Working on a large campus with upwards of 200 teachers I get excited every time a teacher discovers Twitter, connects with a Facebook group or more recently connects through Instagram.  As much as I would like to say the majority are collaborating in these spaces and building PLN's outside our building we aren't there YET.  

Last May I had an idea to try and reach the teachers that were not connecting in the spaces above through good old email. I looked at the different platforms that I could use to create an email that was not just created in Outlook but in a space where it could be a  resource.  Smore was my first choice, however with the email filters in place in my district the communication didn't come through consistently or if it did all the resources did not show up correctly.  I use Constant Contact for our school eNews, but it wasn't going to work for what I wanted to push out to faculty. So for the teachers, I chose to use Mail Chimp.  I am grateful that there are so many tools to choose from! 

I follow the same formula in each email. I share a strategy, a resource (usually a blog post or podcast), a tech tool, and finally some of the social media posts from our faculty.  I love to share these highlights! For teachers not using social media, the embedded posts give them an idea of what other teachers are doing. It also reinforces that social media posts are interesting. I make all of the posts clickable in hopes that people might discover more than the single post they clicked on. Each year our story grows on social media painting a  stronger picture of who we are as a school! While i am pushing this content out to them, I am hopeful eventually it will start to pull them into spaces where they can pursue their own interests and connections. 

If you want to subscribe to the mailing list and receive a copy of the emails that are sent out in the future click here!  Please feel free to use the format and any content that has been curated! 

Below is what the latest Learning Connections email out looked like.  

Connecting ideas, people, tools and opportunities to learn.

​Learning Connections is a communication that has been created to help connect educators at Bellaire HS to ideas, people, tools, and strategies. Our goal is to create a space that you can browse when you have time. We will be sharing interesting educational posts, podcasts, and online courses with you periodically. We will also be spotlighting different uses of Social Media on campus. Each of these moments helps to tell Bellaire's story.This communication is intended to be collaborative moving forward and a product that is crowd-sourced by the Bellaire faculty. You'll be able to send in ideas through a form at the bottom of this message or tag items #BHSLearn on Twitter.

15 Visible Learning Strategies

You’ll probably agree with me when I say, “200% more growth than peers” is quite a stretch.

Or is it?

In our recent nine-week action research, students who focused on visible learning strategies outperformed their peers on district standardized tests. But that’s not all. They achieved over 200% more growth than their peers.
We’ll get into our results more, but first how? What are visible learning strategies?
We used a handful of visible learning strategies and helped our students take control of learning. Their teacher gave them a few strategies that allowed them to take ownership in their learning. They only used three of the 15 strategies below, and achieved amazing results! Read more here...

​https://teamtomeducation.com

Class Randomizer
Shout out to Glenn Fruitiz, a BHS Science teacher, for this share!  His students know at any moment that he may be calling on them. It's a great tool to make sure you are reaching the room.  Create a spreadsheet that has each of your periods in it and quickly copy and past your roster into the tool. ​

Below are links to other editions of Learning Connections .

• Learning Connections #1
• Learning Connections #2
• Learning Connections #3
• Learning Connections #4
• Learning Connections #5

I would love to hear other ideas and see examples of how you connect with your teachers. Please share below or tag me on Twitter. 

I can remember the first twitter chat I tried to be a part of, I was on Twitter where I thought I should be participating, it was for goodness sakes a "Twitter Chat".  I understood the question/answer structure in general and between trying to find the question in my stream and shorten my thought process to 140 characters (now its 280) I was always three steps behind. I wasn't able to respond or really interact with anyone else. I had moved from being a lurker to a participant, so there was progress.  It was a frustrating experience though!

Then I discovered TweetDeck and everything began to make sense. I could organize my content, responses and see the questions all in individual feeds.  TweetDeck is a web interface that allows you to view tweets in real time. TweetDeck has many features you won’t find within the standard Twitter interface, but we will focus on what it specifically does for Twitter chats. In short, you can create a specialized column that will auto update with tweets containing a specific hashtag or user. When you open TweetDeck, you will see your version of the following screen. 3 or 4 columns with a menu bar on the left. This page is completely customizable. Click on the sliders at the top right corner of any column and a  options appear. You can sort a column, clear its contents, change the size of previews, filter by keyword, even remove the column completely. 

How to get started with Tweetdeck:

• Go to Tweetdeck.com
• Log in with your twitter credentials
• You will be able to customize the columns. 

Below is what Tweetdeck looks like when you are in the app. The screencast that follows the images shows you how to set your screen up and then how to use Tweetdeck in a chat.

