Before the real lesson studies, the school had arranged for the HKU team to have class visits and lesson observations. Teachers’ efforts put in, students’ learning attitude, teacher-students relationship could hence be recognized.
Moreover, there was also informal collaborative lesson planning, in which certain taught topics, e.g. directed numbers, is brought up for discussion. In such meetings, notes, worksheets, test papers and students’ work were studied. With respect to these materials, difficulties encountered by teachers and students were presented in detailed by teachers. Then comprehensive and deep sharing were focused on the following areas.
- teachers’ ideas about /conceptions of particular math content
- school/ teachers’ knowledge of their students
- what difficulties were encountered when relevant topics were covered
- what remedies had been tried
- school / teachers’ expectation on NCS students’
- knowledge achievement / level of difficulty
- skill achievement
- attitude achievement
(which could be set as learning objectives)
- school / teachers’ preference of activities, tasks, assignments, assessments, etc.