​In the book Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques in Your Classroom, Fisher and Frey paint a picture of an ineffective learning experience for a student.

Socrative Quick Question is a dependable efficient way to check students understanding. While multiple choice and true false questions can give quick feedback, the short answer option creates an opportunity for teachers to receive a lot more information from students.  Quick Question requires no preparation time on the part of the content teacher. The use of Socrative also allows for every student in the room to contribute and share their thinking in a safe space. Many students would rather sit in silence than share a thought that they are unsure about. 

Response cards are a quick, no tech strategy that supports active student participation.  This strategy allows the teacher a quick check of understanding by visually seeing each student’s level of understanding by the scanning the student response cards by color. Response cards can be used in groups, as Dr. Waller did in the video above. (Dr. Waller is an amazing AP English 3 teacher at Bellaire High School in the Houston ISD). Response cards can also be used by individuals as @FastCrayon (Amy Fast) shared in this tweet.  The use of student response cards is also demonstrated in this Teaching Channel Video.  

Plickers is a blended tool that allows teachers to use technology while eliminating the need for students to have a device in hand.  Students just need to rotate a card to show their answer. Teachers use the Plicker's App to scan and to project answers. Questions can be loaded previously or posed in the moment.  It is simple to use, simple to set up, and only requires one electronic smart device which reduces risk of failure or technical difficulties. All students have to do is pull out their Plicker Card and they are ready for the questions. You can download a set of cards here. 

@BurnsideMath shared the idea of having students glue their Plicker Card on the back of their interactive notebook.  When she wants to ask a quick question, students just pick up their notebook to answer. This eliminates the need to have any device out to respond. 

These are just three of a countless number of strategies that can be used in classrooms. If you are looking for additional strategies, check out these resources:

• Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques in Your Classroom by Fisher and Frey.
• 56 Examples of Formative Assessment ( A crowd sourced slide deck by David Wess.)

Do you have some "go to" strategies that you like to use to check for understanding?  I would love to hear more ideas of which strategies you have found to be effective.

​Winter break brings time to rest, relax, and reflect on 2019. For the 5th year in a row I decided to embark on selecting "one word" or "three words" to be a guide or north star during the upcoming year.  While this post is not about how my three words, ARENA, MOMENTS, and FAITH impacted 2019, I will share that each word drove either a significant decision or a reaction to an experience that I had during 2019. I find these moments of reflection incredibly powerful in that they allow time to evaluate and measure growth while taking notes on how I have changed. 

What I have discovered about myself is that "my comfortable place", the place where I have things under control and figured out,  is not a place that I can stay for very long without beginning to feel stagnant.  I haven't always operated in this zone. There have definitely been "seasons" of my life where staying comfortable was all that I wanted.  

My three words for 2020 were selected to help push me forward, both personally and professionally. And I hate to say it, but they will hopefully move me into that space where I am unsure, uncomfortable and a little scared of failing and not accomplishing what I had hoped.  #my3words

Consistent - showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom*
"Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose and of action over a long period of time." ~Bruce Springsteen

I picked this quote because an "audience" can be a crowd, a staff, a small group or an individual. Investing in small things daily, consistently will compound with time. Small actions over and over create something bigger.  In 2019, I had a brief encounter with the power of consistency when I worked towards doing the swimming leg on a relay team for the Half Ironman Texas.

Hands down, the strongest leaders that I have worked with have been consistent. Consistent in their expectations, actions, and support. Consistency builds trust. It's an area that I want to grow in and be held accountable in by others. ​

Intentional - done by intention or design*
"Good intentions will never take you anywhere you want to go. Only intentional actions will get you to the things you want in life" ~ John Maxwell

Success is uphill all the way. It doesn't happen automatically. Striving towards excellence has to be intentional.  