Once you are logged in and set up, you are ready to participate in a twitter chat the easy way.  If you have questions send me a DM and I'll be happy to help you.

Good luck learning and sharing your thoughts in your next Twitter Chat! 

I had a teacher ask me for ideas for how her students could show their knowledge at the end fo a unit in a way that wasn't a traditional, paper, presentation or test. I pulled together some resources about infographics and thought I would share them. 

We see infographics all the time. They are visual images used to share information or data. Infographics work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to learning — and because they sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of information that would take a student hours to process. In addition to organizing information for students, infographics can be one more option when students are asked to research, share their findings, or analyze information. It is an alternative way for them to creatively communicate knowledge or an idea using a combination of visuals and small snippets of text.  

If you haven't created an infographic yourself, here is a good blog post that walks you through the process.  (Like just about everything these days, we have to teach ourselves before we can help our students learn!) 
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In looking for resources about infographics I came across the image above. It made me want to dive in and learn more about everything it was saying!  This is just an example of how inquiry and learning can start with an infographic. I found it here. ​

​Looking for ways to introduce infographics to your students? Check out these resources: 
​

• This will save you tons of time - Here is a link to a lesson plan with resources all ready to go so that teachers can introduce what an infographic is and how it organizes and presents information.
• Fantastic Resource - Kathy Schrock has a Guide to Using Infographics as a Creative Assessment. She includes links to help develop formative or summative assessments that have students creating infographics to showcase their mastery of knowledge. Check it out, because there is A LOT there! ​

• One free tool that will help students create an infographic is Easel.ly. This site requires no sign in at all so you can either plan to have students create in one sitting OR you can use the "groups" feature to create users under your e-mail that require no shared personal information. This is a nice option that will then allow the students to collaborate. The groups feature also enables students to save and come back to their designs later. 
  
  Easel.ly also has a ton of templates already available as starters. For example, if a student or group plans to compare/contrast two things, there is a template available to either edit or to inspire them to create their own from scratch. While there is a pro version, the free version offers everything our students need to create their own infographics.
• ​Use Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint to create infographics. There are templates that have been created to guide students. Read all about how you can use the tools you already have on your device to create infographics on this TCEA Blog Post Infographics Made Simple. 
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If you have additional resources or examples of using infographics in our learning environments please leave them below! 

As our Christmas decorations come down and boxes that have been stored for over a year in our garage are unpacked while we remodeled after Hurricane Harvey, I am sitting back and looking at my "big picture".  I am grateful to be a part of the #CompelledTribe and to have developed a practice of sharing my thoughts and learning through blogging. (More about the #CompelledTribe and why I blog here.)

Here goes where I am as we close out 2018.....

I’ve found this year to be filled with reflections on gratitude, appreciation, inspiration to keep learning, stretching, growing, exploring, creating, and contemplating who I am meant to be.  Seven take aways from 2018 that I will carry forward in my journey are:

• Failure is an opportunity for growth. It is evidence that I had the courage to try. It is the best way to learn how to do (or not do) whatever I am striving to achieve.
• Try not to ever pass up an opportunity to travel. Being a traveler expands world views, perspectives, and empathy in powerful ways.. It makes us more insightful and accepting.
• Loss comes in many forms. It isn’t something we get over but something we learn to live with and shapes who we are and how we see other people. (Empathy) 

• Use my opportunities and privileges to extend more opportunities and privileges to others.
• Things gather dust and most things will eventually end up in a donation box.  Keep it simple.

• My time is the most valuable and precious commodity I have. Gifting it to others is the most meaningful gift I can give. Filling my time with people who make me feel motivated, challenged, inspired, valued, or loved is the most valuable and memorable gift I can give myself.
• Never settle for what is, continually ask what if... including looking within. (It's ok to change your mind and your goals.) 

I learned the Latin phrase alis volat propriis or "She flies with her own wings."  It makes me smile. 

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!  Now on to the fun of thinking of my three words for 2019! What will yours be?  #ChallengeOn

Finals are coming! We assume students have the skills and tools they need to make connections and deepen their learning independently, but many times freshmen have never been exposed to skills and strategies to use.  Creating a study plan is a first step students can take to help them experience greater success. 

Creating a study schedule is a time management method that can reduce a student's level of stress by teaching them how to set aside the necessary amount of time for studying, and also how to use that time wisely.

When reading about ways to help our students begin to get organized I came across a blog written by a student at the time in Portugal. She shares from a student's perspective 10 Essential Steps to Creating a Study Schedule.   Students love to hear and learn from other students! 

