Author: Talitha Ormberg

I have not blogged in FOREVER. I miss it. However, I haven’t given myself the time to sit down and do it. I really should. I am a verbal processor and it helps. Anyway – I digress.

Today I have so much on my mind which brings me back here.

The first “Why” of lately is kind of my philosophy. My administrator has decided to go back to explore our philosophies of teaching in our department. This also means I am going back to mine. I thought about it when I first started. I thought about it when I completed my Masters. I thought about it when I worked on my boards. However, it’s been a couple of years. I think I need to keep reevaluating my why and my philosophies. At the very least, I need to be aware of them. They guide all of our teaching decisions – even at a subconscious level. If we can be aware of our philosophies, I think we can be more intentional in our planning. When we lose sight of these, we lose sight of our purpose.

That said – as a department – we also need a common philosophy and goal. This is good leadership. If we don’t have a common vision we are going to have an element of division. Especially when it comes to things we are passionate about and believe. I think all teachers have things they are passionate about and believe are right. However, we can get stuck in the differences if we don’t see how these work together for a common good or vision. Just my two cent rambling.

My next “why” I have been trying to answer is “why are we doing things the way we are?” Who is at the heart of these decisions? Do I know the reasons behind these decisions? Do others know the reasons behind these decisions. It’s like in the classroom with our students. Do they know why we teach what we do? Do they know why we do that? If they don’t, they don’t buy in. Are the reasons good enough to buy in?

I guess I find myself challenging some things. Right now, I hope it’s coming off to others that I am challenging myself first and foremost. Why am I doing things the way we are? Why do we spend a week on simplifying radicals? When someone asks me where it is in the standards and I can’t find it, I am having a hard time justifying the amount of time on something that doesn’t seem to be relevant to much of anything. I can’t justify why simplifying radicals are important to the real-world. I can’t find where they appear on state tests. I can’t justify that they’ll even need them in a future class. Have I been following along blindly? Are we all following along blindly? Under what pretenses? [Side Note – I have a theory on this. However, it’s only theory…. and really doesn’t make a difference.]

I am seeking answers to really good questions that are being brought to my attention. I am seeking answers to really good questions that I then need to process. Yesterday it was a math concept I was told I was wrong with. I wanted to seek to understand where my misconceptions came from and what the answers were. Turns out, there’s very little resources on the topic. Which makes me question where this came from in the first place. Where did my misunderstanding come from? Why is it this complicated?

• I appreciate that my peers are questioning.
• I appreciate that they are seeking to understand.
• I appreciate the they are finding their voice to call attention to things that they have not in the past.

This is how change happens and needs to happen. We have some go-getters asking the right questions. We have some great people seeking to understand from a place of their own philosophy and heart. We have teachers who are empowered to find a voice and make a difference.

At the same time, change is uneasy for some. At the same time we can’t go too fast. At the same time, change needs to be handled with care. However, there is the term “growing pains” for a reason. Non one ever said growth was easy.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. It’ll be interesting to see how change happens. It will be interesting to see what change happens.

For the mean time, I’m going to keep questioning why. Encouraging others to question why.

It’s back to school time and I’ve been overwhelmed by the to-do list a mile long. There’s also been some unique personal dynamics happening that have prevented me from having the start I wanted. That said, back to school has kind of come and gone.

I’m so stinking excited my PLC wants to focus on instruction. I think the conversations we are going to begin to have are going to be amazing. I’m stoked that this is where this is going to go.

I also have decided that this year I’m going to “flip” my geometry class. There’s so much vocab and notes that need to be taken and they take twice as much time as they should in class. I’ve done three lessons of notes this way. (Our lessons are more than a day!) and so far I’m stinking excited about it.

1. Flipping my classroom has established a routine of a homework check and note processing at the beginning of every period. This is handy.
2. Flipping my classroom has increased participation in homework. The workload is perceived as doable. Videos have been less than 10 minutes… with the reality of actually being closer to 5 for most of them. Win!
3. Time is being spent on math, engagement, relationship building. Because I don’t spend the time boring them in class, I’m finding them to be more willing to try, work, and even struggle. So far, I’m impressed.