​I commit to pausing and making intentional decisions. One area this will happen in is professional learning. Intentional decisions will be made around the learning that I engage in throughout the year. Many times my learning moves in directions organically with no clear path. This is an example of having good intentions but no specific goal being accomplished. I commit to continuing to learn about improving authentic engagement in classrooms, strengthening the cores of PLC's and about how leadership can empower and supercharge the culture in ways that amplify teacher leadership and autonomy.  (I am sure that I will add to this list.)

Ship - to be sent for delivery*.  (When one "ships" to publish and put a project out in the world.)
"Amazing ideas and incredible projects die at the hands of people who think just one more tweak, one more proofread, one more change is needed before putting that project out into the world. These people are paralyzed by the resistance and can’t ship." ~Seth Godin
  
I often assume that what I have to create and share everyone already knows. At a conference a few years ago Aaron Hogan shared this video: Obvious to you. Amazing to others. - by Derek Sivers

I find that most of my better work is often paired with some fear, or at least a feeling of less than total confidence. Ironically, I am learning that if I'm afraid people won’t like what I’ve done, that’s often a good sign. It means I care, and it means there are stakes. Creating things is often about risk, intimacy and vulnerability. I want to get better at shipping.  Not everything is going to be substantial or even good for that matter. But if done "consistently" I will change. And when it's not good, or I just miss it....I will remind myself that in my heart I had good intentions.

​There you have them. Three words intentionally selected to push me into uncomfortable spots, uggh.....and ultimately help move me forward! #my3words

​A shout out to Chris Brogan for authoring the idea of "My Three Words" and to Jennifer Hogan for being the conduit to the idea for me! I am counting on my PLN, my family and friends to hold me accountable.  

I would love to know what your "word(s)" are or in what ways you have  committed to improvement in 2020?

*Definitions are from the Merriam-Webster International Dictionary.  

​I just finished reading 17,000 Classroom Visits Can't Be Wrong; Strategies that Engage Students, Promote Active Learning and Boost Achievement by John Antonetti and James Garver.  There are so many things that I want to share from this book. The authors first look at Bloom's Taxonomy and the focus on learning in classrooms. In their thousands of classroom visits, they looked for evidence of how the level of thinking intersected with brain research. They sought to find out whether Bloom's Taxonomy was still relevant in today's classrooms.  In short, the answer was YES. 

Fractus Learning [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

In 87% of the 17,000+ classrooms visited, students were tasked with low-level thinking activities. Antonetti and Garver identified four reasons that the abundance of learning was occurring at this level.

• Teacher focused classrooms. Students passively receive information which they later repeat, reproduce or restate.
• Professional development not focused on better instructional design or presentation styles and pedagogy that supports active learning.
• Standardized assessments encourage educators to use rote instruction for students to have success in low-level tasks.
• Students cling to being "right and done". 

How do we move the needle and get better in 87% of these classrooms? It's simple; we learn! As educators, we have to evolve in our practices and improve instructional design and incorporate advances in brain science into learning experiences. In the 17,000+ classroom visits, they found that the key to raising thinking in a meaningful way was to focus on the middle two levels of Bloom's taxonomy, application, and analysis.

• Application - the human brain likes to gather information and then find ways to use it.
• Analysis - finding patterns is one of the most natural ways for our brains to learn. 

​
​I often hear focus on "the verb" to increase the level of thinking, but Antonetti and Garver point us towards looking at our Instructional design and what science tells us about how the brain learns. As a student, when asked a question by a teacher, I would give an answer if I knew it. If not, I'd more than likely sit and wait for the next person to provide the solution. If the teacher is in control of all of the questions, what impact does that have on learning?

​​So if this is how our brains are wired, how can instructional design help facilitate students towards engaging in learning that involves application and analyses? John Medina, a molecular biologist, published Brain Rules in 2008. His researched formed 12 big ideas about the brain that apply to our daily lives, especially at work and school. (It's been 11 years since his rules were published and I have never read his work.)  The complete list of Brain Rules can be accessed here and here. 

