Blending with Stanford Ideas

    This has been the summer of PD. After attending the ISTE conference in Philadelphia at the end of June, I was fortunate enough to become a Stanford Hollyhock Fellow (along with Justin and Paul from BHS) and receive two weeks of instruction on both content and leading for equity. At first, I was nervous that all this new information was going to send my instruction in different directions, but going blended has proved a fantastic landing point for many of the new ideas sparked at Stanford.
    One new idea that I would like to try is the use of recording discussions in order to promote reflection and extension. The act of reviewing discussion videos was a practice at Stanford, and I was able to reflect on my facilitation as well as the educators in my content cluster. I learned so much by watching just ten minutes of video, and if I was able to reflect on my facilitation, why can't my students reflect on their participation?
    My plan of action is to have a station rotation with two stations for the beginning of the year. While one group of students is working individually on chromebooks/an independent task, a small group will work with me either on a modified lesson or in order to hold a discussion. I am going to record (at least a few) discussions, and students will be responsible for watching this video the next class and completing a reflection tool.
    I have not created this tool as of now, but I envision it to have three categories: 1. Your participation during the discussion; 2. Additions to any of the content discussed (agree, disagree, evidence, etc); and 3. Evaluation of discussion norms (which will be created at the beginning of the year and house things such as "Step Up/Step Back"). I will collect these reflection tools, and the third class will consist of an overall review of the discussion.
   Please comment if you can think of anything else to add to my reflection tool or any other ideas you might have about using video to improve metacognitive skills in the classroom! I will edit this post and attach the tool once it is finalized.