Lesson Study Cycle Designer Agent Skill

Design a complete lesson study cycle from research question through collaborative planning to research lesson.

Context cost
6.8k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 27.1 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design a complete lesson study cycle from research question through collaborative planning to research lesson. Use when planning jugyou kenkyuu or collaborative teacher inquiry into practice.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

collaborative-planningdocumentationjugyou-kenkyuulesson-studyprofessional-learningresearchresearch-lesson

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md27.1 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: lesson-study-cycle-designer disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "professional-learning/lesson-study-cycle-designer" skill_name: "Lesson Study Cycle Designer" domain: "professional-learning" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Stigler & Hiebert (1999) — The Teaching Gap: best ideas from the world's teachers for improving education in the classroom" - "Lewis, Perry & Murata (2006) — How should research contribute to instructional improvement? The case of lesson study" - "Dudley (2014) — Lesson Study: a handbook" - "Takahashi & McDougal (2016) — Collaborative lesson research: maximizing the impact of lesson study" - "Fernandez & Yoshida (2004) — Lesson Study: a Japanese approach to improving mathematics teaching and learning" input_schema: required: - field: "teaching_challenge" type: "string" - field: "subject_and_topic" type: "string" - field: "team_composition" type: "string" optional: - field: "student_level" type: "string" - field: "available_time" type: "string" - field: "previous_lesson_study" type: "string" - field: "school_context" type: "string" - field: "case_students" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "research_theme" type: "string" - field: "cycle_plan" type: "object" - field: "research_lesson_plan" type: "object" - field: "observation_protocol" type: "object" chains_well_with: - "instructional-coaching-conversation-guide" - "lesson-observation-protocol-designer" - "reflective-practice-prompt-generator" - "teacher-inquiry-cycle-designer" - "pedagogical-content-knowledge-developer" teacher_time: "5 minutes" tags: ["lesson-study", "jugyou-kenkyuu", "collaborative-planning", "research-lesson", "professional-learning"] ---
74# Lesson Study Cycle Designer
75
76## What This Skill Does
77
78Designs a complete lesson study cycle — the structured, collaborative process originated in Japan (jugyō kenkyū) where a team of teachers jointly plan a "research lesson," one teacher teaches it while others observe student learning (not teacher performance), and the team analyses what students actually learned and why. The critical principle is that lesson study is research INTO teaching, not evaluation OF teachers — the lesson belongs to the group, the focus is on student learning (not teacher behaviour), and the purpose is to develop shared professional knowledge about how students learn specific content. The output includes a research theme, a cycle plan with meeting agendas, a research lesson plan designed for collaborative observation, and an observation protocol focused on case students. AI is specifically valuable here because designing an effective lesson study cycle requires understanding both the Japanese model (with its emphasis on kyōzai kenkyū — deep study of the subject matter and curriculum) and the practical constraints of non-Japanese school contexts where release time, team stability, and lesson study experience may be limited.
79
80## Evidence Foundation
81
82Stigler & Hiebert (1999) introduced lesson study to Western audiences through "The Teaching Gap," showing that Japanese teachers continuously improve their practice through collaborative cycles of planning, observing, and analysing research lessons. They argued that the power of lesson study lies not in individual lessons but in the collaborative process: teachers develop shared professional knowledge about how students learn, which accumulates over years and is passed to new teachers. Lewis, Perry & Murata (2006) identified four pathways through which lesson study improves instruction: increased knowledge of subject matter, increased knowledge of instruction, increased ability to observe students, and stronger collegial networks. Dudley (2014) adapted lesson study for UK schools, introducing the concept of "case students" — three carefully chosen students (one high-attaining, one middle, one lower-attaining) who become the focus of observation, making student learning visible and manageable to track. Takahashi & McDougal (2016) emphasised that the most important (and most often skipped) phase of lesson study is kyōzai kenkyū — the deep study of the subject matter, curriculum, and existing research that precedes lesson planning. Without this, lesson study becomes collaborative planning without the research foundation. Fernandez & Yoshida (2004) documented the complete Japanese lesson study process, showing that a single cycle typically takes 3–5 meetings over several weeks, with the research lesson itself being just one component of a much deeper process.
83
84## Input Schema
85
86The teacher must provide:
87- **Teaching challenge:** The problem to investigate. *e.g. "Students can calculate the area of simple shapes but can't apply this to compound shapes — they don't see how to decompose a compound shape into simpler ones" / "Students can identify language features in a text but can't explain their effect on the reader" / "Year 7 students struggle to write developed explanations in Science — they make a claim but don't support it with evidence or reasoning"*
88- **Subject and topic:** What the research lesson will cover. *e.g. "Year 8 Mathematics — area of compound shapes" / "Year 9 English — analysing language in poetry" / "Year 7 Science — writing CER (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) explanations"*
89- **Team composition:** Who is involved. *e.g. "3 maths teachers, mixed experience — one NQT, one 5 years experience, one head of department" / "4 English teachers from the same department, all experienced"*
90
91Optional (injected by context engine if available):
92- **Student level:** Year group
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md4,011 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈820
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
5,955
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
3.4%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 34% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

6.8k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 27.1 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md27.1 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Lesson Study Cycle Designer · 6.8k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/garethmanning-lesson-study-cycle-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/lesson-study-cycle-designer" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer ] || { mv .claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/lesson-study-cycle-designer" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/lesson-study-cycle-designer

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/garethmanning-lesson-study-cycle-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/lesson-study-cycle-designer" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/lesson-study-cycle-designer" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/lesson-study-cycle-designer/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/lesson-study-cycle-designer

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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