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Making Learning Personal
Fall 2017
Vanguard Forum
Vanguard Babies!
Collaboration
Be the Example
Stacey Morrissey, Middletown Middle School
I found myself looking at the starting line of a new school year. I sat down at my desk to plan, and realized I’m really going to be doing this… I’m going blended. What is this going to look like in science? How am I going to implement this? Have I lost my mind taking this on with a new curriculum? I buried my nose in resource after resource, becoming ever-more thankful for the wide array of experiences I have had with FCPS to draw from. I knew what to do, I just needed to take the plunge.
So I began. The excitement from the Vanguard Academy and Twitter feeds fueled my efforts. The experiences from classes and book studies inspired my lesson plans. Collaboration with other teachers across the county--whether face-to-face or through social media-- was one of the highlights of my summer. I worked to incorporate flexible seating into the mix, because if I’m going to make one big change in my classroom this year, why not two?! Everything was coming together and I had such a refreshed outlook for the new school year.
An unexpected change developed when collaborating with one of my colleagues. We would plan together and share ideas as we always had, but I felt that I was consistently in a different place… and this is because I was. We focused on the same Performance Expectations and Standards and planned together, but my journey wasn’t like his anymore. It was a lot of conversations starting with me saying “I’m going to be doing this…” or “you can use these ideas, too, but I’m using a blended station rotation model so my student’s path will look different.”
The first days of the new year I was committed to working out rotations, adapting and re-adapting my room arrangement, and refining the processes in my room. My students and I settled into a rotation schedule that met their needs and the needs of the curriculum. Students were excited about science! They anticipated each day and what the next day would have in store for them. Engagement was high and behavior problems and disruptions were low. Then it happened.
The Effective Blended Classroom
Onboarding: An Essential Process for Blended Learning
Stacey Sisler, Crestwood Middle School
Think about all of the routines and procedures we teach students at the beginning of the school year. We teach students rules for sharpening pencils, turning in papers, and leaving the classroom. We teach students how to evacuate the building, open a combination lock, and memorize their lunch numbers. But what about teaching students about the culture of learning in our classrooms? What kinds of routines and expectations do we teach that prepare our students to engage in a blended learning environment?
In chapter 8 of Blended Learning in Action by Tucker, Wycoff, and Green, the authors define onboarding as the “specific practices used by organizations to successfully help recent employees enter their new work environment” (p. 96). Even though many of our students are digital natives, the blended learning environment and the skills necessary to thrive in that environment can be very new. It is our responsibility to teach our students how to navigate and be successful in this personalized setting. For the teachers at Crestwood Middle School, onboarding has been an essential part of establishing the culture of learning in our blended math classrooms.
During the first week of school, our math teachers designed four lessons that were purposeful in teaching students how to be digital learners and agents of their own learning experience. These onboarding lessons supported the growth mindset and included expectations for independent learning, collaborative learning, blended learning, and productive struggle. Each reinforced for students the premise that lessons are designed to meet their unique learning needs. Each of these lessons also helped to “build a bridge which allow[ed] them to use [technology] effectively in an academic setting” (Tucker, et al., p. 98). In addition, our school provided lessons on digital citizenship to help students learn about the safe, appropriate use of technology and online learning tools. As the school year progresses, teachers can refer back to the expectations set and modeled during the first week of school to help students maintain control of their learning and behavior throughout the year.
Collaborative Learning
At the beginning of the collaborative learning lesson, teachers asked our students to think about their experiences working with others. They used this conversation to build a pros and cons list for collaborative work. Allowing students to voice both positive and negative feelings gave the teachers the opportunity to address misconceptions about collaborative work and drive the conversation toward productive group norms. Teachers shared the routines and procedures for getting materials ready and finding a place to work through group roles, such as organizer, resource manager, understander, and includer. Then, the class discussed accountable talk and how to have focused, respectful conversations about the work at hand. Finally, teachers asked students to put these norms into action using a collaborative activity called 31-DERFUL in which students had to listen to each other, consider each other’s thinking, and organize materials to reach a common goal.
