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Resources & Guidance from The Learning Accelerator

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How do I deepen differentiation and personalization within a station...

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Currently implementing stations and thinking "now what?" This guide will give you resources around how adding more flexibility of movement, timing, strategic data use, and varied groupings will allow for greater differentiation, personalization, and student engagement.

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Overview

Flexible time offers students a chance to work on school assignments, meet with teachers to review content, or choose to attend enrichment offerings. Teachers can assign students to intervention or review work if needed. Otherwise, students can choose an enrichment class to attend, complete homework, or work on class projects. When used for Advisory or Tutorial (a block of time set aside for additional or targeted instruction), flex time periods are typically shorter than a regular class period. While the format might vary from school to school, the purpose remains the same: to give students a chance to follow their own interests and manage their own learning time.

At Sanborn Regional High School, a flex period is a part of every student's day and aligns with the school's competency-based learning model. Students can get help with standards they are struggling with or work on enrichment or honors projects. The school's bell schedule operates on a six-day (A-F) cycle. "A" and "D" days are reserved for the students to engage in traditional advisory activities with their adviser, while B, C, E, and F days are reserved for focused learning activities. On the first day of the cycle ("A" day), students meet individually with their adviser to develop a schedule for where they will spend their focused learning time for the rest of the six-day cycle.
Variations:

Advisory: Between 25 and 60 minutes can be built into the schedule on a daily or weekly basis to support students with social-emotional learning, school culture, study skills, or other enrichment opportunities. Some schools create small class sizes for Advisory and assign students to the same teacher for multiple years to foster stronger student-teacher relationships.

Flex Time Hour: Provides a daily or weekly time for students to self-select the learning activity they want or need. Schools may use Flex Time Hour for on-campus virtual learning opportunities, electives, tutorials, community meetings, career exploration, or other options which students freely select.

Flex Days: A weekly Flex Day may be an early release day, where students have a completely flexible day to do work based on their individual needs, interests, and community goals. Students work independently or in groups, across grade levels, on interdisciplinary projects or activities. Some schools with Flex Days work with students to build individual learning plans or conduct internships or service learning off campus.

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Flexible time offers students a chance to work on school assignments, meet with teachers to review content, or choose to attend enrichment offerings. Teachers can assign students to intervention or review work if needed. Otherwise, students can choose an enrichment class to attend, complete homework, or work on class projects.

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by Rob Schwartz, Jeffrey Starr on July 25 2018
This blog first appeared on EdWeek's Next Gen Learning in Action column.

With all the interest in innovative school models, many schools are creating "flex time" periods during the day for students to increase student agency. We at Silicon Schools Fund and Relay Graduate School of Education set out to understand what makes flex time periods work best and started with a deep dive studying and writing about the topic.

The idea behind flex time is that students can build the skills to work effectively on their own and that by allowing more choice and freedom, students will be more engaged in their learning. In successful schools we did observe students exhibiting agency and working quite independently, which raised the question, " how did these classes reach this place of success?" When talking to these schools, they suggested that it worked best to begin with more teacher-directed systems and structures and then gradually transfer responsibilities onto students as they demonstrate readiness. The school support structures begin in the foreground and gradually fade into the background.

The end result is that when educators visit these successful implementations of flex time, they often can't see the work behind the scenes that went into making the schools successful. Because the finished product is smooth and students and teachers know their roles, it can make flex time look easy. When others try to replicate, they mistakenly jump into a late-stage version of flex time, where students have lots of autonomy and forget to build up the systems that support such freedoms. This article seeks to look behind the curtain and share how successful schools designed and launched great flex time periods that ultimately slowly release students to real autonomy.

Getting to Great Flex Time

Stage I: Set the Classroom Culture
We've seen schools go through four steps on their path towards great flex time. These stages are not distinct, but rather work in concert with each other. Like when a child learns to swim, she first puts her face in the water, then blows bubbles, then starts to kick, and then adds arm strokes. When done all together, she is successfully swimming. Like almost everything in education, the first step in creating flex time is setting the classroom culture.

To get to eventual freedom and agency, teachers begin with explicit classroom culture and procedures. These classrooms are much more teacher-driven at the start. Students learn how to come to attention when asked by the teacher and how to work quietly - essential elements of pretty much any effective classroom. Students also learn how to ask for help, what to do when they are stuck, and how to productively work in small groups. In this early stage, teachers are building trust and connection between student-to-teacher and student-to-student. Once the norms and procedures for a tight classroom are in place and once positive relationships fuel the culture, the classroom has the necessary ingredients to enable the coaching, feedback, and peer-to-peer collaboration to come that is necessary to move towards a more student-directed approach.

