Blended learning CoAching tips and Tricks

10/6/2018

October 1st through the 5th, 2018

Wow, this was a fantastic week for blended learning coaching. The DSD Professional Development Team worked with three school districts from across the country. Below are some of the highlights and resources from each school visit, coaching sessions, and professional development workshop.

Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District

I got the pleasure of spending three days with Bertha, Sheri, and Arielle as we traveled to twelve buildings within the SMMUSD. We visited the classrooms, met with teachers, and shared out ideas on how to implement blended learning into the K-12 classroom setting. Most of the teachers were working in Phase 1 blended learning environment with aspects of Phase 2 after 26 days of school.

Key Take Aways

Create a Ghost Group:
What is a Ghost Group? When setting up a Phase 1 blended learning environment, set up five learning studios. Break your class into four groups. Start a group out in the Mini-Lesson, Digital Content, Future Ready Skills, and Vocabulary learning studios. After the first ten minutes, students will rotate to the next learning studio. The students that were in the Mini-Lesson are now working in the Independent Learning studio.

Create a Leader and Leave Behind:
While watching the students moving from one learning studio to the next during a Phase 1 learning environment, I noticed that sometimes the students had a hard time getting started because they did not know what to do at each learning studio. (Yes, the direction were posted at each learning studio, but the students still had a hard time understanding the process at times) My coaching tip was to generate a leader and a leave behind for each group. The role of the leader would be to read the directions to the group, help to answer questions, and make sure that everyone in the group gets started promptly. When the ten minutes is up, the group will leave one student behind to help explain the directions, process, and tips to the next group leader or group. Once the group gets the gist of the learning objective, the leave behind joins back up with his group.

Technology Tools

Seesaw.me and Freckle.com were the big technology tools that we mentioned during the three days of instructional coaching.

Seesaw.me

We saw Kindergarten students posting videos and voice comments showcasing how they created a collection of ten objects. Then the video could be shared out with the parents through the Seesaw.me App.
We saw 5th-grade students showcasing their math process by recording themselves on Seesaw.me walking through the math problem step by step.
We shared out to the high school Foreign Language classrooms on how to use Seesaw.me during a learning studio to have the students practice fluency.

Freckle.com

Freckle.com was used frequently in the 1st through 5th grade math classrooms. The teachers were using the program in the digital content area as an adaptive technology program. The teachers then would use the data to drive the mini-lessons. Our next step with the teachers would be to develop data binders and use the freckle.com data as a tool to help set personalized learning goals for the week.