In the Spotlight
Being a Blended Bear: My Experience with Blended Learning
Lauren Graziano, Oakdale High School
Before the Bell — Where I Began:
When I first began my journey with blended learning I had no idea where to begin. Like any teacher, I had to think, “How will my students understand this?” I kept asking myself, “How can I make this work for them and how can I manage it?” But like anything, I just had to try. Try I did. Try and fail. Fail again. And again. But then I found what worked for my classroom and more importantly, what worked for my students. I had a large class of merit level ninth graders and knew I had to keep their attention, so I started with a station rotation model and kept everything simple. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I continued teaching through Google Classroom and adapted my lessons to create student choice. I quickly realized I had to manage the amount of work I was assigning and how long I was allowing them to do it; I felt like a new teacher all over again with struggling pacing, wait time, and vigor. Through trial and error I found a happy medium for my merit and honors level classes and students. I changed the paths they got to choose to learn from and allowed them varying time to get to our essential questions and overall lesson objectives. I used alliteration for the station tasks, so the students could pick up on the concepts quicker. For example, I had to keep track of all the tasks I wanted to get to in a week, month, semester. Wednesdays were always my days to do vocabulary and that stayed that way: Word Wednesday. My stations were originally based off of music lyrics, I came up with four concepts for me to handle my English curriculum with: Check, Connect, Create, and Choice.
Presenting the Blended Elem. Science Classroom at NSTA
The goal of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. Each year several regional conferences are held around the United States allowing for science teachers to share their cutting edge practices that engage students in critical thinking and learning. On January 3, 2017 a proposal was submitted to the regional NSTA Baltimore Conference about Frederick County Public School’s Vanguard program accelerating blended learning in elementary science classrooms. The proposal was accepted, giving Vanguard teachers the platform to present on how blended learning environments are created and embraced in the elementary science classroom.
FCPS science is undergoing large scale overhauls as all grade levels align to the Maryland State Science Standards. With such significant changes taking place, the timing was perfect to examine how science is being taught in the classroom. Two Vanguard teachers, who embrace such a challenge, were asked to lend their experience from the classroom and share with participants at the conference. Both of these teachers, Kim Brandenburg from Oakdale Elementary School and Kim Martin from Lincoln Elementary School, are known for their enthusiasm to leverage technology to meet needs of students. These teachers are also highly involved in systemic initiatives, such as curriculum development, allowing them to possess a deep knowledge of how content and active learning are used to engage students. Fellow Vanguards Elementary Science Teacher Specialist Kendra Hinson and myself were able to lend our experience to provide an organizational perspective. After assembling the session content, a final structure for our session model included a short introduction to be delivered, 3 timed content stations, followed by a concluding Q&A. The station topics included: How do I start? How do I personalize learning? and Blended NGSS in action.
Giving Up Control: Shifting Mindset Through Flexible Seating
Between math groups, guided reading groups, word study groups, and writing groups, every teacher is in some way attempting to give every child a unique and personalized learning pathway. Now think about how much time is spent planning, creating, instructing, grading, and sending home lessons. There are usually never enough minutes in the day to get it all done, and many elementary teachers are often left feeling overwhelmed or ineffective. No one wants to spend hours feeling this way when they can be energized and inspired by their work. Blended learning gives teachers time to do the things they are most qualified for: TEACHING! Using the power of technology, teachers can create, copy, assign, group, score, and report in a fraction of the time. This frees them up to attend to creative, intentional lesson design and more dedicated time to personalizing based on individual students’ needs during 1-on-1 or small group conferences. Blended learning does not replace that face-to-face time between teachers and students or students and students. Rather, blended learning enhances it!
My First Shift - Control over PLACE
Three years ago, I launched my blended learning journey by experimenting with flexible seating as a way to give students control over their place for learning. My first effort involved replacing all student chairs with exercise balls through a PTA-funded grant. I went “cold turkey.” One afternoon, the kids had chairs; when they came back to school the next morning, they had yoga balls. One hour into the trial, the chairs were back in place. It should come as no surprise that I had to frequently model what working on an exercise ball should look like in order for students to successfully master appropriate use. Once expectations were explicitly communicated and gentle reminders were administered to individuals who ignored the expectations, trial two went much smoother. Unfortunately, the novelty of my new seating option wore off by the end of the day, and the majority of my students requested their chairs back. I had to look through a different lens to really have my students understand the value of flexible seating, so I expanded my definition of place from seating to “zones” for working and collaborating.