​http://brainrules.net/pdf/12brainrules.pdf

​Reading about Medina's Brain Rules led me down a path to learn even more about them!  
In the podcast Vrain Waves hosts Ben and Becky interview John Medina. Medina connects his research to both learning and teachers. (If you don't have time now to listen to the podcast, I highly encourage you to stop and add it to your playlist. It is SO good!)

​To improve learning experiences, we must not only strive to design instruction so that we push thinking to the middle, we must take into account what we now know about how the brain learns and responds.  Need an example? In 17,000 Classroom Visits Can't be Wrong, Antonetti and Garver shared an example of a simple vocabulary lesson they obsereved in a 4th grade classroom.  The lesson was learner-centered and had students working in the mid-levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.)

• The students were shown a group of images. (Brain Rule #10- Vision)
• The teacher partnered students up and assigned roles. One student was to be the recorder and one was to be the reporter. Students were given 30 seconds to find as many patterns as they could in the three pictures. (Brain rule #4 - Attention)
• At the end of 30 seconds, the teacher had pairs share out. Some of the patterns shared by students were; there all big things, there all things people didn't make, you usually find all of these things outside, they are all rough, etc. The students continued to share out until they exhausted the patterns that they had found. (Mid-level thinking here. Students are analyzing) 
• The teacher asked if every group had found the pattern of size, and they had. Next, she had students switch roles in their pairs and then gave them 30 seconds to think of as many words as they could think of that mean "big". 
• After 30 seconds students shared out more than 20 synonyms before the teacher heard the vocabulary word she wanted students to learn. That word was MASSIVE. When she heard it she identified it as a "cool word" and added it to the vocabulary list for the week. No need for students to be given a definition to memorize, they had told her what it meant.

These ideas and resources are just the tip of the iceberg of ways we can improve the experiences students are having in classrooms and teachers are having in their professional learning. The next time you plan instruction, how might you help activate learning by what science has taught us about the brain?  How might learners experience and process the content in a more meaningful way using application and analysis? 

Next up on my blog, I'll look into the levels of engagement in learning. Are there qualities present in instruction that increase student engagement?

Last week I observed instruction that was facilitated through the use of a Hyperdoc. (It was a great lesson by Ms. Tellez!) The objective of the lesson was identifying the setting and the impact a setting plays in a text.  Having content organized in a Hyperdoc allowed for the students to move at their own pace and it offered different modalities for students to interact with content. Learn more about Hypderdoc's in Jennifer Gonzalez's post on Cult of Pedagogy here.

As students moved through the Hyperdoc and interacted, completed and created content, I noticed that they tended to spend the least amount of time with resources that were text rich and that did not have any media embedded in them.  It made me think about using a tool to help students read the text and allow them to listen to it.  I remembered that I had a chrome extension installed called Read Aloud that will read a web page with one click to a student. You can learn more about installing the extension in a screencast created by JP Prezzavento here. 

Then I was in a Wakelet Collection and discovered the Immersive Reader App icon. That little icon opens the door to so much for students.  (I am a huge fan of Wakelet and wrote a blog post about why you should be using it as a tool here.) The digital content that you save and organize in Wakelet now can be read to students through the Immersive Reader App. Immersive Reader, might be the most useful technology that Microsoft has developed for education. 

Immersive Reader will:​

• Read the text in a new window with text formatted so it's easy to read.
• The user can pick between a male or a female voice.
• The user can slow down or speed up the rate at which the text is read.
• When the app is reading the screen darkens slightly and the word that is being read is highlighted.
• The app will translate the text into over 60 different languages.. 

The translation piece is huge! Watch below to see how easy it is to use.

 An Algebra 1 teacher approached me to help her with a new student that she had just received that only spoke Turkish.  Watch how I used Wakelet to show her how to meet the needs of her new student. 

Taking content and organizing it within Wakelet and then linking into a Hyperdoc or LMS gives a structure to the resources that improves the use of instructional time.  Give it a try and see how it's a game changer.  Through combining these tools, students can learn and interact with content in ways that they couldn't in our classrooms a decade ago!

