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Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute
Course: Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Case studies: teaching in a blended learning environmentCase study #2: Teaching in a Station Rotation model at KIPP LA
Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.
Want to join the conversation?
- I'd like to get some insight into how the teachers lesson plan for a blended classroom. Do you have any exemplar lesson plans to share?(5 votes)
- i googled 'blended learning lesson plan examples' or you can try 'kipp la' or 'navigator schools' or 'summit public schools' lesson plans or be creative; here's the top google selection
The Educator's Guide to the "Blended Learning Lesson Plan"
http://blog.wowzers.com/topic/blended-learning
and
http://www.edutopia.org/(2 votes)
- Do you plan to produce a similar course for Higher Education Blended Teaching? As a Ed Tech facilitator at a mid-size university I found this courseware incredibly useful and transferable to our classroom experience. Great job!(4 votes)
- I'd enjoy attending university if the model was similar to these primary school blended learning models!(2 votes)
- Blended learning is future of students like us on Khan Academy(2 votes)
- why do usa pupils still use the inches and feet aka the imperial system (even the brits dont use their imperial system in schools anymore)?
...the rest of the smart world uses the metric system. the metric system is an order of magnitude easier to learn and use!
...perhaps, this is one of the reasons usa pupils are low PISA scorers in math (27th in 2012) vs other OECD countries
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results.htm(2 votes)
Video transcript
- In terms of me explaining
my job I say that, I don't teach as much as I am guiding them to become better people. And sometimes it's... To me, the learning is secondary. Well, the learning is of course primary, but I come in with knowing these are gonna be
tranformational leaders of change. And they need to know math, and they need to know measurement, and that's what gets me
at the end of the day. - My role as a blended learning teacher is a little different in
three main ways, I would say. First, I'm able to spend a lot of time doing small group instruction, while my students are interacting with adaptive learning programs. So, I'm able to work with
small groups of students, and interact... and increase my impact in that way. Second, while my students are not with me, they're still spending
a lot of time learning. They're still learning through
visual spatial math programs. They're still learning through apps that reinforce basic
skills like math facts. So they're learning at their own pace, even when they're not in front of me. And third, I'm able to maximize
my impact by collecting data and having students
interact with technology as we integrate it into
the core curriculum. So I'm able to have students
take quizzes online, and I get instant feedback about how they've mastered
the standard that day. Without even grading papers, I can just see it on a graph online. Or when my students are publishing
their papers for writing, rather than writing it out in black pen, they're able to type
it up just as they will in high school, and college, and in life. So I'm able to maximize my impact through technology in a
lot of different ways. - As we shift to looking at KIPP LA, what we see and what jumped out to us was that teachers there are really
focused around three things in their new roles as
blended learning teachers. The first one is driving
small group instruction. The second one is instilling
character and values. And the third one is that they actually still take the best of
traditional teaching, and weave it into these new
blended learning environments. - So to that point of their Holy Grail, it is small group instruction, and it's an interesting story of how they came to this
focus of blended learning, in many ways because
of budgetary pressures that force them to think about new models. Beyond that though, it's
also fascinating to see how much they've embraced this role of small group instruction,
and that for them, they just see the gains
from this amount of time far outpacing any other
thing they could do as part of their educational model. - We believe in small group instruction because it allows for
one-on-one conversations for so much language practice, and for repeated hits with a skill, so that students are able to
get to mastery even faster. - Clearly many teachers around the country are already doing small group instruction, or what we call a workshop model. But what's different
in blended learning is that rather than just being
rotations through worksheets, or other assignments
that may or may not be connected to an individual's needs, because students are working online, can really focus and
tailor that instruction to the individual student's needs. - For my students it's
especially essential that they get lots of
practice with the language around whatever I'm teaching. So we have a lot of
English language learners. So because they're in a small group, they're able to talk frequently, both to me and to partners, and I'm able to follow-up with them to make sure that they're
using the academic language the way that they need to. They're also able to
get a lot of feedback. So I'm able to interact with each student throughout the course of the lesson on an individual basis. As we go through the lesson, and I figure out which students are mastering the content quickly, which students need more reinforcement. I'm able to pull... I usually end up with a group of two to four students in front of me, just working with them to address any
misconceptions they may have. So I'm able to have that
powerful one-on-one impact, even when the classroom
ratio is one to 27. - So as KIPP, the teachers
explicitly see their role as building the character and
the value of their students. You cannot step foot on this campus without understanding how it permeates every part of their soul. And they wanna teach things like grit, determination, values, ganas, or desire for learning. It is the core job of a
teacher in their school. We would argue that in
blended learning environments, focusing on character and
values is really important, because we're really giving the power to the students to be their
self-directed learners. - Character education at Comienza begins day one of summer school. During summer school, we really
focus in on the character, and we do that through values. And we have four school values: Courage, ganas, honor, and reflection. Courage means to take risks. Ganas means never giving up. Honor is to respect oneself
and their community. And reflection, to our youngest kids, means making the right choice. And when you don't make the right choice, which happens to all of us, is really turning it around. We really focus in on the values, and on this character
development to make sure that our students are
growing socio-emotionally. For us, the academics is what's gonna get our kids to college, but it's not gonna get
them to and through. We really believe that it's
gonna be the character, their character, that's gonna
get them through college. - It's interesting to see that KIPP still does do a lot of direct instruction. And we raised this point as a reminder that this is not an all
or nothing proposition. You don't have to have a religious conversion to blended learning. If you're gonna still do
direct instruction, go for it. But just like KIPP, do it
with purpose and fidelity. So when you watch a KIPP classroom, when you see these KIPP LA schools, they're direct instruction,
the moves they use are tight and purposeful. And it's that attention to detail that keeps the kids on
the edges of their seats in the learning process. - By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to measure objects in feet, or in inches. That is your first job. Your second job is to look at an object, and tell, "Should I measure this in feet, "or should I measure it in inches?" So you will know you're successful when you can answer those two questions. Ready to rock? - [Students] Ready to roll! - Hold up your pencil! Would you measure it in inches or feet? Think to yourself. Whisper to your pencil, "I would measure you in..." (students mumble) - [Colleen] The other essential thing that you have to know before you measure, is what the halfway point is. Say halfway point! - [Sudents] Halfway point! - The halfway point is
smack dab in the middle, between two numbers. Mark, why would you
measure a book in inches? - Because a book is too small. - 'Cause a book is small, 'cause you're...