The most effective teachers we observed narrate some of this journey to students, explaining where the class is headed and how the systems they are practicing will give way to much more student autonomy. As classrooms move to more flexible time for students to manage on their own, we see some specific teacher moves working to support this autonomy:

Strong Whole Class Openings:
Effective Monitoring:
When a flex time period begins, the teacher can spend a few minutes setting the tone for the class, having students create a learning target, reminding students of what they are working on, and focusing on any habits or behaviors that might need a refresher. Openings provide an opportunity to set clear expectations and to practice important procedures as well as provide a strong daily culture reset to ensure students maximize their work time once they start independent work.

During a flex time period, great teachers make it clear to students that time is sacred and that students should use their freedom wisely. Teachers model engagement by actively circulating the room, conferring with students 1:1 or in targeted small groups, and actively keeping an eye on students to help nudge them back to productivity when needed. These teachers maintain such monitoring even while performing other tasks such as conferencing and small group instruction.

Purposeful Use of Pen and Paper:
Strong Whole Class Closings:
During flex time, students often use laptops or tablets to learn content or produce products. Even when using digital mediums, we've seen teachers successfully implement a paper-based system to support the learning that is happening online. Some teachers like to have students record notes on paper (even if the material is on a screen) believing in the power of manually writing to help cement learning. Other teachers like the paper record as evidence of what students have learned and a quick way to touch base with students on progress when circulating a room. Some teachers really like students setting goals on paper and tracking their progress physically (see more below). As we give students more freedom we want to trust them to make good decisions, but we also want to implement systems to keep them engaged and accountable.
Stage II: Developing Good Habits
Much like a whole class launch at the beginning of class can be powerful, we are believers in whole class conclusions. Teachers can ask students to reflect on their own productivity during the class, reinforce noteworthy effort or progress, and remind students of elements they want to keep students focused on. The learning may mostly be independent during a flex time period, but the social nature of groups makes us believers in the power of still launching and concluding briefly together as a class.

Once students understand the expectations and systems for independent work time, teachers can begin to teach students the habits required to successfully make the most out of flex time. Setting clear goals, reflecting on progress, making good choices, and students monitoring their own use of time and energy are key habits to be taught and practiced.

Goal Setting and Progress Monitoring: Early on, teachers often set goals for students, usually related to progress over a set amount of time. Teachers often have students record their goals in a graphic organizer and track progress. Eventually the teacher can have students practice setting their own goals, thereby increasing buy-in. Most students are not used to daily or weekly goal setting and will need some support, which is why teachers build in time to model good goals, ensure students are accurately tracking progress, and improve students' ability to figure out what they most need to work on. Teachers often begin 1:1 check-ins (see below) by reviewing and reflecting on student goals.
Stage III: Release and Catch
Modeling and Reinforcement: Teachers need to help students learn the habits of self-directed learning like what to do when stuck, how to use a learning platform or other online resources, and what to do when distracted or when energy wanes. Teachers often focus on a single learning habit for a stretch of time until it can be consistently demonstrated by students - such as note-taking, help seeking, or studying. Leveraging the whole group opener to model ideal behavior can be effective, as well as having students reflect on how well they accomplished their focus at the end of class. During class time in a flex period, teachers watch for the desired actions, sometimes narrating examples, and offering precise praise when practiced effectively.

As students start to show more readiness for independence and small group work, educators have to do the hard step of really letting go. Like the moment when a child leaves the comfort of the swimming pool wall and ventures into the deep end, students need the chance to put everything together and figure out how to use a period of time effectively on their own. By that point (based on previous positive reinforcement and redirection), students should know exactly what is expected of them, have strategies to be successful, and have formed trusting relationships with each other and the adults in the room. The teacher works to intentionally build the stamina of students to sustain their own learning for longer periods of time. At this point, we encourage teachers to sparingly interrupt the class, instead addressing any issues with individual students to let the learners experience what it's like to have uninterrupted time to direct their own learning.

While students are working independently, teachers sometimes are left wondering, "What do I do?" We've seen too many teachers revert to wandering the room, addressing each hand that comes up. Instead, some of the best teachers realize that they are now free to engage in some of the highest impact teaching time in the form of 1:1 check-ins and small group instruction.

1:1 Check-ins: Gradually increasing student autonomy frees teachers up for more targeted individualized support. Using data from formative assessments, observations, and student reflections, teachers start to plan 1:1 check-ins with each student at least twice per month. During these 3-10 min interactions, teachers confer with students to deepen relationships, provide coaching on specific cognitive habits, and offer brief content interventions. This is a great time to reflect on student-created goals, help students improve their ability to assess their own progress, and target support to the students who need the most support for remediation or a chance to push further for high-achieving students.