Give it a try and let me know if you find other ways Wakelet and Immersive Reader can support and facilitate student learning.

*Post Update Mike Tholfsen shared this additional post All  About Immersive Reader!  

Over the past 15 years I have tried and used a few curation tools on the web. To name a few of them...Evernote, One Note, Diigo, EduClipper/Participate, and Google Keep. Up until last year Evernote was my favorite. What I didn't like about Evernote was that it had lured me in and then began to charge a fee to use it on all my devices.  I liked Evernote so much that I jumped in and paid because the ease of the tool was worth it to me. Then came Wakelet!  Wakelet helps you find, organize and share digital information and it's free. Educators and students will want to check it out! 

​

• Bookmark - Never lose a link or a resource again! Save the content that you discover from across the web.  Wakelet has browser extensions available for Chrome, Safari, and FireFox.   The extensions work great and allow for a user to simply click on the Wakelet extension and save it. Wakelet also allows users to add content to a collection within the Wakelet platform. 

• Organize - Organize your bookmarks into stunning collections. You can create collections on any topic, reorder your content however you like, add images, videos, PDFs, or text to give context to your bookmarks. Once a collection is created, a user can edit and add images, videos and comments directly into the collection.  The privacy level for a collection of resources can be set to Public (anyone can see and discover it), Unlisted (anyone with the link can see it) and Private (only you can see it).  

• Collaborate - You can invite other people to collaborate on a collection that you have made. You can notify them through their Wakelet username or email address, or you can share a link or  QR code to allow people to contribute without signing up.  Educators can use the collaborate feature to send a link and build a collection with someone else or a group of people.  Collections are easy to read and sift through the content. 

• Share - Collections can be shared with students or other educators. Below is a Wakelet that I curated on Independent Reading. I began to collect the resources from a Twitter stream I was reading one afternoon. Since that time I have added other resources to the collection as I have found them. (@MsTomlinsonBHS I think you'll like this resource. ) If you click here you can see the same collection exported as a PDF. The cool thing about this PDF is that the links and resources are still clickable. You can also "Follow" a collection.  This way if you will also be able to see and get notifications when a collection grows.  Click here to see another Wakelet collection created by @Jenniferstuckey6164 about Independent Reading in High School. 

I am going to throw in a 5th reason to use Wakelet, the company has a specific focus on education. Wakelet has created a guide for educators. You can download that here and a YouTube channel.  Wakelet integrates with both Screencastify and Flipgrid to make curated content from those sources seamless. Students can easily create their own videos or projects and share to one collection in Wakelet. Teachers also can share a Wakelet collection directly to Google Classroom.

To get started create a Wakelet account. Click here to add an extension to your browser of choice. Find a resource that you want to save, use the extension that you installed to grab the URL and create and name your first collection and save.

Let me know what you think about Wakelet! It has been one of my favorite new tools to use to increase efficiency and organization of digital content.
0 Comments

​In my first two posts about our professional learning journey, I shared our  shift in mindset and practices surrounding professional learning as a school community.  In our annual 2018 Spring survey to staff, an interest in social-emotional learning and how, as educators, we could learn more to help our students.  Our journey was super charged with the opportunity to work with Dr. Brene´ Brown and her Daring Classroom's team. If you are not familiar with Dr. Brown's work, please watch the video below taken from a keynote address she gave at SXSW in 2017.  

Our three days of learning with Dr. Brown's team was hard and deep at many points.  We quickly learned that we were not just going to be learning about ways to support students in our school, we were going to be learning about ourselves. We have a very large faculty, close to 200 people, and as with any learning, there were teachers that were not in a place where they could connect with and engage with the topics we were learning about. And that was OK.  If you have read my previous two posts about our learning journey, you might be asking how this fits into our shift in mindset to encourage autonomy, choice, and risk in professional learning. Our work with Dr. Brown opened our minds to what some of the barriers can be in adult learning and in fostering learning mindsets in our students. We began our work with Dr. Brown and her team by identifying our own core values and then spent time reflecting on how our values shape and guide us personally and professionally.  

