School-wide Lesson Study Case: Hillcrest Elementary School
Hillcrest Elementary School, in San Francisco Unified School District, began its journey of school-wide lesson study in 2016, focusing on mathematics. Between 2016 and 2019, mathematics achievement at Hillcrest for students of color, low-income students and English learners went from below district averages to substantially above district averages.
Using the school-wide lesson study process, Hillcrest teachers continue to build and refine coherent mathematics teaching and learning across grade levels around key elements like the following.
Study and Revision of Mathematics Units
Each unit progression is studied and revised as needed to make sure that each new mathematical concept is built from students’ prior knowledge. See an example from a grade 3 fraction unit (pages 3-9).
Gallery of Boardwork for One Mathematics Unit
Creating mock-up boardwork across an entire mathematics unit allowed Hillcrest teachers to make visible and refine their thinking about the unit’s mathematical trajectory.
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Student Reflective Math Journals
Drawing on ideas about student mathematics journals from Japanese curriculum materials, Hillcrest teachers built a shared vision of journal use from kindergarten through grade 5 and refined their practices by sharing and analyzing class journal sets.
Progression of student journal prompts across the grades adapted from Mathematics for Elementary School grades 1-6, H. Hironaka & Y. Sugiyama (eds.), 2006, Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki Ltd. Copyright 2006 by Tokyo Shoseki Ltd. Adapted with permission.
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Student Talk Banks
As part of their lesson study work, teachers studied and tested resources on classroom discourse, and built a school-wide set of discourse expectations and examples designed to support powerful mathematics learning even as students transitioned from their native language to English.
Hillcrest’s journal work with teachers provided the design and many of the materials for this course ‘Try Math Journals in your Classroom‘
Student Talk Banks
As Hillcrest developed productive talk with student they developed this Talk Bank across the grade levels.
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Teachers at Hillcrest use a speaking and listening rubric adapted for K-5 classrooms at their school. In the video clip below, they discuss their students’ mathematical conversations when working with partners.
Special Education Using Teaching Through Problem-solving