Things I need to work on:

1. I’m collecting less student work this way as “work” is a learning endeavor rather than a product. How do I score this? I’m thinking I need a rubric of some sort that I assess with involved with student talk and student growth. However, I’ll need some input and guidance here.
2. I need to establish a routine for notebook checks. I did the first one when the students were testing. However, there’s too much time in between topic assessments to do that. This is my first area of growth.

Overall – I’m enjoying my Geo9 group and stinking thrilled for it. I can’t wait to see how flipping is going to have long-term effects. It also means I can do more activities to help students TRULY make meaning rather than a sit and regurgitate.

My other classes are going great. My PreCalc group is one of the highest achieving groups I have had thus far. I taught my first REAL lesson today…. and we started school August 28th. It’s kind of weird because I only really “teach” one class a day and it’s the one that isn’t going well…. How do I change this perspective for my students? I need to think through that for this class. Time management wise though, they’ve not been my focus for instruction. We have some group agreements with that course too that I’m trying to wrap my head around while being a bit more engaging. I just need to give myself some more time to get on my feet and look forward.

It’s been a good start to the year. I’m stoked to continue my learning from last year with technology that has changed my thinking. I now need to upload my videos I’ve been making for Geo with EdPuzzle to prevent my students from “skipping” the videos. There’s good information in there! I also need to find ways to merge videos to put a face and notes in one… to make them more personable.

Things with school and teaching are good. Learning is good. I’m excited that my PLC is FINALLY ready for instructional strategies. I think this is going to help.

The beauty of teaching is summer’s off right? Nah. I attended a training last week…. Which got my brain already thinking about what I’m going to do in the fall.

The primary focus of this training was around being able to teach College in the Classroom with a local university. The mornings are spent dealing with university items like legal changes, enrollment requirements, placement changes etc. The afternoon is spent with the content leads from the university.

The math people focused on this idea of rigor. Rigor is something that has been discussed a lot in math lately. However, this training went a step above to distinguish rigor as something different than someone who is simply just mathematically fluent. They went so far as to define rigor as a thinking process.

That said – common core standards have been trying to shift thinking around math instruction away from simply generating students who are algorithmically fluent.

I walked away from this training with a few musings in my mind on some things I’d like to try next year.

Musings: How Can I do the following in the fall?

1. Project based tasks. The person who presented had the luxury of spending a week or more talking about how to add fractions. He has the luxury of working in a project based school program where students apply and all teachers are trained to teach this way. That all said, while much of the presentation seems so far out of reach in my current situation, I can implement project based learning in some capacities. Do we do a cumulative project per unit? Per topic? Where do I find valuable projects that meet the learning goals of the unit? I’m trying very hard not to brush off this idea. At the same time, it is completely overwhelming.
2. Flipping. Ok. I need to spend some time with my curriculums in order to flip my classroom. I really dig this idea that notes are the homework. If I really want to truly increase the rigor in my classroom, I’ll need to be creative. I loved how the people from the university acknowledged that there will always be some form of lecture in a math class. There are just procedures and skills that need to be developed along the way. However, that said, I’ve been reflecting on life as well and here’s where the two overlap: Where we spend our time speaks to our priorities. If we spend all our time in class lecturing, we send the message to students that notes are most important. If we spend our time asking questions, developing routines, and thinking, that’s what becomes valuable. So are notes the most important part of my instruction? Are notes the true evidence of student learning? I don’t think so. That said – taking notes doesn’t require great support. Students can take notes without too much support (after being taught how) and without too much thinking.
3. Problem of the week. I did this in my first year of teaching around old WASL problems and I got amazing scores out of my students. The rest of my week was taught very traditionally. I tried doing this with my AP students a couple years ago and with very little success. However, I think what was different was the emphasis and priority. My AP students were assigned lots of routine problems they needed to do outside of class and we lectured in class. These problems of the week were kind of like sprinkles to the sundae. See below.