​What we quickly learned was that everyone comes with a story...EVERYONE. And learning more about vulnerability and empathy were the first steps in helping us to enter classrooms and look below the surface at our students.  

`Vulnerability is defined as the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. Each of us is unique, and the feelings that we experience with vulnerability are also unique. For me, vulnerability begins in a conversation between my head and heart, a queasy feeling in my stomach that comes from the fear of being emotionally exposed. Brené Brown talks about vulnerability being “…based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It’s not oversharing, it’s not purging, it’s not indiscriminate disclosure and it’s not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process” (Daring Greatly, p.45).

Creating a safe space within our classrooms for students to feel safe is something that we need to actively seek to create. When we are vulnerable with students we are showing that not only do we respect them, but we trust them. The thing about learning is that it's hard, and if we want students to show up and give us their best we have to work to create a that space where they can share openly. Mr. Houle, a new member of our staff, shared how he would approach a sleeping child in one of his classrooms. He spoke about first getting down on the students level, rousing them from their sleep and then he "would do his thing". He went on to share, "because if you don't have your thing, you won't be able to connect with the student.

We learned from Dr. Brown that “Empathy is… communicating the message of, "You are not alone.” And in that moment of realizing you are not alone, you feel a connection to someone else. Dr. Brown goes on to explain what connection is; "Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued: when they can give and receive without judgement."  Brené Brown's short film below is the best source that I have found to explain empathy.

In our work with students extending empathy can mean:

• To simply listen
• Acknowledge that what is being shared must be difficult
• Thank them for sharing 
• You do not need to try and fix anything

A key take away for us was that rarely can a response make a difference when interacting with a student, it is forming a connection that ignites a relationship. 

In addition to the three days, we spent with Dr. Brown and her team, as a faculty, we read Daring Greatly,  Rising Strong and Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. Our learning throughout the year encompassed a more in-depth understanding about empathy and vulnerability.  We saw, heard and felt the impact our knowledge was having in some of our classrooms.
​
I captured an assignment that Ms. Oertli, an English 1 teacher created for her students below.  It's just one example of our time with Dr. Brown's team being integrated into a classroom. 

And so our learning journey continues...  As a faculty and staff, we have embraced a culture of growth and learning, and that is exciting.  I am grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from Brené Brown and her team.  She is funny and smart and just REAL. As a school, our greatest asset is the people that walk through our doors every day. If as adults, we commit to continue to learn and serve our students in better ways, we can't help but get better.  This blog post gets us to date as to where we are in our professional learning journey. I am excited to see where new learning takes us in the future! #BHSLearn

Our 2018-2019 Learn Shirt!

Not being STUCK and having momentum is a really good thing! In Part 1 of my reflection of our professional learning, I chronicled our journey as a faculty from feeling stuck to moving forward as adult learners. Full disclaimer here....year 2 of our journey Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. We lost three weeks of our school year and in all honesty we dealt with so many obstacles that just "doing school" as we knew it was a challenge. BUT, we did move forward!

Year 2 of our journey took our staff from looking at the process of learning to examining how we approached content in our classrooms.  Our faculty was once again challenged at the beginning of the school year by our principal, Michael McDonough, to continue their journey as learners and to look at what students were creating with the content in each of our classrooms.  That led to our 2017 Learn shirts. 

As a faculty we had shifted our mindset a bit moving into year 2 because of the Learn Project. Conversations began centered around what was happening  in our classrooms with the content that students were learning?  A simple jump to focus on Blooms Taxonomy would be the assumption....but it was more than that.  We looked at once our students had processed content at high levels how were they then taking that content and constructing something new. And how could those "new" ideas be authored and shared outside our walls.  This focus brought up learning that focused on collaboration and communication. Yep....21st century skills just naturally bubbling up in our path. 

