Blended Bulletin, Issue 28

Blended Brags

Thank you to all teachers and students who played a roll in the Nellie Mae site visit. We had a large number of enthusiastic visitors and they were treated to interesting classes and engaging presentations.

Nellie Mae visitors enjoying their luncheon Q&A at Bulkeley.

Students in Susan Johnston's class created this video to show how much they love Blended Learning!

Justin Taylor and Jessica Chirdon are combining their two classes and co-teaching students through a research paper related to the Holocaust. To do this, they are using a flex model where students are mostly working independently, but data from EdPuzzle videos on research/writing skills is being used to inform them which students to pull into small group instruction. Justin and Jessica set themselves and their students up for success by explicitly teaching the expected behaviors for each area of the room.

Cool Tools

Google Slides just introduced a new feature that you may have recently noticed called Q&A. The feature allows a presenter to share a link where audience members can submit questions in a back channel. The audience can "like" questions that have been asked so that the presenter can prioritize questions that are popular in the group. I played with this feature last week and found it extremely easy to use! Check out this promotional video:

Because I can't get enough of cool physics experience, here is Physics Girl, a series of free video resources from PBS LearningMedia.

ThinkCERCA has updated their lesson library to include filters. This should making finding the "just right" lesson even easier.

Professional Learning

Can growth mindset theory reshape the classroom? According to this article, it can, but now the research needs to be turned into effective practice.

A middle school teacher reflects on incorporating reflection into her PBL classroom in 

Reflect versus Critique in the PBL Classroom. An interesting read that differentiates reflection on process from critique of product.

As we know, technology for technology's sake does not work. Five Myths About Classroom Technology (And What To Do, Instead) challenges us to think about classroom technology best practices.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 27

Blended Brags

On Wednesday and Thursday last week, a team of teachers from JMA and BHS joined our wonderful coaches Natalie and Kelly from Education Elements for the final workshop of the year. On Wednesday, these teachers opened their classroom doors for walkthroughs. Visiting their classes, we were able to see engaging Kahoot! games, choice lectures through EdPuzzle, authentic reading and writing practice with ThinkCERCA, and other thoughtful ways of using technology to enhance instruction. We were also able to see station rotation models that allowed for small group instruction and for students to have ownership of their learning.

On Thursday, the team came together for a Reflect and Plan academy. Teachers shared their best practices and worked on what changes and improvements they would like to make for next year. I can't wait to see what they have in store for 2016-17!

 Professional Learning

In It’s Time to Stop Hiding Behind Graduation Rates, Nicholas Donahue, the president and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, discusses how college and career readiness needs to be the measure of success for schools, not graduation rates. How do we improve college and career readiness? Student centered learning.

When Celebrating Learning Differences Is At the Heart of School Culture shares the stories of two schools as they use specific knowledge of each of their students to personalize learning.

The idea behind Let Teachers Design Better Ways to Use School Time is that when time is a variable, teachers should have voice in how it is used in order to avoid time wasted.

Why Flipped Learning Improves a Teacher’s Questioning Skills shares another benefit of flipping your classroom: teachers can ask question that might actually be answered! (Due to the ability to personalize questions for individual or groups of students)

“Can You Hear Me?!”: The Power of Student Voice shares the process and takeaways of one school when they included student voices in reshaping their school.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 26

Blended Brags

Last week, 9th-12th grade Bulkeley students sat down with the software developers for Middlebury Interactive Languages to provide feedback about their tool to support ELLs. Students were able to voice their opinions about the software to the developers in hopes of making the product better. I was deeply impressed by the students making suggestions for the product to improve their learning and not just to make the product more enjoyable! To learn more about MIL's partnership with Hartford Public Schools, check out this article.

Cool Tools

Win the Whitehouse is a fun simulation where students create a presidential candidate and try to make it to the Oval Office. The game takes students through picking a party, establishing their opinions on political issues, and making it through the primaries and election processes.

US News Map is an interactive map of the United States that displays the reporting of news stories over time and locationally. The site also allows you to view images of the original newspapers.

Professional Learning

How can Social Studies benefit from digital content? The Value of Modern Social Studies in Cultivating Real World Literacy shares top resources for bring history to our students' fingertips.

It is often easy for us to claim a buzzword as us ("I am a blended teacher"), or think of a buzzword as unattainable ("We can't do blended here"). ‘It’s Personalized, Online, and Blended’: How to Make Edtech Buzzwords Substantive tells us that when it comes to buzzwords, actions speak louder than words.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 25

Blended Brags

Recently, the school counselors and college and career specialists have been working on learning and rolling out a digital tool called Naviance. Naviance is a college and career readiness portfolio platform that offers a range of tools including curriculum, planning, surveys, document collection, and many more. Our students will be using this site to produce their SSPs. The truly great part is that these SSPs will live with the students for at least their high school careers and will be a collaborative effort among the students, families, teachers, and counselors.

Cool Tools

Edulastic is a free tool for building and assigning standards-based formative assessments. The really great thing about this site is the library of assessments from the community of users.

Professional Learning

In The difference between being eligible for college and ready for college, I found one of the most important reasons why student-centered learning matters. SCL practices get our kids ready for college by instilling them not just with content knowledge, but the knowledge of how to learn.

