Lesson Study Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUfLFaG7Ji8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR02HfgXnkk



Name of class, grade level, number of students:
Both videos were of my first period co-op class. It is a tenth-grade English class. There are a total of twenty-one students with an EC population of nine. Over half of the non-disabled students have been identified as at-risk prior to being assigned to our class.

Overview of module objectives and activities: 

The objectives of the lessons were as follows:

I can identify the topic and detail sentences in a paragraph.
I can identify the transitions in a paragraph.
I can identify and sort general, clueing, and specific topic sentences.
I can create general, clueing, and specific topic sentences.
I can explain the difference between the types of topic sentences and the parts of the paragraph.

The clips show students engaged in kinesthetic activities that act as physical metaphors for the writing strategies or concepts we are trying to help students learn. Based on Learning Styles Assessments we conducted with the students, we found that most of our students are kinesthetic learners. Therefore, we try to incorporate some kinesthetic activity in every lesson (more when we are practicing) like the physical warm-up and discussion of how we do certain things to warm the brain or the Paragraph Express with students.
The clips also show the students working on their differentiated writing mini-lessons in which they are not only working from their own starting point but also engaged in self-reflection about their performance on the previous day's writing practice. During their individualized writing practice, they were also meeting individually with one teacher to work on areas of difficulty or confusion, or to discuss success and goals for the next day. Students who had advanced to the next level early circulated and encouraged students to "search and check their capitalization or to remember their clueing words" in order to promote cooperation and engagement.

Rationale for choice of the two, 10-15-minute clips: 

 
I chose these videos because they exhibit the reflective, student-centered, and authentic elements of Best Practice. The reflective aspect is present in the student comments they record for every completed assignment, and in the individual meetings with teachers. The student-centered aspect is evident in the use of kinesthetic delivery and practice methods by teachers and students as well as the differentiated writing mini-lessons which students complete at their own pace. As for the authenticity, it may not be evident in the video; however, students are applying their writing strategies in analysis of text read in and out of class as well as preparing to write their ePals in a few weeks. The students are very aware of why they are learning strategies to improve their writing and reading abilities, and that, as well as the cooperative nature of the class, have motivated them to focus and strive for improvement. Also, this week was Homecoming and between that and a myriad of equipment and technical issues, these two clips were all I had to use. While I may have lost the video of the clicker assessments, basket-ball review, and dry erase activities, I thought these were still indicative
 of our differentiated approach to the difficult-to-teach and hard-to-learn topic of writing.

Summary of pre-/post-assessment findings in table form:  Table is below summary

In the pre-assessments, all four parts of the paragraph were not present in their writings. They did not use proper capitalization, punctuation or sentence structure. They did not apply any organizational framework to their writing, nor did they provide details.
In the post-assessments, more than 100% of students began their paragraphs with a topic sentence and 80% included at least three details to develop their topic sentence. Over 70% of students correctly used transitions in their paragraphs. Over 60% of the students who had struggled with capitalization and punctuation on the pre-test began every sentence with a capital and ended them with the proper punctuation. In their student reflections, they said the "Search and Check" step of the "PENS" strategy helped them remember to go back and check each sentence for the capital at the beginning and the punctuation at the end. These findings were promising; however, students who struggled with subject/verb agreement continued to exhibit the same gap in learning they exhibited in the pre-assessment. This leads me to believe the subject/verb agreement issue is due to a more fundamental misconception or mis-education than our strategy is meant to target.

	Pre-Assessment	Post-Assessment
Topic sentence present	24%	100%*-every student included a topic sentence
Detail sentences (at least 6 sentences, 3 details)	.04%	81%-17 out of 21 students included at least 3 details-two sentences for each!
Transitions	14%	76%-16 out of 21 students included appropriate transitions
Tense (subject/verb agreement)	33%	43%- 12 students did not show improvement in this area-definitely an area for focus!!
Point-of-View	71%	85%-this was also an area that did not seem to be addressed by our strategies-I will be looking at this too!
Capitalization/Punctuation	28%	67%-I still have 7 students who struggle with this; however, I believe they need more time to assimilate the strategy into their writing practice before they will exhibit mastery.