Small Group Instruction: Some of the best teaching in flex time settings comes in the form of teachers pulling targeted groups of students to sit around a kidney shaped table and get a targeted mini-lesson that is "just-in-time" to support a challenging concept or practice a difficult skill. Teachers obviously have to monitor learning to know when students are ready for such small group instruction, and lessons have to be well-planned and shorter duration to be most effective.

Destination: Student Drivers

The goal with flex time is to eventually get students to be able to make good decisions to:

Figure out what they need to work on

Prioritize their work

Set clear targets

Work efficiently and independently

Think back to the most earnest of your friends in college and how they worked when in the library independently. If this is the end state of student-driven learning, what is reasonable to expect for elementary, middle, or high school students? Likely the intermediary step is something akin to student drivers - where learners get full control of the steering wheel and gas pedal, but still have a trusted guide in the car just in case.

In this final stage of student self-driven learning, students make most of the decisions. The teacher, however, still explicitly develops classroom culture and trusting relationships with whole class, small group, and individual activities. Students may be exposed to more advanced cognitive habits and tools that promote agency and academic development.

Student-Led Goal Cycle and Daily Agenda: Goal setting during this stage becomes increasingly student driven. Students exercise increased ownership by setting ambitious goals for themselves over longer periods of time. Students identify the strategies and resources they will need to accomplish their goals and tracking their progress towards completion. Creating a daily or weekly agenda allows students to manage their own time during the period and gives teachers an easy way to quickly know what each student should be working on.

As classrooms evolve from one stage of self-directed learning to the next, students gain more and more agency and autonomy over their learning. But to reiterate, in almost every case where this desired state of independence and freedom is reached, schools started off much more tightly controlled and gradually supported students to take on more agency. The big shift is the systems, structures, and routines that started out teacher driven and can gradually fade into the background as they are internalized by students.

We believe that flex time can both effectively help students learn content and support their development of skills that will prove powerful throughout a lifetime. As one student said recently about their flex time classroom, "I thought this time was just for doing more math, but now I am using the strategies I learned in this class in all of my other classes and I know it will help me in college."

If you are interested in learning more about flex time and are interested in piloting supports for teachers in implementing the moves necessary to be effective, please reach out to Jeff Starr at Relay Graduate School of Education ( jstarr@relay.edu).

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by Rob Schwartz, Jeffrey Starr on July 25 2018 This blog first appeared on EdWeek's Next Gen Learning in Action column. With all the interest in innovative school models, many schools are creating "flex time" periods during the day for students to increase student agency.

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In an effort to personalize learning more and more educators are turning to blended learning strategies. Before getting into the specifics of this post, it is important to flesh out each concept to ensure the efficacy of these shifts in pedagogy. When it comes to personalized learning, the "personal" should be emphasized. Putting all kids in front of a device and having them engaged in an adaptive learning tool all at the same time is not personalized. Here is my take on the strategy:

Personalized learning represents a movement from the "what" to the "who" as a means to facilitate student ownership of the learning process. It considers the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum, and environments by or for learners to meet their different learning needs and passions. In many cases, but not all, technology is a catalyst to facilitate the personalization of the learning environment.

The lofty outcomes listed above can be accomplished using a variety of innovative strategies. The key is to shift the balance of power and time from instruction (what the teacher does) to learning (what the kid does). Blended learning, as a means to personalize, is one way to accomplish this. However, there still seems to be a great deal of confusion as to what this really entails. Many times, blended instruction is confused with blended learning. Here is the difference.

See the difference? The transfer of power and time is apparent as the learner is in the driver's seat. This is not to say that a teacher using a variety of tools as part of daily instruction isn't effective, but this is not blended learning. Content and process matter if the goal is to move to a more personalized approach through increased student agency. Wells Elementary School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (CFISD) is one of the best examples I have seen when it comes to effective blended learning at school. Up until recently station rotation and choice boards where preferred strategies utilized by the teachers here. However, during my recent coaching visit, I began to see the implementation of playlists across all grade levels.

So what is a playlist exactly? I pulled the following from the blog of Jennifer Gonzalez, who profiled the work of Tracy Enos in this area:

A playlist, an individualized digital assignment chart that students work through at their own pace. With playlists, the responsibility for executing the learning plan shifts: Students are given the unit plan, including access to all the lessons (in text or video form), ahead of time. With the learning plan in hand, students work through the lessons and assignments at their own pace. And because each student has their own digital copy of the playlist (delivered through a system like Google Classroom), the teacher can customize the list to meet each student's needs.

