Tag Archives: Lesson Study

Instructors Tackle Tools for Competency-based Learning and Equity

Each year, our school’s Instructional Team selects an annual focus for improving our educational practices. Past focus areas have included student-centered coaching, classroom culture, and common assessments. This year, we are focusing on competency-based learning and equity.

Competency-based learning can go by other names in educational literature, including proficiency-based learning and mastery learning. Competency-based learning is one tool we use at Eagle Rock toward the achievement of our ultimate goal for students: equitable attainment of high standards of learning. We drew from a variety of sources to define what competency-based learning and equity mean to us and honed in on our definitions: Continue reading…

Eagle Rock’s TLC: Teachers Teaching Teachers to Teach

One of the major “perks” of becoming a part of our cohort of Public Allies Fellows at Eagle Rock is the opportunity to participate in a Colorado state alternative teacher licensure program, which is paid for by Eagle Rock.

An important portion of that program centers on weekly meetings with new licensure candidates on campus to hear fresh teaching skills from our Professional Development Center team members as a means of boosting the candidates’ instructional techniques.

Eagle Rock School Alternative Teacher Licensure

Offered through our Fellowship Program in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education and Public Allies Inc., these “mini” lessons — known as Teaching and Learning Convenings (TLC) — are intended to improve the quality of teaching and awareness each candidate can produce within a classroom setting. The learnings range from classroom culture to simple and effective practices that can improve each student’s experience.

At the same time, the lessons allow each candidate to receive feedback from his or her peers — in addition to our own Continue reading…

Using ‘Lesson Study’ for Instructional Improvement

There are a couple of ways of looking at continuing education for classroom instructors. There’s the Henry Ford method, which suggests, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

And then there’s the Marine Corps way: “If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.”

Lesson Study ImageHere at the Eagle Rock School, we subscribe to the above-mentioned automaker’s optimistic view and apply it to our own instructors’ commitment to become lifelong learners who are continually improving their craft. In fact, we believe continuing education to be a critical part of becoming — or remaining — a successful educator.

Our School’s instructional specialists and Public Allies Fellows constantly experience being part of a professional community where they are giving and receiving feedback, as well provided with opportunities to reflect on their practice. You can see this professional learning community in action through our instructional meetings, staff workdays at the start and end of each trimester, and conversations between co-teachers.

One specific structure that we use — primarily with our Public Allies Fellows — is a cycle that we refer to as “lesson study.”  Other schools might call it by a different name such as “educational rounds.” Our lesson study cycle has three distinct sections:

  1. Pre-meeting session
  2. Classroom observation
  3. de-briefing session

The pre-meeting brings together all of the teachers who will participate in the three-part cycle, and employs a couple of different formats. For instance, we could be learning about Continue reading…