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Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute
Course: Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute > Unit 2
Lesson 3: The moves of a blended learning teacherPart 2: Tips from blended-learning teachers about the structures and systems that make blended work
Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.
Want to join the conversation?
- What are your class size recommendations? Watching the videos, I observe what I would consider to be large class sizes. However, each teacher talks about a paraprofessional, while some teachers talk about team teaching. Have you found a point where the student teacher ratio is too large to facilitate that positive relationship?(3 votes)
- Well, small classes are better ever, but It can work for large classes as well. The point is to set small groups, like 5 or 6 students.(4 votes)
- Have any of the classroom systems been influenced by lean manufacturing principles? At :11 it sounds very familiar to the practices of shadow boxing and making information visual.(2 votes)
- one of the great aspects of education is plagiarism, using others' ideas to make the best learning environment possible!(2 votes)
- when the lizzie choi spoke, she sounded like Orwell's 1984 has finally come to fruition 'everyone is watching your progress', anyone else get that vibe?(2 votes)
- Can we use this technology in our class room(1 vote)
- ...around, the info is exceptional! the idea of honoring what is happening in a room, the focus on changing our thinking as teachers, students become empowered. The thinking is sound and powerful. Well done! -- GL 6:00(0 votes)
- so what's your question? tips and thanks is the next tab over ;)(3 votes)
Video transcript
- All teachers know that you need great systems in your classroom, even the little things. It's as if, if there's any one problem, create a system for it. I remember one of my
teachers was frustrated by her bookshelf at the
end of free reading time because the books were a mess. So after lots of lecturing, she finally decided to take a picture of what she wanted it to look like, and post the picture on
top of the bookshelf, and it essentially solved her problem. It's so simple, but if
you find a structural systematic approach, you
can solve a lot of problems. - So blended learning teachers are coming up with great systems to make their classrooms run smoothly. - The fist two weeks are procedures, and that includes when they
go to the computer labs. Mrs. Sara, who's my paraprofessional, she's going to show the kids
how to walk into the lab. If they do not walk in
quietly with their hands behind their back and sit
down at their computer, she takes them out, lines
them up, and they do it again. If they don't enter quietly, takes them back out, lines them back up. We can do this seven, eight, nine times if that's how long it's going to take. Most of the time it doesn't. Then, as they know, as soon
as they get into the lab, Mrs. Sara tells them, she models
what she wants them to do. She says, "Headphones on." They all put their headphones on. - [Voiceover] Watch how smoothly it works when you have good systems, for a student to know
exactly what to turn in, and then easily transition
to working on a tablet. - Organize in a consistent
and predictable way. I have stations in each of my classroom where the technology is set up, where students are
completely self-sufficient in getting an iPad, moving
to the spot on the carpet where they work on the iPads. Getting a Chromebook, carrying
it over to their seat, working on it there. The systems have to be predictable, have to be consistent. - There's a clear theme that emerges from all these structures and systems, and it's that the teachers are creative. The teachers find
solutions to the problems and they're getting ahead of the problems and mapping out where we need to go. We know that the things we've raised are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure at home there's a lot of you who've already had a really great system or a structure that
you've been thinking about that works really well in
the blended learning setting. - Now, there's one other
idea that Brian and I have been toying with,
which is that as we move to these blended learning environments, what are the right signs
that we should be looking at to see if students are
truly engaged in learning? - I think about this as stop
measuring proxies of learning and start trying to
actually measure learning. I remember when I was
running a summer pilot, we've talked about, with blended learning, there was a student who
wasn't there the first day, so I came back the third
day and I saw this kid. He was standing in the
doorway eating an apple. I was an old-school, like
law-and-order kind of principal. I went up to this kid. I was like, "What are
you doing in the hallway? "Why are you eating an apple? "Where were you day one?" He just looked at me and said, "Hey, slow down. "I'm the top scoring kid
in the class right now." I took a breath and I
said, "Come show me." We walked in and he opened his laptop and he had made more
progress in his one day than everybody else had in two. So I said, "Go finish your apple." Right? It's like he had proven to me
that he knew this material, and I could finally get
inside the black box and see some indications of learning versus whether his headphones were in or whether his eyes were on