Leveraging Technology
How to Integrate Tech without Losing Your Mind
Jennifer Gonzalez, editor-in-chief at Cult of Pedagogy.
So you’ve decided it’s time to add more technology to your educational repertoire. The process won’t be painless: Technology can be tricky even for the most tech-savvy person, and if you don’t have a good plan, you might give up before you ever really get started.
These seven steps will give you a framework for adding more technology to your teaching practice.
Step 1: Get Clear on the Reason.
Before you start using any tech tool, figure out why you want to use it. Some reasons are sound, and they will contribute to a successful implementation:
The tool could solve a problem for you.
It may improve learning for some or all students.
It could save you time or stress.
It may give you access to new skills, people, or information.
It looks like fun. If the tool could engage students and keep them learning, it’s worth a try.
And these are some not-so-good reasons:
You feel pressure to use the tool because people keep going on and on about it.
You feel like you should use some technology; might as well be this.
It looks like fun. If a time-consuming tech tool is added with no connection to learning, it may take too much time away from instruction.
It’s essential to start with your learning objectives. Before you even consider technology, think about what you want students to know or be able to do by the time the lesson or unit is over. Then consider how technology could help you reach those goals more effectively.
Can this tool help your students develop measurable, content-based skills in a way that’s more authentic, lasting, expedient, or engaging than the way you’d ordinarily do it? Or will it enable you to grow professionally in a way that would be much harder without it? Then it’s worth a try.
Any time you feel as if the implementation is taking too long or is getting too frustrating, ask yourself whether you’re still heading toward meeting those learning goals. If you’re not, it’s time to change course.
Step 2: Get in the Right Mindset.
Succeeding with technology requires a ton of flexibility and patience. Most people who eventually get comfortable with tech tools have a few mindsets in common, so try to adopt them for yourself:
Things will go wrong. Expecting and dealing with problems and setbacks, rather than getting thrown into a tizzy by them, makes it possible to keep moving forward.
Reboot and Undo. When something isn’t working, know that many problems can be solved by simply restarting a program or a device. And before you let a big mistake discourage you, look for the “undo” button: in many programs, there’s a way to reverse that terrible thing you just did.
Phone a friend. It’s simply not possible to know everything, so get comfortable with asking for help from colleagues, friends, and students. Don’t let the fear of looking ignorant stop you. And if the person you ask seems bothered, then look for someone else who’s happy to share what they know (and there’s a whole lot of them out there).
Let’s just try it. The only way a person gets better at working with technology is by trying stuff. They don’t wait for the full day of training. They sign up, log in, and get their hands dirty.
Step 3: Start Small (and Low-Risk).
Small wins equal greater confidence, so start with a tool that’s relatively easy and that won’t have a big impact on your instructional content or time. Some tools that fit this description are QR Codes, TodaysMeet, Animoto, and bubbl.us. But before you start, read the next step.
#FCPSVanguard
Upcoming Dates and Reminders
Nov. 3 - Vanguard Application Window Closes
Nov. 4 - FCTA Ed Camp
November - Quarter 1 Vanguard micro-credential review
Nov. 17 - Deadline for applications to present at MACPL
Nov. 28 - Vanguard Speaker Series: Jason Green
Nov. 29 - Vanguard Professional Learning with Jason Green
Dec. 1 - Deadline to apply for personalized learning MSET Grant Opportunity
Dec. 20 - Vanguard Forum
Dec. 30 - Deadline for applications to present at Common Ground
January - Vanguard Cohort 2 Announcements
Vanguard Teacher Program
Email: eric.haines@fcps.org
Website: go.fcps.org/vanguard
Phone: 301-644-5182
Twitter: @EHaines24