04 summer - anne, carey, casey
conservation of energy - sans friction

In order to start a lesson study, we needed to start with a common lesson, so Casey, Carey, and Anne began to design a lesson regarding conservation of energy (see brainstorming and concept map documentation below). We discussed the different forms of energy and attempted to find relevant analogies to help explain the concepts.

While working in this meeting and the following Spring meeting, we learned primarily how to do collaborative lesson planning. This may not have been 'lesson study' as it should be done, but we still found it to be a valuable. Perhaps my biggest learning from collaborative lesson planning was this idea that my classroom is not really my own. At my school I (Anne) am the only physics teacher, so I don't need to share curriculum with anyone, and I have no high stakes testing so effectively I'm not accountable to anyone other than my principal, who rarely observes me. This kind of isolation provided a learning environment for me to make mistakes and grow as a teacher, but it was inevitably a solitary practice. Collaborative lesson planning was maybe one of the first times that I had to let other people have a say in my classroom. I remember it being very uncomfortable when Carey or Casey would suggest something that I didn't think I couldn't picture doing in my classroom, or using an analogy that didn't seem useful to me. Even so, what we came up with was pretty good, but we wouldn't find that out until we had taught it over the course of the following year.

documents and resources

• Concept map - the physics concept map of energy, helping us clarify our ideas and help focus our direction for our lesson study
• Brainstorm - this shows a list of ideas we generated as we decided where to focus our lesson study
• Lesson Plan - first draft of our conservation of energy lesson sequence

(c) 2009 ronnster/oharanator productions