the teacher the whole time. - Kids get off task, as in any classroom. When I have noticed a kid is off task, I usually go over and ask
them what they're doing. That might mean as I'm walking over they've just closed down the tab on what they were just doing. We might check the browser
history or whatever, it depends on how much you actually care about that nonsense. I generally find that
kids who are off task are not engaged or motivated, or understand why that
task is the right one for them at that moment to
help them in their learning. So if you're convinced that
it is the right task for them, that it's the right module in Khan Academy or whatever it might be, then that's a conversation I think is worth having with the kid. In a blended classroom, you often have the minute to three minutes it takes to have that conversation,
because other students are generally working hard and on task, and you can get that done. It could be that that kid, particularly as you get into middle grades and high school grades, really disagrees with the task they've been assigned with them, and I try and respect
that as much as possible. If that kid can articulate to me that they actually should be working on something else at that time, I generally say, "Sure,
that works for me," and "What's your plan
for coming back to this?" Put it back in their hands
to take responsibility for coming back to that original learning. - One of the things that most schools fail to do in the blended learning model is really look at the data that the software programs are providing. Almost all the programs can tell you, these are the five kids that
are in trouble right now on the software program. I've seen cases where sometimes a teacher will let a student go three weeks with absolutely no growth, and the information was
there every single day on that report that was never looked at. So we have each of our teachers, or paras, print out that report daily and know exactly who are the five kids I need to talk to tomorrow
when they come in the lab about their performance from yesterday. That's become part of our staff culture and it's been extremely
successful at driving our achievement in blended learning and software programs. One of the most important components of using a lab or a
Chromebook lab effectively is that the teacher's up and monitoring students at all time. We ask the teachers every
two to three minutes to step back, scan the room, and look for behaviors
that are not acceptable. Typically you'll find
students that may not have their headphones on when they need to have their headphones on. It's really about having
your head on a swivel when you're in the computer lab, because kids will occasionally drift off and get off task. Just like in a traditional classroom, you want to be tracking
the classroom at all times. Another technique that's really critical to have in your blended learning program is a way to reward student performance. We have several different awards that students can win in a week. Who grew the most? Which are the students that had the greatest improvement
one week to the next? - Before students go on technology, we map out what it should look like, what it should sound like, what it should feel like. What it should look like is
you are on your technology. Your eyes are on your iPad. Your eyes are on your Chromebook. Your hands are moving. You're interacting with the program. What it sounds like is it's
quiet in the classroom, so that the students
on the carpet can work. What it feels like is it feels purposeful. It feels intentional. It feels like you are showing honor to the people who are learning, like you are showing love and respect. You feel happy. So mapping out the purpose,
and mapping out exactly what those clear expectations
are, is essential. - It's really important to help students understand that you're
going to honest with them. It takes a long time, as a teacher, to come to a place where
you feel comfortable being honest with your students about what they know and what they don't know, because you're really
worried that you're going to break their morale. But, you have to do it if
you want to move the needle and you want to help students change the trajectory of their lives, you need to empower them with information. So a lot about the next generation model is taking what students know
and what they don't know and putting it in their hands and saying, "You have the power, you have the power "to decide what to do next. "This is where you're at. "What do you want to do? "But we're going to be here with you "and have that conversation alongside, "and we're going to be here. "These are the tools and
these are the structures "that are in place so
that we can support you. "But I need you to understand
that we see what you see "and your parents see what you see "and you need to see what you see "so that we can make movement." - Throughout the course of a day, found myself starting to just ask kids a lot more questions to help them come up with
their own answers to things, whether that is to understand content, whether that is to
understand instructions, or whether that's to
like resolve conflicts with their friends, or problems
they feel like they have with a teacher or another adult. I think we've really tried
to create this culture as a faculty that our job is to help kids learn how to solve their own problems. I think it's been a great thing because I think instead of
me just giving kids answers, it's really helping me push kids to come up with their own answers.