Don't let learning stop!  With the unknown of when students will be able to enter back into the classroom, provide online and offline activities for your students to complete from home.  The following activities can be printed off for the students and turned into the teacher via Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas, seesaw.me, or email. 

I came across this tear-off learning activity from my good friend, Meredith Akers. Meredith is a principal at Rennell Elementary at CyFair ISD, and she designed a math lesson where the students had to tear off a math problem during the Future Ready activity for a blended learning lesson. The students and the teachers loved having a choice in different activities. While thinking about what the students could do at home, I came up with the tear-off activity that can be used with any subject and topic. ​

I have generated three different types of tear-off activity sheets. The online technology tools will explore twelve various technology tools that are all free to use for the students. The offline twelve activities can all be completed with the printable templates or with paper and markers. Finally, I created twelve phone applications that can showcase the understanding of the concepts that are free for the students to use with their smartphones. 
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The teacher or the parent will assign a new idea for the students to learn or research. The student will then pull or pick a new technology tool to use to showcase their understanding of the concepts. When the students are finished with the project, he will send the finished product to the teacher through email, Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas, or Seesaw.me.

Data, Data, Data-- Everywhere There Is Data
Nowadays, educators have so much data being tossed at them daily. There are online data from the digital content resources, the district provided data from the common assessments, exit ticket data from the teacher, and not to mention the ongoing summative assessments. With all of this data submitted to the teachers, it is no wonder why most educators don't even know where to start with USING the data to drive the instruction in the classroom. 

This blog post will walk you through five ways to use the data in a blended learning classroom setting.  

• Simple Ways to ​Collect Data
• Teacher Data Clipboard
• Google Forms
• Digital Content Website that provide data to the teachers
• Setting Up Data Meetings

Start by making a game plan on what type of data you plan to collect within a given day or week.  Think about this scenario, a teacher deploys four learning studios, each studio has a quick check for understanding, and the teacher will see over 125 students in one day.  That means that there is a possibility of 500 pieces of paper to grade from one full day at school.  Nobody has time for that kind of grading.  
Here is the Game Plan for grading and collecting data 

With this game plan, the teacher went from grading 500 pieces of paper to grading a quick check at the mini-lesson. The workflow went from being all on the teacher to now transferring the workload to the students. Of course, this does not happen overnight. You will need to take time to train the students on how to be responsible for completing their work, checking the work, and commenting on other student work. 

After visiting close to 1,000 classrooms in the first semester of school, I have realized that most educators don't have a system to keep track of student growth, and data.  Of course, every teacher is using  the grade book reporting system to report absent students and test scores.  I am not talking about the lack of reporting essential data but rather how a teacher can keep track of the daily data and weekly progress of understanding a skill or concept.   

After visiting a Kindergarten classroom at Kirtland Elementary, I feel in love with their daily tracker.  (See the photo below.)  The tracker was easy to use, it kept track of daily growth, the standards and breakdown of the standards were listed on the top, and the teachers used the data to group and regroup the students based on the mini-lesson exit tickets.  

I took this idea of the data tracker and created a blended learning weekly teacher progression board.  The teacher progression board keeps track of the standard, the mini lesson exit ticket, the whole group exit ticket, any assessments, and the weekly data meeting.  Watch the video below to learn more about the Teacher Progression Tracker.  

I love using Google Forms.  The ability to send students to a different question based on the answer is one of my favorite aspects of Google Forms.  When using data in the classroom, Google Forms can become one of your quick assessments.  Students can complete the quiz on their iPads, laptops, chromebooks, laptops, or even their phones. Watch the video below as I showcase how to design a quick formative assessment using Google Forms.  Pay close attention to the end of the video where I showcase how to obtain notifications that someone responded to the Google Form. 

There are a lot of great digital content websites out there on the world wide web.  I am going to share out my favorite websites that are adaptive, collect data, and are student friendly.  Feel free to post any additional websites that you would like me to add to this list in the comment section below. 

Grab a FREE copy of the suggested websites.  Place this list next to your lesson plan book to use while implementing technology into your curriculum. 

Grab a FREE copy of the suggested websites.  Place this list next to your lesson plan book to use while implementing technology into your curriculum. 

Grab a FREE copy of the suggested websites.  Place this list next to your lesson plan book to use while implementing technology into your curriculum. ​

As a blended learning coach, I get asked this question all of the time. "What is the difference between centers, stations, and studios?"  A lot of educators feel that when they implement blended learning into the classroom that it is just a new form of centers.  However, the Three Phases of Blended Learning showcases how to deploy a lesson where the students learn in four different learning modalities.  The four learning styles include, visual, tactile, auditory, and kinesthetic.  Recent research has found that not all students learn in one form of modality but rather in  multiple forms which will in turn increase the ability for the students to learn more quickly and be able to have a deeper understanding of the content. 

When I taught in the second-grade classroom, I deployed centers during my math and reading time. The students would travel from one center activity to the next during a given time frame while I worked with a small group of students at the kidney-shaped table. I am going to share out a sample center activity map that the students completed during my math time. 

Launch: To kick off the math lesson, I would have all of the students gathered around to hear the whole group lesson of the day. Next, the students and I would complete a quick number talk activity. 

Centers: After the launch, I broke the students up into different groups based on their level of understanding or last test scores. The centers included the following activities along with time to meet with me for small group instruction on the math concept of the day. 

The students would work through the different centers until it was time to wrap up the math for the day, and then we would end with a closing activity that tied back into the key concepts for the day. Note that the students would only be able to complete two or three centers a day.

The station rotation model is one of the key deployment plans mentioned by Michael Horn in his book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Education.  Phase One of the Three Phases of Blended Learning process deploys station rotation as a way to train the students and the teachers.  Stations help to build and develop the ability to learn in different modalities.  A lot of our teachers enjoy the station rotation model because the teacher still has control of the classroom.  An example lesson of a station rotation model would look like this in a Social Studies classroom. 

Launch: The teacher would kick start the lesson with a quick five-minute overview of the lesson topic, objectives, or essential questions. 

​Stations: The students would move to the following stations during the given time frame. Note that each station would last for ten minutes and focus back on the learning objective of the day. 

Teacher Station: Small group instruction with the students
Independent Station: Students working on their own to complete a worksheet
Technology Station: Students would complete an online activity that ties back to the daily objectives 
Hands-on Station or Vocabulary Station: The students would have an opportunity to explore the content through a hands-on learning lab or work through key vocabulary words that align with the daily objective. 

Regardless if you are implementing centers, stations, or studios, you are changing the delivery method of the content from whole group learning to small group learning. The students will be able to retain the information for more extended periods because they are learning the content in different learning modalities. 

Wow, yesterday was a fantastic day at CyFair ISD. I handed over the certification sticker to the last group of educators from the Three Phases of Blended Learning Certification Course! What a big moment. That means that we now have 60+ educators that are ready to train, coach, and implement The Three Phases of Blended Learning Model into the classrooms around CyFair and the country.  

The Three Phases of Blended Learning Course is a six module onsite or online course that educators can take to learn more about how to implement blended learning in their classroom, at their school, or throughout the district.  The six modules cover the following concepts. ​

Sign up and get started today.  The Three Phases of Blended Learning Certification course can start when you are ready.  You can work at your own pace and learn from other educators from around the country.