Learning Labs

Learning Labs are organized opportunities for teachers to engage in the work of teaching together. Learning Labs are designed to offer professional development that is close to practice and fosters collaborative communities in which educators continue to learn from one another and develop shared practices.

Goals of Learning Labs

• To develop ways of working together that support ongoing learning of our craft • To create a collaborative disposition of innovation, risk-taking, and informing

decisions based on effectiveness with students • To hone our practice by drawing on the expertise of multiple educators sharing a

teaching/learning experience • To develop a shared understanding of high quality teaching that includes eliciting

and responding to students’ ideas

Learning Labs and the Learning Cycle

Introduce

Prepare

Enact

Analyze

The Lab begins with some collective learning about an aspect of practice that the group wants to investigate. This focus may be selected by the teacher educator or facilitator, or collectively decided upon by the participants.

Then, the group collaboratively plans and practices a lesson to try with students.

They go to into a classroom to try the lesson, sharing the responsibility of decision-making and enactment. Groups will often do two classroom visits in one day so that plans can be revised between visits and multiple educators can try leading the activity.

Finally, the group analyzes how the lesson(s) went, considering what was learned about student thinking and how instructional decisions played out in the classroom and planning future lessons to try.

Learning Labs

Learning Lab Overview Introduce: First, teachers, coaches, and principals select an aspect of practice they want to investigate collectively: particular content, a particular instructional activity, or “talk moves” that can help get out student ideas, for example.

Prepare: Next, the group plans and practices a lesson collaboratively, anticipating student thinking, considering the benefits and challenges of particular moves, and developing shared goals for the lesson. Enact: Then teachers go into a classroom together and teach the lesson. There might be one lead teacher or teachers might “pass the chalk,” sharing the teaching role. The intent of this time is for all educators to share in the decision-making of live teaching. One way teachers all participate in-the-moment is through “teacher time out.” Read more about teacher time out below. Often teachers will do two classroom visits in one day so that multiple teachers can lead the activity and plans can be revised between visits. Analyze: After the classroom visit teachers analyze how the lesson went, considering what was learned about student thinking in relation to the content and how decisions played out in the classroom. Teachers also decide on some common instructional activities that they will try in their classroom. Through these common commitments, the learning cycle continues as teachers try common practices and learn from one another about how these plans play out in their various classrooms.

Instructional Activities Instructional Activities are short routine activities with a beginning, middle, and end, making them useful for trying out together in a brief period of time. The routines can be used over and over with new content, allowing teachers to try out the same activity many times, focusing on student thinking and fostering discussion across classrooms.

Classroom Visits and Teacher Time Out The purpose of Learning Labs is to learn together about practice and develop shared, collaborative practices. In this spirit, we all engage in the learning, planning, and

enactment of the lesson. The teacher leading the lesson is not modeling for us to watch and think about. Instead, we all work on making sense of student thinking and making decisions about what to do in the moment. One way this happens is through “Teacher Time Out”. This is when a teacher calls time out, or pauses the lesson, to think aloud about what they are noticing, share decision making with one another, and determine where to steer instruction. It is helpful to let students know that teachers are learners too, and that when we are in classes together we might pause the lesson to talk about what we are learning.