NWA Writing Project Engages Local Teachers in a Different Approach to Teacher Learning Through Lesson Study

This spring, NWA Writing Project teacher consultants and participants in the College-Ready Writers Program grant joined teachers and faculty in 10 states across the country to collaboratively plan, teach, and reflect on a series of lessons targeting argumentative writing.

The original idea for this activity — called "lesson study" — comes from Japan and refers to a form of professional development teachers use to study and improve their teaching. In a traditional lesson study, teachers come together to identify a teaching problem they want to solve, read the latest education literature on the topic, design a lesson to address the problem, and then join together to teach and observe what is called a public research lesson.

For the College-Ready Writers Program lesson study, the National Writing Project added a digital component to the practice, inviting participants to use Google-plus communities and hangouts to share experiences and learn from each other's practice at a distance. The Google-plus communities allowed teachers from across the country to post images, videos, documents, and thoughts.

Locally, teacher consultants Kelly Buckley (Fayetteville High School), Jennifer Penaflorida (Haas Hall Academy), and Heather Zaloudek (Berryville High School) volunteered to teach the mini-unit to their own students first before heading out to classrooms across Northwest Arkansas to demonstrate lessons and share resources and strategies with teachers planning to teach the lessons in their own classrooms.

In a podcast for NWP radio, Nikki Holland, director of the Northwest Arkansas College-Ready Writers Program grant, explained, "Creating professional learning opportunities for teachers is tricky — it's amazing how quickly we can forget that all of those strategies we cherish in our classrooms like inquiry, reflection, choice, and dialogue need to be present for adult learners as well. The process of lesson study has become, for us, an essential element in the landscape of professional learning, as it places teachers' questions at the center and creates a critical, collaborative space for sharing resources and reflections."

To hear more about teachers' experience teaching the mini-units in their classrooms and participating in the lesson study via the online community, check out the NWP's radio show on lesson study: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nwp_radio/2016/04/28/college-ready-writers-program-lesson-study.