Lesson Plan and How to Look at It
Our instructions are based on the Course of Study (curriculum guidelines) released by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Today's lessons were developed based on the new Course of Study that will be enforced in 2002.
<Study Goal>
	Under the Course of Study, each Math and Science Study Group established its own study goals. Please refer to each subject's "reasons for setting up the goal" for more details.
		Mathematics Study Group Developing well thought out lessons that provide students a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment of mathematical activities and fostering their ability to have good foresight and logical thinking.
		Science Study Group Not only to rear students' minds to autonomously connect with surrounding nature and to love nature, but also to foster their ability to investigate problems in nature.
	The lesson plans are usually developed in collaboration with other teachers in the same grade level or small mixed grade level group. During the collaboration work, the teachers share their experiences and ideas in order to enhance students' learning and development. Unit instructional plans are usually developed to achieve the objective of the unit by considering the instruction process of each lesson. Then a key lesson is identified from the unit instructional plan and detailed lesson plan is produced. Sometimes, the lesson plan is tested in a classroom as preparation work and the contents and the strategies of instruction are carefully analyzed and revised.
	Format of the Lesson Plan (please refer to our lesson plans for this open house) 1. Unit name (Contents of what is to be learned) 2. Relation of the unit with other units (Relation with contents of other units) 3. Instructional plan (Instructional plan of the unit) 4. Instruction of this lesson
		This section consists of four different parts: (1) "title" of the lesson, (2)"goal" of the lesson, (3) relationship of the lesson to the goal of subject education at the school, and (4) Learning process. The learning process section consists of four sections: "introduction" "development;" and "conclusion". A lesson is carried out according to the allocation of time that is indicated in the lesson plan. Lessons are made based on a teacher's effort to understand his/her students by daily observation of the students and interaction with them. Without understanding of the students the lesson will not work well.
<Observing Lessons>
	In order to observe lessons effectively we usually go through the following steps: (1) read the lesson plan carefully, (2) grasp how the lesson flows, (3) be familiar with the objective of this lesson, (4) observe the lessons and think about whether the objective is achieved through the instructions, (5) evaluate the lesson. At today's lesson study open house, we suggest that participants focus on the following points: a.) how the teacher poses questions and how the students respond, b.) the place in the lesson that the teacher's ideas are implemented (usually described in the lesson plan), and c.) the materials developed by the teacher and how they are presented.
<Suggested Observation Points of Today's Two Main Lessons>
	Mathematics lesson -- 7A (Mr. Suginaka)
	Were the students willing to challenge themselves in order to solve the problems? Were the students able to find the area of the side of a cone using the length of the generated line and the radius of the base?
	Science lesson -- 9A (Mr. Shinomiya)
	Did the students work cooperatively with other group members in order to solve the problems? Were they able to describe the relationships between the changes in speed and the working force that they investigated?