School has already started, or will soon be starting, in many of our districts. Although some districts are opting for in-classroom teaching, many are choosing to start (and may continue) to be online. This means that we’re all scrambling to get our best lessons translated to an online format and learning to use different programs and technology tools to provide our students with the synchronous portion of our program. We may have to use a particular program for the official part of our class meeting, but teachers often feel the need to collaborate outside of class time to ensure that lessons are as up-to-date and engaging as possible.If you are using Zoom for your synchronous meetings, here are some keyboard shortcuts courtesy of TeachThought.https://www.teachthought.com/technology/what-are-the-most-useful-keyboard-shortcuts-for-zoom/
Let us know which are your go-to shortcuts and best practices for online teaching.
I feel that there is much to be learned from the way we approach performance-based subjects such as art, music, and sports. Not so much from the perspective of winning or losing, but from the perspective that skills are achieved in a progression and that we become better as we practice.
In his personal reflection, Troy Strand draws on his experience conducting middle school orchestras to share some lessons about personalizing learning. Here is my take using his ideas.
1) Learning Becomes Personal When Students Can Articulate Their Goals. This fits really well with my last writing about portfolios because the driving force is to do goal-setting WITH the students instead of FOR the students. Along with the setting of goals, the student must be able to articulate them – the WHAT, WHY, and HOW – in order to own their goals. This practice of jointly developing goals and individually being able to communicate those goals and sharing how they are going to be attained is at the core of making learning personal.
2) Use Performance to Create a Classroom Culture That Values Practice and Growth. This puts a new spin on the idea of success vs failure and of each goal being a stand-alone. When we look at what goes on in our academic classroom from the perspective of an orchestra conductor moving towards a cohesive performance, then each step can become an intermediary “practice” towards mastery rather than a final and unconnected assessment in a string of unrelated objectives. I really like the shift towards helping students understand that, as they acquire new skills, they can “build upon existing knowledge or highlight the need for additional practice, rather than as a mark of success or shame”.
3) Pacing Must Be Personalized. This is where we must internalize the concept that “differentiation” is not just a bunch of strategies to be trotted out whenever we feel that particular students need additional help, but the belief that we need to create “an infrastructure that supports learners at various paces”. In other words, differentiation is part of the skeleton, not just some external and random padding. In addition, it must be something that the students (and parents) buy into because being aware of one’s own progress and the ability to verbalize next steps is a critical life-skill. Furthermore, building pacing into the infrastructure makes the whole classroom “simultaneously collaborative and individualized” without having it turn into additional layers that eat away at the little time we have with our students.
4) Passion and Pride Go a Long Way. Choice builds confidence and instills a sense of control in our students. “Encouraging students to explore creative alternatives for how they demonstrate mastery … can yield astonishing results” while allowing teachers to document progress and mastery. Strand says that “when students are passionate, engaged and feel supported by their community of learners, they’ll pursue their work with enthusiasm and a sense of ownership – and they’ll thrive”. It has been my experience that sharing my passions and encouraging my students to share theirs builds momentum in the classroom. Having a list of many topics and allowing time for reflection and sharing in pairs or in groups gives students a voice.
Having a voice that is built upon achievement is empowering and isn’t this what we want for our children (students)?
To see the entire reflection by Strand see:
The 4 Keys to Conducting Personalized Learning Like a Maestro
When technology started to become an integral part of our lives, I used to tell my students that the jobs they would get had not been invented yet.This season, over turkey and eggnog, I realized that the time had already arrived. Chatting with my children, nephews and nieces, and other family members, I realized that I had no idea what their job titles meant and that I could not have imagined that job even a decade ago.My next thought was – what are we doing to keep up with our students and the world that they will inherit? Are we making the necessary changes so that they leave us ready to take on the world and be successful in life and career? I started to think back at my teaching career and how each year meant one more layer of something – cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, literacies and technology, etc. – and how unwieldy it became as all these little pieces added to an already crowded and difficult timeline.Just in time, I saw this article by Terry Heick (January 3, 2019) and it mirrored my feelings about the future of the classroom, and it also gave some pointers towards a path for making the necessary changes to meet those future needs. What the pragmatist in me liked is that it referred to “shifts” not “changes” and that “the most compelling and powerful trends, concepts, and resources that represent its promise” were already available (and didn’t require tons of money and hours of training).Even the title Tomorrow’s Learning Today: 7 Shifts To Create A Classroom Of The Future didn’t leave me breathless and exhausted but curious and hopeful.Before even getting into the meat of the article, the author acknowledged the biggest challenge that teachers face: IMPLEMENTATION. By addressing this first and stating that “many of the elements of a progressive learning environment…work together…and, that collectively they can reduce the burden on those managing the learning because they place the learner at the center…” gave me a feeling of I Can Do This. The new shifts use “integration” not “tacking on”.The seven shifts made sense to me, but the last two made my heart sing… “Spaces and places matter”… “authentic learning experiences allow learners to self-direct personal change in pursuit of social change–and that starts small, at home and surrounding intimate communities” and finally “self-directed learning is at the core of the future of learning”. Small changes make for big results in the end. I can teach to this end. Happy New Year!
The most important factor in making your classroom (and by extension, your lessons) relevant is to KNOW YOUR STUDENTS. That includes knowing their names, their faces, their story, interests and academic background. You can’t just teach “stuff”. Content, no matter how important has no value or meaning unless it is tied to what’s important to us individually or communally.
The most basic of all questions is, obviously, WHO ARE MY STUDENTS? We often look for the obvious questions and answers when it is usually the less than obvious ones that impact our classrooms the most deeply.
The WHAT is the content of the curriculum itself and the key is to find the connection to the students. The HOW is the process of teaching and learning and it brings into play several factors for the learner and teacher. What are the learners’ styles for learning? What is the teacher’s style for teaching? Is there an optimal set of strategies for a particular content area and can these strategies be taught?
The WHEN brings into play, for example, in learning an additional language like English, what we believe about how age impacts acquisition and what strategies we can use to help our students acquire English, regardless of their age. Other when questions center around the amount of time spent learning an additional language. Is the learner exposed to three, five or ten hours a week in the classroom? Or a seven-hour day in an immersion program? Or twenty-four hours a day totally submerged in the culture?
One of the most interesting distinctions when designing a curriculum is the WHERE. Are the learners attempting to acquire the second language within the cultural and linguistic milieu of the second language, that is, in an “ESL” environment? Or are they focusing on a “foreign” language context in which the second language is heard and spoken only in an artificial environment, such as the teaching of English abroad (EFL)? The availability of English models for Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing are vastly different depending on the circumstances and teachers need to be aware of what their students will have access to when designing a curriculum.
The WHY will give you insight into motivation. Why are your students attempting to acquire the second language? If you are teaching in a K-12 environment, the most obvious one is that they HAVE to be there by law; but beyond that, there are other factors that a teacher can tap into. That’s when the relevance of what you’re teaching becomes very important.
When addressing the different questions to help design your lessons and decide on strategies, you must look at your classroom as you would a giant puzzle. When faced with a puzzle of 2,000 pieces, for example, most of us develop strategies to narrow down the parameters. We look for corners, then for the pieces that determine the outside frame of the puzzle. We look at the picture to determine colors – such as brown for earth, green for foliage, or blue for sea or sky. If we are presented with a puzzle without a picture, we still try to make sense of the whole and we adopt or abandon strategies as necessary. In teaching, as in a puzzle, it is important to see “the BIG picture” in order to figure out the best way to proceed.
How do you really get to know your students? Do you use surveys and ice-breakers at the beginning of the school year? What about as the year progresses?
