Last week, I had the opportunity to commandeer one of Justin Taylor's and his student teacher Kevin Krantz's planning periods to plan for blended learning. Though Justin has been using blended learning instructional practices and station rotation in his teaching, he felt he needed to improve something in his DBQ process. So here is what we did:
We started by diagramming the current practice. As you see in the image below, the DBQ process takes place of 5 class periods. Justin uses a mix of whole class instruction and discussion, small group stations, and independent and small group practice.
Justin and Kevin then identified the problem as such: strategy instruction and practice of new skills is not engaging and takes too long, impacting the time students have to analyze the documents. We then brainstormed solutions to this problem and revised the diagram to reflect two simple changes and an area we would continue to think about improving.
Finally, I made it look pretty so that we have a tool to share for the common good! You can click the image to see a larger version.
If this planning approach sounds like something you would be interested in, please let me know!
Cool Tools
Edutopia recently updated their Big List of Educational Grants and Resources. If you have a big idea that just lacks funding, check the list out to see if you can apply for anything! Thanks to Natalie and Kelly from Education Elements for the suggestion!
PBLU is a website with ready-made projects for those of you who may be interested in trying Project-Based Learning. Each project comes equipped with all the resources you may need, even down to the rubrics! Thanks to Natalie and Kelly for the suggestion!
School Retool has issued the Shadow a Student Challenge for the week of Feb. 29-Mar. 4. The challenge is intended for school administrators to strap on a backpack for a day and experience school from the students' perspective, and the challenge website has resources to help make this possible. Teachers may consider taking the challenge during their off-period.
Soundtrap is a new tool for student creation of sound files, either music or podcast. Student work created through the program is stored on the cloud, which is helpful considering the large size of many sound files. Additionally, students can also remotely collaborate on the same project, much like WeVideo allows for collaboration on video projects. This is a freemium product, so look at the Basic personal subscription, which is free.
Professional Learning
In Teaching: Just Like Performing Magic, Teller, the silent half of Penn and Teller, shares how engagement, or the romance of a subject, should not be overlooked.
Finding common ground with students is an important step towards student-centered learning, even if it means connecting over a favorite TV show as described in The Walking Dead helped me bring Jordan's reading skills back to life.
I can really appreciate the level of work that is apparent in Justin and Kevin's planning. Additionally, I like that the sheets of paper across the top of the board share appropriate behaviors about engagement in the group. ~
ReplyDelete