The base of math class, much like the base of a Sundae, is lecture. Telling the students which processes to use and when. I enter every school year hoping to move past this but about 1/2 way through the first trimester, I revert back to old habits. However, this is also because in the majority of math classes, the most substance to our classes are lecture. Then the drizzle that makes it a sundae is the homework problems. These are the definition of a sundae and also end up as a the definition of math class. Test prep for SBA and ACT are also thrown in there as a big giant dollop of whipped cream because whipped cream is a big extra, it makes it look pretty and elevates your Sundae. Test scores give an illusion that math class was effective for students. Problem solving is then the sprinkles we occasionally top on there. Some teachers have sprinkles and others don’t. Some teachers have more sprinkles than others. At the end of the day though, that’s all it is…. Sprinkles. Last but not least, modeling is the cherry on top of the sundae that just gets treated as that little bit extra for those “good” math students who have proven themselves capable of more than the whipped cream and sprinkles. Even then, I don’t think most teachers are adequately trained to teach modeling. I am afraid, I’m not.

My ultimate questions to myself are this: How do I make the ice cream of my class problem solving with the procedures/fluency as the chocolate sauce? How do I treat lecture as the whipped cream and make modeling the sprinkles? How do I make test prep the cherry on top? I want test prep the cherry because if the foundational skills are there, then the test prep truly becomes prepping students on how to take a test and not on content.

Future Blogs:

What will flipping my classroom look like? What can I use to effectively do this? How will I hold students accountable for note taking? How will I hold myself accountable for recording notes ahead of time? What platform will I use to record the notes? What platform will I use to assign the videos? Do all videos need to be lecture/notes based?

What will bringing back a problem of the week look like? In the past, the buy in on these problems of the week are at the end of the day test prep. However, I don’t want them all to be test prep. I want them to be thinking based. (Now the test prep I did assign when I’ve done this were all problem solving based – not procedure based). How will I provide feedback? How will I remediate? How will I hold students accountable?

How can I change what homework is for my classes? How do I move away from rote practice problems each day. Can I assign a problem set of procedural problems once a week instead? How can I make this homework more meaningful for students? Maybe this procedural practice has no role in homework at all. Much to be said and thought through here.

Is it seriously June 3rd already? Time needs to slow down!

I can deny the end of the year is only 10 school days away all I want. I can plead with time to slow down but it won’t. So guess it’s time to pull myself up and face the realities.

The question is: How do I engage my students for the next 10 days?

Specifically for my 5th period: I’d like to engage them in some sort of technology learning. I’d like for them to do something cumulative and fun. I would like for the task to be collaborative. My current musing for them: Work in Partners (Or Trios) to choose 2 (or 3) topics we have covered so far this year. Then they’ll need to come up with examples, definitions, etc related to that topic. They can record videos or upload documents. Whichever works best for them. What we’ll do with that is create either a wiki page, google site, or series of presentations we can link from a class website.

Now — how do I do something fun with my 2nd period?

OK. So as the PD challenge at my school is coming a close, I must take a moment to reflect on the new things I have learned and tried. There are two areas that I have found myself growing and wanting to continue my own personal growth. 1) Peer observations and being transparent in practice. 2) Technology in the classroom.

Peer Observations

I failed to get into every teacher’s classroom in my department. That is more due to the fact that some unforeseen circumstances popped up which consumed the time I had available to complete these.

However, the simplicity of observing other teachers has created a different culture and environment in my department. We now talk about strategies. We highlight each other’s successes. It has become routine to highlight the strategies we are trying and using in our classrooms. People who were once silent are no longer silent about their practice. Honestly, it is the greatest thing ever. The challenge I have for myself personally is to pick this idea back up in the fall. I hope that this momentum carries through.

This process has allowed us to be more transparent in our practice. We’ve also had some other events in our department that have illustrated the need to be transparent in our practice. We can grow by being vulnerable. We can also be each other’s support systems in the cases of the unexpected if we’re familiar with their practice.

Therefore, I think it is essential, not only for teacher growth in practice but in support of one another to be familiar with each other’s practices. We should be able to have a familiarity with our colleague’s styles and fundamental beliefs as teachers. It builds the idea of peer to peer support amongst colleagues…. and peer to peer support is the strongest support for growth.

To Tech or Not to Tech?

OK— So this whole issue is a can of worms. Technology has been a push in education as long as technology has been a thing in education. There’s a push for STEM…. T=Technology. There’s a push for technology literacy. There’s a push for students to know how to use technology as a tool. There’s a push for “paperless” classrooms.