As I visited classrooms, I saw many different versions of the playlist, but the overall goals associated with path, pace, and place remained the same. Andrew Huckeba created a playlist for his 5th-grade math students where they worked through various activities on multiplying and diving fractions. As they finished a task, they colored in the corresponding box next to their name. While the majority of the class progressed through the playlist, Andrew worked one-on-one with students that needed the most assistance. Herein lies one of the most essential elements of any personalized experience - kids getting help who need it the most.

First-grade teacher Anna Fisher has also implemented playlists in her classroom along with many of her colleagues. After hearing about how she improved the strategy following feedback I provided as part of the coaching process I asked her to share what she was doing. Below is her take on the use of a playlist for reading (you can see the entire activity HERE).

Here's how it works. Each 'village' is one of my reading groups that are grouped by reading/skill level. The barrels at the bottom, fish and steak, go along with corresponding reading task cards that are grouped by skill level/skills being targeted. I'm currently working on how to make it even more differentiated. They fill in their responses in their reading journals which they take to partner reading to share. I got these cards from Teachers Pay Teachers and added some of my own. The student looks at how many of each barrel they need to complete that day and then fill in that amount with snowballs on their igloo. The barrel in the back is a work in progress. On a rotation, one group each day completes one task on the Lego board I showed you. The students have the opportunity throughout the week to record their responses on Class Dojo and share with me during group time.

Playlists can provide a true path to personalization. Michael Putman provides this take:

Imagine a school where students arrive at their classroom and start their day by using their mobile device to scan a unique QR code posted on the door. The QR code points the students to a website that includes a series of activities aligned with their individual learning needs. As the teacher enters the room a short time later, she briefly conferences with each student regarding his or her progress, while the rest of the class continues to engage with their tasks.

Ownership of learning requires a more personal approach. From differentiating instruction to maximizing the impact of flexible learning spaces, the use of playlists aligned to sound pedagogy can add more purpose in the eyes of kids as they engage in tasks while developing independence and self-management competencies.

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In an effort to personalize learning more and more educators are turning to blended learning strategies. Before getting into the specifics of this post, it is important to flesh out each concept to ensure the efficacy of these shifts in pedagogy. When it comes to personalized learning, the "personal" should be emphasized.

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Playlists: A Path to Personalizing Learning - Dr. Catlin Tucker

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One reason I am such a big advocate for blended learning is that using the various models allow me to spend more time on the aspects of my job that I enjoy and feel are most valuable for students. I don't want to waste precious class time talking at my students.

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1. Artifacts

2. Mix It Up! The Benefits of Mixed-Ability Groups: IgnitED Research Video

Students benefit from working on a skill or learning target in small groups with others who are at different ability levels in that skill, likely through developing a growth mindset around the target skill and through gaining a better understanding of their own strengths. In this installment of IgnitED Research, we investigate the power of grouping students who are at different levels on an academic skill.

Explore More

Teachers at Cisco use whole group instruction to address common learning needs across the entire class.

Students complete long-term projects within "houses" that align to career pathways.

Student at Valor can be grouped in a variety of ways, which may evolve over time based on need.

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Mix It Up! The Benefits of Mixed-Ability Groups: IgnitED Research Video

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We use technology from the Learning Commons to track anonymous visitor behavior on our website to ensure you have a great experience. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Opt In/Out. Artifacts Mix It Up!

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When schools think about incorporating personalized learning, it may seem intuitive to consider resources like specific technologies or professional development plans. But there's another critical resource that too often gets discounted but is hiding in plain sight: time.

Although schools may manage to add more time on the margins with a "just do more" mindset, personalizing learning at scale will require a massive rethinking of how schools use time, alongside pursuing new strategies that can save time. Put simply, traditional systems aiming to adopt new approaches to teaching and learning but not willing to do away with legacy structures (e.g. traditional staffing arrangements, instructional delivery, and scheduling) could have all the best intentions in the world, but will inevitably run up against real time crunches.

3 ways to find time for personalized learning
2. Streamline administrative tasks
3. Consider blended learning as a tool to rethink teacher time

In traditional systems, scheduling can become the tail that wags the dog. Strict course schedules in turn risk hamstringing instructional innovations in the name of logistical coherence. To overcome this trap, schools should seek out new processes for building schedules and tools that can help sort out where students and teachers should spend their time. For example, the startup abl launched a tool to help schools make thorny scheduling tradeoffs in a far more streamlined manner than the 'spreadsheets and elbow grease' models that many schools still use to coordinate schedules.