A study plan can be created on paper or electronically. Need a template or a place to start? Below are templates you can make a copy of. Feel free to use as is or edit.

• Starting with your hardest course, work backwards from the exam date and assign study chunks to individual blocks in the schedule (If using a paper schedule use a pencil because you may need to revise!)
• Schedule your peak learning times for your hardest studying. 
• There is no perfect plan: try to spread your studying over a period of 5 days or more, and reach your targeted number of study blocks.
• Be sure and schedule breaks and things to look forward to doing. 

Encourage students to create a study plan that is reasonable  Keeping in mind the amount of time they need to study and review each day, students also need to realize that, blocking off four hours, for example, with no break will set them up for failure. 

Develop a plan to communicate and share information with parents also. As we began to post our Finals schedule we also began to push out information to our parents through our weekly eNews.  We also have a Study Skills and Resources section available on the Cardinal's Nest our Freshman website. 
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Once a student has their study plan in place, some helpful reminders are:

• Place the calendar or printed schedule in a visible location so that it is easy to see or if the schedule is electronic have it bookmarked and easily accessible. 
• It is important to review, study, and self-test. First, spend a few minutes reviewing the material you studied during the previous study block; then spend most of your time reviewing the current chunk of material; then spend some time testing yourself on that material.
• Take the breaks that they have scheduled into their study time. 
• Find a place or environment that is right and comfortable to study and concentrate. 
• Include exercise and healthy snacks in your break schedule. 

Creating a plan is the first step. If you have additional suggestions or resources for students to use, please share them below so that we can all learn and help students draft a study plan that will help them be successful.  Next post I'll focus on Retrieval Practice and how it plays such an important part in making learning stick.

One of the many things that I love about Google is that they are constantly seeking feedback and looking at ways they can get better. Here is a simple improvement that made them better. Whenever you want to create a new Google doc, slidedeck, form, sheet or site.  Simply go to your browser's address bar and type in the type of Google app you would like to create followed by dot and "new". So for a Google doc you would type "doc.new" and press enter. A new Google doc will appear and you will be ready to get to work.

Better is better....and this is better!  

The assessments listed above are tools that educators have to use and administer at the classroom level.  The first type of assessment, formative is a term commonly referred to in education. The use of formative data to alter instruction and to scaffold next steps forward in instruction varies from classroom to classroom. There are times that the formative data is being used to create a grade as an indicator to the student of their level of understanding. When the formative data is simply a grade to the teacher and instruction continues as planned the power of using a formative assessment is lost. (In other words.....I have taught it and you have either learned it or not and I am moving on.)  In defense of many teachers, the pressure to move forward to keep up with a pacing calendar encourages this practice at many schools.  

The next three types of assessments: the screener, diagnostic and progress monitoring assessments are tools that are not as commonly referred to or used in many classrooms.  In my experience, they are tools that can help identify where a student is performing at in overall literacy and numeracy. These types of assessments help educators know where to adjust the basic point at which instruction is going to begin.  I think of it in terms of someone setting out to climb a mountain.  

Using the data from a screener and a diagnostic report allows a teacher to decide a starting point, for example reading level for the students they currently are teaching. The use of progress monitoring allows educators to see in a snapshot if the strategies and instruction they are using are helping students show growth. 

When looking at the list above, summative assessments are used often in our classrooms to assess over-all learning.  Creating summative assessments prior to instruction is critical. Summative assessments should be created by a PLC. When the PLC creates a common assessment it allows for every teacher to know what learners will need to know and at what rigor level they'll need to be able to perform at.  My question, and it is a question because I don't know what the answer is, how do our summative assessments address the various starting points of our learners? 

Bringing all of these assessments together into one big picture takes a team, planning, brainstorming, and constant change.  What it looks like and how instruction is affected cannot be scripted by pacing guides, and it is going to look different depending on the group of students. The challenge here is that the learning goals identified for students may be different than the standards identified by the student's grade level and course. This is where traditional classrooms and data hit a roadblock.  Teachers need to be encouraged and supported throughout the process as it is complicated and hard work.  Asking questions along the way as to the use of data, instructional adjustments and student progress should be at the center of our conversations.  

I believe we have learning to do around the implementation of interventions and varied instructional groupings, especially at the secondary level.  Identifying technology tools that help differentiate and scaffold instruction is key to meeting more students needs.  Realizing the need to learn is the first step forward to improvement.   

If you have insights on the use of assessments to drive learning and adjust instruction, I would love to hear your thoughts.  ​