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Written by: Marcia Kish CIO for DSD Professional Development Have you ever walked into a classroom and thought to yourself, that was a good lesson but I wonder how could we turn it into a GREAT lesson? I am going to walk you through how I turn a good lesson into a GREAT lesson with only the resources that a school might have in his/her environment. First, let's talk about a good lesson vs. a GREAT lesson. A good lesson provides information on the topic to the students with interactive activities, digital content, and whole group instruction. A GREAT lesson starts with the students taking ownership of his/her learning, a teacher showcases key concepts or ideas in a mini lesson, the students explore and engage with the content through adaptive digital content, students have the ability to collaborate, communicate, be creative, use critical thinking skills, and connect with others outside of the classroom walls.  Step 1:"Change your space, you change your mindset" Marcia Kish One of the first things to change a Good lesson to a GREAT lesson is change the learning space. Break down the rows and build collaborative groups. Provide learning spaces where the students can stand or sit on the floor. (Yes, our high school students still enjoy sitting on the floor to learn)
Step 2:Transform a good lesson into a GREAT lesson by breaking the same lesson with the same resources into four or five parts. Participate in a good lesson with a teacher or colleague. After the lesson, sit down and talk about how the exact same lesson can be broken down into four parts. If you would like, provide me with a lesson plan topic and I will create a video on how I would break the lesson into four parts just fill out the form below and I will send you back a video. Below examine how a good lesson can quickly be changed into a GREAT lesson.  Challenge me to transform your lessonStep 3:Take time to self evaluate the lesson from your perspective and from your students perspective Taking the time to think about what went well during the lesson as well as what roadblocks popped up during the lesson is key for developing a GREAT lesson. I will be the first to tell you that not every lesson will be fantastic the first time you implement a GREAT lesson. Be prepared to have the students tell you that they don't like learning this way. One main reason why students don't like this style of teaching at first is due to the fact that they are in charge of his/her learning. Instead of the teacher telling them what they have to learn, the students have to figure it out for themselves while the teacher is teaching a mini lesson. However, after the third or fourth time implementing the GREAT lesson plan, the students will start to enjoy this style of teaching more and more. Step 4:Practice, Reflect, and Try it Again
Give the GREAT lesson plans time. If the GREAT lesson is an epic fail, then try a similar lesson plan again with the same group of students. The GREAT lesson is changing the way you are teaching and changing the way the students are learning. Try out the implementation plan below. Plan for just one GREAT lesson once a week, deploy the lesson, and then reflect on how the lesson worked.
Step 5:Generate a personal learning network to help toss around ideas and concepts Watching and learning from other educators that are using the GREAT lesson plan model in their classrooms can be one way to continue to build and generate GREAT lesson plans. Feel free to follow and reach out to them and ask about how the GREAT lesson plan has transformed his/her teaching practice, scores, and levels of student engagement Sample list of teachers and educators to follow:
Learn more from DSD Professional DevelopmentThe DSD Professional Development Team is working hard to provide resources and concept that are empowering the educators for tomorrow. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions and check out some of our top blog post.
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Written by Marcia Kish with DSD Professional Development marcia@dsdpdcoaching.com Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Connectedness What are the 4C’s + 1The 4C’s +1 in a blended and personalized learning classroom allow students time to be Creative, to Collaborate with their classmates, to spend time Communicating about the content they are learning, to use Critical Thinking skills, and to be globally Connected. Student Choice BoardsImplementing choice boards into the classroom is a great way to incorporate creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and connectedness. Check out the blog post on Choice boards to learn more and to download free choice boards for your classroom. Today we will be showcasing a choice board on Global Connectedness. The choice board will showcase eight new technology tools that will allow the student to communicate, collaborate, and connect with other learners from around the world. Global Connected Choice BoardThere are many ways to deploy a choice board within a classroom. For this example the students have to complete the center square. The center square is a mini lesson with the teacher. The teacher will cover the importance of Global Connectedness and make sure the students understand the importance of adding in the 5C to the curriculum. The students can then pick two other squares to complete. Free Global Connected Choice BoardClick below to download a copy of the Global Connectedness choice board 
Click the tabs below for a quick overview of each activity found on the Choice BoardFlip Grid
Using video to connect with other learners on the same topic on concepts being taught within the classroom. Why I like Flip Grid? Flip Grid uses 90 second video clips to communicate with other students. Website: www.flipgrid.com Written by: Marcia Kish with DSD Professional Development marcia@dsdpdcoaching.com Why Balanced Learning?The world that we live in, is constantly changing from new advances in technology to the way that we buy groceries. Our classrooms also need to be changing in the direction to help students to become inventors instead of fact memorizers. In order to develop inventors, we first need to empower the educators to be ready for the learners of tomorrow. One way to start the movement is to develop a balanced learning approach. Balanced Learning provides a multiple array of learning opportunities that helps to personalize learning for all learners and prepares them for the Innovation Era. What is Balanced Learning? Balanced Learning explores the needs of the teacher, the student, the parents, the classroom layout, and the guidelines set forth from the school, and develops a learning environment that best works for everyone. Balanced Learning adds in a balance of the BEST of all teaching practices. It can include a mix of the following
How does Balanced Learning work? Anyone who has ever taught, knows that not two classrooms of students are alike. They differ in personality, intellectual abilities, creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking skills, and much more. Therefore, why do some teachers send out the same copies or deliver the same content to different groups of students? Balanced Learning breaks apart all of the best practices and allows the teacher to apply the skills that best meet the needs of a group of students or even an individual student. Click on the tabs below to see examples of Balanced Learning in action Elementary ExampleBalanced Learning in an elementary classroom might look a little different, than in a middle or high school due to the fact that the teacher has the same students (in most cases) all day long and has the ability to mix in multiple resources for the students. Balanced Learning allows the students the chance to learn a concept through a variety of platforms, learning environments, and different choices.