Thinking of trying out PBL? Read 4 Ways to Promote Growth Mindset in Project-Based Learning to ensure that your students are learning from their failures and reflecting on their progress.

The interesting interview in Blended learning can enable teachers to focus on cognitive skills helps to illuminate how a transition to blended learning makes good teaching great.

Read how TED-ED clubs encourage students to use their voice in producing authentic speeches for an audience.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 24

Blended Brags

Where to start? So much to brag about!

First and foremost, Chromebooks are finally in our classrooms and in the hands of our students. Carts are being used at Bulkeley Lower and at JMA, and over 260 11-12 graders at Bulkeley Upper now have devices to take home.

Chromebook Kickoff
On Saturday, March 12, from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM, just under 200 students and family members came to Bulkeley High School for the first ever Chromebook Kickoff. Students and families first learned about Chromebook care and HPS policies in two brief presentations, given in both English and Spanish. After passing through these stations and signing some paperwork, the students received their devices. A big thank you to Stacey Rosado, Diana Gonzalez, Myrna Rivera, Billy Conroy, Kevin Clemens, Diane Anthony, Yolanda Baez, Gayle Allen-Greene, and Kim Childress for making everything run smoothly for all 10 hours! A special thank you to the student volunteers from Bulkeley's National Honor Society for guiding families around in the school and helping with childcare, as well as the Women's League for providing childcare.

ThinkCERCA Training

Last Thursday, English, social studies, and science teachers at Bulkeley and JMA all received the first round of training to use ThinkCERCA as integrated digital content in their blended classrooms. The teachers were excited by what they learned and know that it will have an impact on student literacy. Steve from ThinkCERCA was energetic and responsive to the needs of the teachers, and I know I don't just speak for myself when I say that I can't wait to see this software in action!

Social Studies Site Visit

Last Friday, Kevin Clemens, Justin Taylor, and Janice Milroy travelled to Maloney High School in Meriden to see examples of station rotation models in social studies classrooms. The group walked away with some important insights and spent the afternoon drafting or revisiting their instructional designs. Below is Kevin's unique design where instead of thinking about classes day-by-day, he designed around the principal learning objective of certain class periods. 

Blended Bulletin, Issue 23

Blended Brags

Last week, Mario Sousa-Pena, Wendy Turek, and Kaitlin Sullivan visited Platt High School in Meriden to look at blended learning using station rotations. They took away some important lessons and spent the afternoon revisiting their classroom designs. One important note to share was that students will not use their devices unless we give them a reason to do so!

Cool Tools

As you may know by now, one of the tools we will be using systematically is ThinkCERCA. Research from a rather extensive pilot in Chicago suggests that ThinkCERCA is one of two literacy tools that has a statistically significant impact on learning. We will soon be having training with this platform, but if you are interested in getting a head start, here are some online training modules.

As an update Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides have all new templates that you can choose from. To find the templates, go straight to docs.google.com. The templates will appear at the top of the page.

PBS has created Election Central as a teaching tool for what promises to be an historical 2016 in politics.

Professional Learning

No matter how many articles I read about technology programs, growth mindset's place in the change process remains crucial. Check out an interesting way to chart growth mindset in Does your school have a growth mindset when it comes to change?

As we move to student-centered approaches, the answers we should use to answer the question, "Did that lesson go well?" need to change. Find out how in How to Move from First-Person to Learner-Centered Teaching.

In a follow up to the WALL-E article from last week, Interaction With Digital Content: 5 Actions to Look For In Your Students’ Online Experience offers ideas about what to look for to ensure students are actively using digital content.

What would happen if we asked our students to design their school experience? How high school would be different if students could design it offers some ideas. My favorite line: "I was passionate about it...You could think and use your ideas, and be creative."

Webinar: Register for Engaging Struggling Learners in Online and/or Blended Environments which will be shown on Tuesday, March 15 at 6:00 PM. Remember, even if you can't tune in then, you will be sent a link for a recording.

Platt Visit!

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to visit Platt and observe and interact in three different science classrooms. Our focus of our trip was to see station rotation. We observed three teachers that plan together or in the same system as one another.One helpful tip I learned with implementing stations was using a timer that accounts for transition time. This timer will reset itself as well so you do not need to remember to do that in between each station. It is a google app meant for training and the transition time is really the “rest” time. 

Being in the teacher’s classrooms, you could tell that the students were accustomed to the stations and many of the students were eager to complete the stations. I really liked that it was a standard set up that they always had a drawing, reading, video, hands on or simulation activity and a vocabulary station. These stations also have their own designated area so students know exactly where to expect each station. It was clear that this routine benefited the students. The teachers did not assign where students needed to start but just stated that there could only be 4 or 5 students at each station. I liked this aspect because students were able to start where they felt most confident or where the best style for them to start learning the content. 

A blended learning detail that I enjoyed was seeing their use of QR codes. The code was not 100% necessary at the station since the teachers tablet was available at the station but but having the QR code available for students that were absent would be really helpful. We also saw that the students used QR codes to access their online textbook and other materials so they were very comfortable with this process.