Peer Coaching

Coaching Skills (Self Study): Lesson Improvement Process

In recent years social and economic changes have remade our world. As we discussed in Session 1, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, creativity and collaborative skills are keys to our students’ success. So is the ability to know how to learn. For educators these changes have profound meaning.

The authors of How People Learn insist that preparing students for their future, “…Requires rethinking what is taught, how teachers teach, and how what students learn is assessed.” (Bransford et al, 2000 P 121).

Overarching Questions of the Lesson Improvement Process

Getting Started

In this activity you will experience one of the roles coaches play most often, co-planning a learning activity that often comes from a colleague’s classroom. As the diagram above indicates, you will gain knowledge and experience needed to improve learning activities that help students develop the skills they need for college and careers as we complete this activity. You will gain these critical skills by:

Using a research-based learning improvement process
Working in collaborative teams.
Practicing coaching skills as you make lesson improvement decisions.
Applying concepts from key resources like the Learning Activity Checklist, and the Lesson Improvement Questions from Session 3, to a classroom learning activity.
Using a Lesson Improvement Process Rubric to reflect on how coaching skills and the lesson improvement process assisted you in this process.

Part B: Setting Up Your Lesson

Throughout this activity you will use a Lesson Improvement Template as your team improves the lesson and shares it with other team members.

Open the Lesson Improvement Template and save it to your Lesson Improvement folder.
To get started, fill in the Lesson Title, Instructor names, Grade Level(s), and Content Area(s).
You will be updating this document throughout Sessions 4 and 5, and will share your work with other educators. Decide how you and your partner will revise and share your work.
- You may want to create a group in Windows Live so you can save and share the template and resources in a SkyDrive.
- Or you can save and share the document by uploading it to Shared Documents in your Workspace

Part C: Learning Context

The authors of How People Learn (2000), believe, “Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth, providing many examples in which the same concept is at work and providing a firm foundation of factual knowledge.” (p 20)

How does the learning activity you are improving relate to your overall plans to help students master the chosen standards, particularly those that focus on higher order skills like critical thinking or problem solving?

In the Lesson Context section of the Lesson Improvement Template note the following:

Any prerequisite knowledge or understanding
How the learning activity you are improving relates to previous learning, and in particular to other activities that will help students develop the same types of skill and knowledge.
How students will be able to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it, and how the activity relates to previous learning activities.

Related Scenarios

» Overview
» Baseline Competency Checklist
» Prepare for Lesson Improvement
» Lesson Improvement Process
» Implementation
» Closing