While working with a team of fourth grade teachers from the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District in California, we noticed that it is important to mix in different adaptive technology programs as well as different learning choices to generate a Balanced Learning approach for the variety of learning levels. That is when we noticed that developing a checklist was key in order to give those students a voice in his/her learning paths. Below is an example of a weekly Balanced Learning checklist. 
By giving the students the ability to complete the task on their own timeframe, we have seen higher levels of engagement, an increase on formative and summative test, as well as an increase in creativity. Note: The above checklist might be too much for some students. An idea would be to give them a simplified checklist for the day. Break it down into smaller parts to help the student stay organized.
The below video showcases a classroom that is allowing the students to work at his/her own pace and adding in a Balance of creation. The teacher read the book a Beautiful Oops and the students created their own Oops. Middle School ExampleDeveloping a Balanced Learning classroom in the Middle School takes part of the elementary checklist and adds in elements commonly found in high school settings, such as time constraints and in some cases mastery based learning. There is still a need for students to have the ability to create, collaborate, communicate, and work within small group settings to develop critical thinking skills. As a blended learning coach, we work with Middle School teachers to fit in all four parts of a blended learning lesson within a forty-five minute time block.
At the start of every school year we work with Middle School teachers to set up their room in a four rotation learning environment know as Phase 1. (See photo below) The time constraint of 45-minute classes quickly lead the teachers to moving to a checklist where the learners can move at his/her own pace. Balanced Learning plays a part of the lesson planning due to the fact that the teacher starts to add in more Project Based Learning opportunities, coding stations, and STEAM activities. The addition of multiple learning venues provides opportunity for students to design and invent formative assessment through projects. (We use forallrubics.com to help assess the outcome of the projects) Photos of Blended Learning in a Middle SchoolPhotos are from the start of the school year so they will be working towards developing a Balanced Learning approach as the school year progresses. Photos from David Wallace @davejwallace
High School ExampleAs a blended and personalized learning coach, I get a chance to work with all teachers from grades K-12+. While, I was working with a high school math teacher on how to deploy phase 3 of blended learning, she asked me if the next time I was at her school if I could spend the day with her. She wanted me to participate with the students in all five class periods, two Calculus classes and three Honors Geometry classes. The first two periods of the day were working at their own pace, place, and path to complete the weekly checklist that the students help to generate the week before. The students were highly engaged and were able to work through the content together in small groups, on their own, and in a mini lesson with the teacher. The video below showcases what the classroom looked like.
The classroom in the video worked well in a Phase 3 blended learning environment. The students were working at their own pace through the checklist, they collaborated as a small group to learn how to solve the problems, they met with the teacher for a mini lesson, and there was a lot of hands-on learning opportunities for the students to complete. On the blended learning scale this classroom would have received 27 possible points. Outstanding learning environment!
What is the blended learning scale?
The third period class walks into the classroom and right away, the teacher and I could tell that the students might not be as successful with working at their own pace, place, and path. (This is why the teacher wanted me to be with her all day. She wanted me to help her with her third period class. She did not tell me this, I figured it out as soon as they walked into the classroom)
The teacher deployed the same checklist with the ability for the students to work at their own pace, place, and path, and the problems were all differentiated based on the skill set of the individual student or small groups of students. Fifteen minutes into class, the teacher had to pull the group back together and complete sample problems as a whole group. After the sample problems, she let the students continue on their checklist. The students were successful with their task but they did not get as much work completed, they were not able to work in small group to learn from each other, and the noise level was through the roof. On the blended learning scale, I would have given this lesson a 15 out 30 points. After school, the teacher and I sat down to talk about what we saw in the five class periods. I showcased with her the two extreme scores from the blended learning lessons and explained that this is why Balanced Learning is key. We examined the weak areas of the lesson for that group of students and generated a Balanced Learning approach for the students. The third period class is not ready to learn on their own. That class might work better in a Phase 1 learning environment where there is more control from the teacher and that the students have just 10 minutes to complete a task. Phase 1 Overview 
Adult Learning Through Professional Development ExamplesHave you have sat through a Professional Development workshop and wondered the following questions...