I have a love-hate relationship with technology in the classroom. I believe there is a place and a purpose. However, I think that purpose is not clearly defined. I have played around with tech tools during this challenge that I both love and others that seem awesome on the surface but need some refining to be powerful.

First – Edulastic —- I personally like Edulastic as a way to collect data. It’s awesome for right or wrong answers. It’s great for efficient grading. However, what I found with this platform is that I missed seeing student work. I had no way of truly identifying student misconceptions. I also found, student scores tanked for my assessments when I started giving them electronically. Could it be that students weren’t completing their work? Does the technology encourage students to do complicated math in their head? I don’t know. Could there be a time and a place for Edulastic? Yes. Do I know what that is for me yet? No. Perhaps I use it for summatives? Perhaps I need to unlock the features of the paid version? Perhaps I need to use it for shorter assessments so that I can actually pay attention to student responses? Using edulastic as a formative assessment isn’t working for me. I can’t identify the misconceptions as easily as I can with good old fashioned paper and pencil. Students don’t have a way to show their work.

Second – EdPuzzle —- I love the idea of EdPuzzle. I love that I can imbed formative checks in EdPuzzle to encourage students to better pay attention. I can see myself using EdPuzzle to flip some units next year. The first hurdle will need to be setting up the expectation that students will use EdPuzzle as a homework platform rather than a classwork platform. I also would need to set up “notes” as a secondary support for this. I think I can do some stuff with EdPuzzle because it seems an enhancement of what I’m doing already rather than a replacement for something.

Third – FlipGrid —- OK. I kind of really really love this platform. I don’t know how to use it effectively yet. However, one area of growth that has been in the back of my mind all year is around homework. I have mixed feelings about homework. There seems to be this conflict in the world of math around practice. The idea of ‘drill and kill’ to become proficient. Yet, there is also a find balance of proficiency with skills and understanding of the skills we teach. I’ve also been toying around with the idea of “a choice grid”. I’m thinking I need to think outside the box for homework and flip grid is there. I recently assigned a task where students had to explain their thinking and their questions using a flip grid video. I think this would be a good way to mix up homework from the traditional practice practice practice of procedures and skills.

I think technology should be used as an enhancement and not a replacement. It is easy to be wowed by the latest and greatest. Therefore, moving forward in my own practice, I need to set up my own requirements for technology. I need to answer the following questions before moving forward:

1. What is my intent for using that particular technology? Is it to make my life easier or to encourage student learning?
2. Is the technology going to replace something I do or enhance something I do? In what ways?
3. In what ways will this particular technology tool enhance learning? What outcome am I expecting out of it? What would i need to do to guarantee that this is the case?

Summary:

Like I said. I have a love-hate relationship with technology. Perhaps it is because I was raised in an era where education was very traditional and technology was not prevalent. Cell phones were not in the hands of every student and laptops were a novelty that college students needed as a requirement for their classes/homework. Now, technology has saturated every aspect of our lives and I’m not sold that is a good thing. I believe there is a time and a place. I’m still learning which are the appropriate times and places. … and platforms.

Spring fever is here in full force. For teachers and for students. Summer count downs are becoming all too real. Graduation is right around the corner. It’s the oh so familiar tug of being tired and ready for summer intermixed with the end of school year stress.

However, it begs the question, how do I keep students on target and engaged if I find myself disengaging and dreaming of summer campfires and sunshine?

The end of the year is tiring. We’re struggling to tread water but keep adding water while we make all the plans for next year. Evaluations are done and growth stalls as we start to shift our focus to all the end of the year duties. Could it be that the students notice that we’re also checking out?

How do I keep myself engaged? How do I keep growing in the last three weeks of school? What can I do to make the end of the year more meaningful. After all, the state test is done, which means my class no longer matters, right? [Not true! Just the logic of students who are so ready for graduation and break.]

The end of the year isn’t all bad. It’s a great opportunity to play with projects or new ideas. The pressure of state testing is behind us and those scores are what they are. We cannot change them now. However, this is also the time of year where it’s harder to focus on implementing a strong project or task.

