Creating a Culture of Inquiry Through the Use of Model Lessons

This article really demonstrates what can be accomplished when schools embrace collaboration. Included is a pdf file of a sample schedule that would be a great jumping-off point for any school that might want to follow suit. Below is the beginning of the article. If you'd like to read it in its entirety, simple click on the hyperlink at the end:

Creating a Culture of Inquiry Through the Use of Model Lessons

By:
Suzanne Linebarger
Date: January 8, 2010

Summary: Suzanne Linebarger, associate director of the Northern California Writing Project, describes how the site conducts an inservice program of model lessons that supports collective teacher inquiry into key concepts in teaching reading and writing.  

The students in TJ's third grade classroom listen intently as their guest teacher, a Northern California Writing Project (NCWP) teacher-consultant, reads an article about how ancient Egyptians mummified bodies. Four teachers—third and fourth grade colleagues of TJ's—sit with him in the back of the room watching this model lesson and taking notes as part of a yearlong inservice series anchored by model lessons.

Model lessons are like lab lessons, where an experienced teacher-consultant demonstrates key concepts in the teaching of writing in the classrooms of the teachers to whom the writing project is providing professional development. These lessons are followed by a collective debriefing session where teachers design inquiries into the schoolwide use of the concept demonstrated.

This classroom in Sierra Avenue Elementary School, a diverse rural school near Oroville, California, with nearly 80 percent of its students coming from families receiving AFDC assistance, is a good example of how NCWP uses model lesson structures in multisession inservice programs.