How does Balanced Learning work in professional development workshops? It's easy, we give the learners a checklist and they complete the different task throughout the workshop. The learner has a balance of online, offline, mini lessons, different technology tools, and time to collaborate with their peers. The only difference between a classroom and our professional development workshops is that we need to be double checking with the adult learners to make sure that they are completing the task. We have come up with a system that seems to work and hold the participants accountable for his/her learning. For every task that a learner completes they earn a badge. If all the badges are collected, then they get a chance to win prizes and/or leave the workshop 20 minutes early. What does a Balanced Learning professional development checklist look like? The checklist looks very similar to a checklist we would handout to students. The task might be a little bit more vague where the learner might have to explore and learn on their own or in a small group. Below is a same of the Balanced Learning checklist and a video of the learners in action. 
The below video is an example of a Balanced Learning checklist in action while the teachers were learning about how to implement Blended Learning into the classroom setting. Teacher to pupil ratio was 1 to 125. With the checklist, I was able to teach meaningful mini lessons to all levels of learners.
Key Take Aways from Balanced LearningThe biggest part of Balanced Learning is knowing how your students learn and knowing what type of teaching style works best for you. Over the summer, I read the book, Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Students for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and it talks a lot about how education needs to stop focusing on memorizing and think more about how to get our students to invent and be creative. Balanced Learning allows for the creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and global connectedness to happen within the classroom setting.
"If you are an educator, and you view your teaching role as delivering lectures and administering multiple-choice quizzes, then you, too, are a sitting duck in the very near future. But if you offer informed guidance and support to students to help them develop skills that matter, you remain indispensable" Tony Wagner
"Change the Space to Change their Mindset" Marcia Kish Once a classroom teacher decides to change the learning space, the mindset of the learner changes. Flexible seating is one way to change the learning space. What does flexible seating mean? Different learning environments where students have the ability to work in a mini lesson with the teacher, by themselves, in a small group, standing up, sitting down, and a space to explore/create. To create flexible learning areas, a school and/or classroom teacher does not need to buy expense furniture to develop flexible learning environments he/she needs the ability to group the students in different learning areas. Some of the best learning spaces have come from free or found furniture. How can we change learning mindset? The first thing a teacher needs to do is get rid of the rows. If the classroom is set up in rows facing the front of the classroom, the learner automatically assumes that they will be watching a slide show while the teacher delivers the information. The learner will take notes, sit quietly, and raise their hand when called upon. The photo below is a classic case of setting up a classroom in rows. Even though the school purchased high end flexible chairs the teacher has still aligned them into direct instruction grouping facing the front of the classroom. Take a moment to examine the photo and look at the tape marks on the floor. The tape marks indicate how far the student can travel while sitting in their chairs.  Generating Flexible Classroom EnvironmentsI want to take a moment and restate that, "Changing the space does not mean spending thousands of dollars on furniture". The video below showcases how middle school teachers transformed a classroom with traditional desk into flexible learning spaces. When we entered the classroom all of the desk were facing forward but with team work and group discussion, we developed learning spaces that would meet the needs of a blended learning classroom. What are the learning spaces need for a blended learning classroom? In designing a blended learning environment, a classroom should have at least four designated areas for students to work and learn.
Creativity and Use of SpaceWhen designing your space, be creative and think outside of the box. What once was five gallon buckets can now become stools and storage. What was once a plank of wood, can now become a digital content bar. What was once T.V. trays can now be an independent work area. There is no right or wrong way to set up the classroom as long as the students have the ability to learn in flexible seating and learning options. The video below showcases a 1st grade classroom. See if you can spot at least four different learning areas. Steps to change your spaceDo you want to change your classroom to a flexible learning environment? Then follow the steps below and before you know it, you will have a space where students can meet in a mini lesson, work independently, explore digital content, and work collaboratively while being creative, communicating, using critical thinking skills, and becoming globally connected
Classroom Design ChallengeThe DSD Professional Development Team will be giving away a $100 dollar gift card to IKEA to one lucky classroom teacher. In order to win, send us a photo of your current classroom and tell us how you would like to change your learning environment. On September 25th, we will pick one lucky winner to receive the $100 dollars and a visit from the DSD PD team to help them redesign their classroom. Send your photos and classroom design ideas to dsdpd@dsdpdcoaching.com by September 24th.  |
AuthorsMarcia Kish - Blended and Personalized Learning coach that designed the Three Phases of Blended Learning Archives
March 2019
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