Speaking of attempting projects. I’ve learned these will only work with clear rubrics for students. Trial and error is amazing but trial and error is not a replacement for great planning. However, I find myself tugged in a million directions at the end of the year that I don’t plan as well.

So the number one question: What can I do to keep myself and my students engaged until June 14th.

I have an idea. More to come on that later. 🙂

Busy couple of weeks here and my overthinking tendencies have slowed down…. mainly because the everyday details of my job have taken over again. Professional Development has to ebb and flow. Right now, I’m in a place where I can’t take in more information. I am in a place where I have to take all the learning and processing and put it into application that works.

I have found some new technology tools that I absolutely love and I’m learning how to manage these and fully integrate these before I move on to trying new things. Sometimes it is better to do less things well than to try to do too much. Therefore, the past week has been about refining my skills in:

Edulastic: I love this tool for assessment. It gives a quick snapshot of grading and student understanding. I am also learning how to quickly and efficiently create quality questions. I am also finding I like the “redirect” feature as it makes a “retake” easier with students. However, I also need to consider what I want to do with this as it allows students to see the correct answers when reviewing their scores. I need to learn how to turn this off. 

EdPuzzle: I love that this forces students to answer questions about the videos they watch and allows me to assess for some understanding of the material. It is great because I can also see that students understand the concept of something but are struggling with the process/application of something in math.

Khan Academy: I have a love-hate relationship with this. The program is picky about how to submit their answers. I both love this as math is very technical and the small details make or break you on SAT/ACTs, college placement exams, state assessments. However, this doesn’t work well with a group of struggling learners. First – most students WANT to do well. Struggling learners are easily discouraged when a task is hard, takes a lot of time, and then they don’t perform well. Perseverance is key but so is timeliness. There also isn’t a lot of feedback besides correct or incorrect. I kind of want to toss Khan Academy… but I don’t have a good replacement.

Let’s talk about my failures in the past week.

They’re exhausting. I am about ready to give up on the “choice grid”. I love the concept and the idea but it’s just not working. The group I am working with lacks the motivation or perhaps the confidence to do this on their own. Perhaps the content I am using is not engaging enough. Something is failing and I’m unsure of what it is. I don’t want to start over and I don’t want to toss the idea. I just need to refine it and clarify my expectations. I fear I am expecting too much. Then again, I struggle that my students expect to do too little. They’re not on task when doing this work. Because they’re not on task, they’re not doing the work. I want to push them. However, this is resulting in them falling behind.

Let’s discuss how to learn from this failure….

Step 1: What is the problem? — At the end of the day, I think the problem is a lack of motivation to get the work done. In this group perseverance is low and the tasks are not capturing their attention. It is rote learning…. It is just technology replacing the work we do. My hope was that this would allow students to work at their own pace… and in that regard, I guess I’m successful. Unfortunately, their pace is just not quick enough.

Step 2: What needs changed? — Not everything needs to be changed but something does. I have to balance curiosity with practice. Concept with procedure. Interest with standards. Rote with exploration. I think my solution is in two things: 1) Is there another platform, besides a hyperdoc, that I can use to organize these tasks in a more engaging fashion? 2) Perhaps I need to do less procedure and more problem solving. They’re engaged when we problem solve.

Step 3: What is the new plan? — I need to start with some problem solving tasks. Leave some open ended things for students to do and explore within some guidelines. Perhaps the challenge is to come up with two equivalent problem solving tasks and give students the resources to tackle aspects of an overall problem rather than just giving them videos and assignments. This isn’t working and it isn’t engaging. Time to reengage. Time to bring in curiosity. However, this is a lofty task that I better get to.

This process of exploring a different style of teaching and learning has been hard. I think the end goal is worth it. It was hard to learn something new at first. I’m now in the messy phase. I’ve just got to get through the messy middle while I refine and figure it out. I don’t want to toss it completely. I think it can be something REALLY good. I just have to wade through the muddy waters.

The thing about teaching is that it is ever changing. We can never stop learning. Personally, as an educator, I am most fueled when I’m in an environment that fosters and encourages learning. When my colleagues also believe in professional growth and development.