We continued learning walks and instructional conversations. Sharing out the pockets of innovation that we were seeing. We celebrated our teachers as we saw a shift in mindset creeping into our culture.  Teachers began to share their learning with each other and a few more teachers also found the magic of a PLN. 
​
In the  Spring, we  have all of our faculty members complete a professional learning survey to gather feedback and information from teachers.  One of my favorite questions we ask is "When comparing May 2018 to May 2017, how does student learning look differently in your classroom?" The responses we got reflected growth in many areas. And looking forward, the survey also showed us that there were questions around how  were we supporting the social and emotional needs of our students. What learning did we need to embark on to lift stigmas associated with mental health and learn as educators more about our students?

We learned to continue to encourage  teachers:

• to get curious
• to dig into learning that had the potential to answer their questions
• to think about what impact a change might have in their instruction
• to then give it a go
• and then reflect 

Stuck….we were STUCK and here is how that happened.  Six years ago, in the fall of 2013, the district I work in moved our high school to a 1:1 environment. Devices arrived on campus for teachers in the fall, and then in the spring, the students received their devices. The shiny object was in the building in mass and at the same time, access to traditional resources, such as physical textbooks, was taken away. In many ways, it was a situation where the band-aid was ripped off in hopes it would be the solution to instructional transformation. The professional learning that rolled out along with deployment was one size fits all training, which was not well received. That first year our work truly centered around just communicating effectively about how students would receive their devices, care for them, and have them repaired if there was a problem.​  

From the beginning, our principal, Michael McDonough, communicated to faculty that a laptop was a tool. Teachers were given a lot of space and time in how they began to utilize devices as well. We were never a compliance-driven campus when it came to computer usage. However, we were focused on 21st-century skills and how our classroom instruction could pivot to embrace those skills.  Fast forward two years, and you can see from an excerpt from a blog post “Meeting Teachers Where They Are” just how far we had moved in our quest to create a 21st-century learning environment.

One of the great things about blogging is that it helps you recreate your story and see how you have grown.  In January of 2016, two years into our 1:1 initiative, I can see that my learning was impacted by Elena Aguilar’s book “The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation“ This book pushed my thinking about ways to increase the effectiveness of professional learning for teachers.  I began to focus more of my time on individual teachers and just spending time asking  questions and curating resources that might be impactful to them in their practice.  Aguilar’s work helped challenge my thoughts on how adult learning could change instructional practices for teachers. In my blog post,  “Looking at Adult Learning,” I share and reflect on some of Aguilar’s insight.

​

As a campus, we had tried one shot learning events such as “Tech Tuesdays” and learning lunches that exposed teachers to new tools and instructional strategies. Quality professional development opportunities were also being offered off site by the district. Some teachers were eager and attended, but we were not seeing a significant return on the investment from these learning opportunities.  We engaged in 21st learning walks to seek out and document changes in pedagogy that reflected shifts in learning for our teachers. What we continued to see was traditional teaching methods that were well planned and executed, and by today’s measures were producing successful results. As we continued to participate in learning walks, we observed few environments that were embracing 21st-century skills. *An important point to emphasize here is that the teachers we were observing were excellent and students were scoring well on state tests and AP/IB exams. These were excellent teachers, and it was intimidating to ask them to take on risks and new strategies.   So, this is where we got….STUCK.

In the spring of 2016, Mr. McDonough had the idea to introduce and challenge his administrative team to engage in “Genius Hour.”  You can read his blog post “My Attempt at Genius Hour” here.  Introducing the concept of Genius Hour and encouraging his team to identify something that they wanted to learn about created a buzz, and it was exciting.  

As the 2016 school year was winding down and we began to look towards the next school year, our focus had been defined by a single word….LEARN.  And Learn was a verb which meant there would be action.