I wear two hats in my role. I wear the hat I have always worn of a colleague and a classroom teacher. However, I also wear the hat of a teacher leader and unofficial mentor. This creates a fine balance between sharing and learning. However, I am learning that teacher leadership is about relationship and not always about expertise and credibility. I have always had the most success when working with my colleagues as a leader and a peer when I am vulnerable to what I want to learn and seek their input. Just like myself, my peers want their voices recognized. They also want their feelings validated. They want their ideas applauded.

That said, I have only been in this educator game 10 years. I by no means know everything about math education. The only things I would say I’m a relative expert at are:

1. Explaining math in a way that makes the material accessible for most students.
2. Knowing my standards and the places to access the information I do not know.
3. Bumbling something on a daily basis.

It’s easy to get caught in the whole “everyone should come watch the awesome things I’m doing” mentality because I know I do a good job with several things. I am at the point in my career where I want to impart wisdom on others. I get so excited about the work i’m doing and trying. I want to share it. That said, the humbling thought is this: if I’m excited about my new things…. then others must be too.

I think most teachers want to be recognized for what they’re doing. I think teachers want to share what they’re doing. However, this can lead to competing voices rather than collaborative ones without the right contexts and cultures. After all, teachers teach. It’s our default mode and this often translates over into our learning communities. We want to teach. We want to share. We don’t always want to listen. I’m guilty. Therefore, culture is a work that is going to begin by teaching less and giving more voice. In some situations, the strongest leadership voices are the quietest ones.

This is what observing my peers has made me realize. If I want peers who are willing to share ideas, I need to be a peer who listens. If I want peers who are willing to be vulnerable enough to reflect in genuine ways, I need to help encourage their efforts and lead the way with my own genuine vulnerability. If I want a culture of learning than I need to show that I myself am a learner and not always a teacher. People will listen when you listen to them. This will create a culture of learning. When learning is created, there will be more opportunity for genuine teaching.

I think this is the power of what new teachers have going for them. The peers I’ve observed lately are all “new” in their instruction but their passion is on fire. They want to do well. The power is this: New teachers are seeking their identity as instructors. The quest for a teaching identity naturally results in experimentation in the classroom. Their teaching is genuine. Their effort is genuine. Their learning is genuine. These teachers are looking at new ways to make this whole career work for them and sometimes need to do so in some out of the box ways. This often results in some amazing things in the classroom.

For my own practice – if I pair those out of the box ideas that new teachers have with some of the wisdom of my experience, I might be able to foster some truly powerful learning experiences for students in my classroom.

The past two days have my mind reeling about curiosity in the classroom. It came up in two different instances that were totally unrelated to one another. I’m only in the beginning phases of hashing it out for myself.

Here are the questions that I am seeking out answers for myself. Some are more answerable than others.

1. How can I as a teacher do something small or intentional everyday to awaken curiosity in my students?
2. How do I balance curiosity and learning with the demands of state assessments and graduation requirements?
3. Where does curiosity die for our high school students? When do they lose that natural love of learning? I watch my little girls and their curiosity at home. My biggest fear with sending them to school is that their natural curiosity would be snuffed by the system.
4. How do I fight the good fight in a system that seems to be anti-curiosity? It’s a long formed system/expectation that high school students complete rote learning. So much so, that activities that inspire curiosity are so foreign to most teachers that they can’t wrap their heads around how to use them. Myself included.
5. When, as a student in high school, was I enrolled in a classroom that sparked natural curiosity? I can remember one class. It wasn’t even my math class. That teacher sparked curiosity. Taught me to learn for the sake of learning. Helped me to break free of the mold of grades and achievement in sacrifice of learning. That teacher questioned me. That teacher made me think. That teacher impacted me in ways to this day I still can’t believe…. and at the time I didn’t believe him. Unfortunately, the most though provoking teacher I’ve ever had was eventually removed from teaching those courses because he didn’t conform. What message does that send about our system? What message does that send to other educators about innovation? Is my story unique? Is this only in the district I grew up in? [I feel the need to clarify, the district I work for is so supportive of innovation. I grew up somewhere else.]
6. In my meeting yesterday it was said that teachers must have had powerful learning moments before they can foster them. If tradition dictates that curiosity has been dead in classrooms, many teachers themselves have probably never experienced those powerful moments. Teachers with good intentions have probably intended to do so but were probably doing so as an island, without collaborative peers. Without collaboration, these tasks are almost overwhelming. Where do we begin to give teachers these experiences?
7. How do I as a teacher start a movement? How do I start a rebellion of sorts? How do I begin walking a line? How do I take a scenic drive the banks of the river rather than get caught in the current?
8. How do I reign myself back in to doing only what I can control? Where do I start small when my ideas and thoughts are so big?

Curiosity is overwhelming. I have no idea where to start. So of all the questions I have for myself… I think the most important one is this: How do I do something tomorrow that makes my students curious?

Thanks to Tyler, I have a name for my choice activity. The Choice Grid. I love this concept but it needs some modifying for sure. Thanks to the PD challenge at school I’ve been learning tons about Flip Grid and EdPuzzle. (Which in fairness, don’t have titles that truly encapsulate what these are, in my opinion.) However, both of these are amazing instructional tools with some small tweaks.

OK. So Choice Grid Pros & Cons:

Pros: I love the element of choice, one on one help I can give students, and how the class runs itself with very little problem behaviors. Students are mostly engaged.

Cons: I think the 4 X 4 Grid is too much and the type of evidence I’m collecting isn’t there. This could be that I’m revealing the holes in students learning. One column is supposed to be a review of skills but that doesn’t mean the students actually learned it. Also, perhaps it is the weekly.

Implementation Failure: I did not spend the time to teach my students how to submit their evidence or set up that expectation. That seems to be one problem we’re having here.

Ultimately, I have to ask myself what needs to be changed. What would make this more powerful? We know that student voice and choice makes a difference in the classroom. The intention of this choice grid was an avenue to offer that. However, it is falling short. It is still operating as a “replacement” to the classroom and not an enhancement.

Modification Ideas

So this PD Challenge at my school introduced me to Ed Puzzle. (Check it out… This is my referral link to earn me some more storage space. Join Ed Puzzle ) EdPuzzle has nothing to do with puzzles. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bit disappointed by this. However, it is an awesome tool to enhance using videos in the classroom and is focused on helping teachers with this idea of a “Flipped Classroom”. I have struggled with the flipped classroom because Khan Academy has been my go to source for videos for students to watch. However, students are much more clever than we give them credit for. They find ways to run the videos in the background and move on without actually paying attention.. [Let’s be real… we sometimes do this as adults.] Ed Puzzle forces students to answer questions and take pauses in the process.

Here’s plan #1 – Keep the choice grid for assignments and tasks. However, instead of putting four standards in the choice grid… Maybe I do one or two related standards but differing assignments. Perhaps change from a 4×4 to a 3×3 and do a tic tac toe concept. Maybe one Khan Academy, One Desmos, One task.

Plan #2: Student’s gaps in understanding are real and are starting to show. Instead of doing an entire grid of “assignments”… Use EdPuzzle to supplement learning videos. The hardest part of using videos has been teaching students how to use them.

Official Plan:

Start by making the assignment more of a tic-tac-toe board. Smaller. More manageable. Easier to feel accomplished. This will provide a feeling of completion and success. Also known as a “quick win”. Students must make three in a row in order to complete the assignment.

Next – watch the videos in class to supplement learning. This is about teaching students how to watch a video for learning. They don’t always get the information out of lecture when doing notes. They don’t know how to pull information out of a video. Teach them. Use EdPuzzle to implement natural spots in the video to help students understand when they should be taking some sort of note. Use the quizzes to make sure they’re actually processing the video along the way.

New Goal

S: Specific – I will create a “Tic Tac Toe” board and find/create accompanying videos through Ed Puzzle for Monday 4/15/18.

M: Measurable – I will measure this goal by whether this is done by the date. I will also be able to anecdotally measure the engagement in class. I will also be able to collect information on student progress through the document.

A: Attainable & R: Reasonable — This may be lofty to do by Monday based on the other things on my to-do list. However, I think it’s doable.

T: Timely. Monday is going to be here before I know it.