That word pushed me professionally that summer, and I attended two national conferences.  Ipadpalooza in Austin and ISTE 2016 in Denver. At these conferences, I had the opportunity to physically meet in person many educators that had become essential members of my PLN.  These two conferences inspired and motivated me to dig deeper into the work of learning as well as leadership.  Attending different types of sessions like poster sessions, playgrounds, and large and small group presentations lead by people from across the country pushed my learning and was impactful. Those conferences inspired a blog post that had ideas for ways to engage your faculty when they returned refreshed after the summer. “​Get Creative with Your Faculty When You Head Back to Campus.” If you are looking for a few ideas, you might check out that post.

In August, we jumped into planning a learning experience that provided a focus on being an adult learner. As our faculty returned, they were met with an inspiring opening session led by our principal, Mr. McDonough. In this opening session, we were each challenged to engage as learners ourselves. In that welcome back message, he asked our faculty to re-engage as learners themselves and to pick something that they wanted to learn about. At the end of that opening session, our faculty and staff received their Learn t-shirts. A simple t-shirt turned out to be a catalyst to continue the conversation that had been started in the 2016 welcome back message. 

As we began the fall semester, teachers engaged in their own Genius Hour project documenting their topic with their appraiser. An important point to make here is that what they could choose to learn about anything, it did not have to be directly tied to their classroom. And so the “Learn Project” was created as a collaborative slide deck.  All of a sudden, teachers were asking questions and actively logging into their Google accounts. Common questions at the time were, how do I log in, how do I find the project, and how do I save? We worked our way through the questions and saw teachers engage in the collaborative project.  They also took notice that everyone could see what they were sharing.  They experienced collaboration and that creating something that others can see gives learning meaning.   Choice, voice, creation and communication were intertwined in one project and the project began to create ripples. 

And that is how we got UNSTUCK.  There were many lessons learned throughout those first few years.  The most important lesson may have been the importance of mindset around the concept of learning. In my next post I will share the next steps of our journey.

If you have a story to share about professional learning and how it helped move adult learning forward, please link to it in the comments below.

*This blog series was prompted by the session “Learn is a Verb” that Michael McDonough
​ and I led at #TASSPSW19. It is a reflection of my learning journey around the work I have been apart of over the past few years.  
​ 
**Learning for me while creating this post was how to format “block quotes” in Google Docs.  If you are wondering how that is done, here is a quick tutorial.  

​Beginnings are important. What happens in the first few minutes of class affects the entire class period.  Working with new teachers this year I have found that helping them find templates and ideas to create structure in their classroom is helpful.

When students enter a classroom if an agenda is posted and expectations clearly set for what will be happening that day, the teacher has taken a step that influences the classroom culture.  When classroom procedures are streamlined, things are clearer for everyone and there is more time for learning. An efficiently run classroom enables students to focus on their work, which, in turn, helps reduce discipline problems. 

For teachers, this means that work and organization happens before the students are anywhere near their classroom. Creating a slide deck each week with an agenda for the day and information the student needs to successfully participate in class is one way a teacher can begin a class period. Taking an idea from a GIF I saw on Instagram. I decided to create a slide deck to use with new teachers. The slide deck has 13 different templates that a teacher can customize and use to get started.  

I specifically included an icon of a cell phone. Establishing procedures and expectations for phones in today's learning environments needs to start on day one and be reinforced every day.  A teacher can delete the phone icon that applies for the class period. If phones can be used during the class period, leave the yes icon.  If they are not going to be used, leave the no icon.  

Make a copy of the slide deck and then you can import a single slide and use it in your own  deck for a week. The video below shows you how to import slides from one slide deck to another. 

Additional Resources for Teachers

• The Do Now: A Primer from Teach Like a Champion site  
• Starting with a Do Now from the Teaching Channel
• ​ "Six Opening and Closing Routines for New Teachers" by Rebecca Alber 

If you have additional resources that can help new teachers establish a beginning routine, please share them below. 

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.