Besides just delivering content, technology can also serve to streamline administrative tasks that often fall to teachers. For example, everything from taking attendance to rostering students can take up precious educator time. Tools like Clever have helped alleviate some of these burdens. Ultimately, however, the ability to meaningfully automate tasks will also depend on tools working in concert with one another. This requires that school systems double down on adopting technology tools that can streamline educator administrative tasks and also demand interoperability among various tools.

Blended learning can help schools to reorganize how they use time in meaningful ways. By shifting some content delivery online, some blended-learning models can allow teachers to reconsider how best to spend face-to-face time in the classroom-perhaps allowing teachers to deliver more small-group or one-on-one instruction, perhaps allowing them to lead students in projects, or even allowing them to grade individual performance assessments to provide students with meaningful feedback. It's worth noting that in some circumstances the opposite is proving true: blended approaches can cost teachers more time if the technology isn't living up to expectations or if classrooms haven't been redesigned to absorb the efficiencies that technology could offer. In particular, some teachers opt to create blended materials themselves, which can increase costs up front. But if a school system is short on time or staff, it should design blended approaches in ways that leverage software to free up-rather than burden-teacher time, so that teachers can support students in more targeted ways.

Without rethinking time, well-intentioned efforts to personalize learning could mean piling new tools and strategies onto classrooms, with the efforts collapsing under their own weight. Schools aiming to personalize learning will have to start negotiating tradeoffs not just regarding how students spend their time, but how the system as a whole spends its time. Put differently, to make personalized approaches feasible in the long run schools will have to pursue bold structural shifts that facilitate and make space for promising instructional shifts. How schools use-or abuse-time may sit at the fulcrum of those shifts.

Julia is the director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Her work aims to educate policymakers and community leaders on the power of disruptive innovation in the K-12 and higher education spheres. Be sure to check out her new book, "Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students' Networks" https://amzn.to/2RIqwOk.

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The underestimated resource for personalized learning (and how to get more of it) - Christensen Institute

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When schools think about incorporating personalized learning, it may seem intuitive to consider resources like specific technologies or professional development plans. But there's another critical resource that too often gets discounted but is hiding in plain sight: time.

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12 Re-Thinking Time in a Blended Learning Classroom

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12 Re-Thinking Time in a Blended Learning Classroom

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Eric Sheninger (@E_Sheninger). Senior Fellow at @RigorRelevance ~ Principal, Learner, Author, Speaker, #digilead | Thoughts are my own ericsheninger.com

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NWEA Student Goal Setting Infographic.pdf

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Southwest Ohio School Using MAP data to promote change

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Southwest Ohio School Using MAP data to promote change

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The phenomenal growth in Southwest Local School District is unique - it started by using MAP Growth in high school. Read how they applied what they learned to promote growth at all grade levels.

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How one district used MAP Growth in high school to launch systemic change

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The phenomenal growth in Southwest Local School District is unique - it started by using MAP Growth in high school. Read how they applied what they learned to promote growth at all grade levels.

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As fall is in full swing, and most schools and districts are either testing or starting to view results, we thought it was timely to share some findings from NWEA Research on average test duration. The MAP Growth assessments are untimed, and as such, there is latitude during administration of the tests for students to work at their own pace. When a challenging question is presented, the student can consider the response, or with some items, use a manipulative like a calculator to work out the answer without the pressure of being on the clock.

By using an untimed test, the proctor in the room has some level of obligation to monitor the students' progress and make a determination if there's a need to pause a test to pick it back up at another time.

My colleague, Dr. Steven Wise, has written about the work NWEA Research has done to unpack the relationship between student engagement and the validity of MAP Growth scores. Last fall, we introduced notifications in the MAP Growth assessment that help proctors monitor for students who may be "rapid guessing," or demonstrating the behavior of quickly choosing an answer faster than they could have had time to fully read and understand the challenge posed by the item. Last week, I wrote about how our research on rapid guessing informed our policy on invalidating MAP Growth tests when a student rapid-guesses on 30% or more of the items.

But what if the issue is not a question of student effort, but rather a lapse of good testing practices? To answer this, NWEA Research wanted to dig in a bit on the relationship between administration practices and test integrity.

Now, when I refer to test integrity, I'm referring to the question of whether a test score is a legitimate estimate of a student's ability, or if it were produced under conditions that could over- or under-represent that ability. Examples of conditions like this would be allowing students to take multiple hours to complete the assessment in a single sitting, frequent interruptions or pauses initiated by the proctor, or frequent retesting of students. Educators also need to attend to the consistency of their practices across different test administrations. For example, completing fall tests in a single sitting, and then giving the spring test over four or five sittings compromises the integrity of a growth score because conditions were not consistent. Thankfully, these examples are not common, but they do happen.

One of the areas we focused on is test duration. An efficient measure of student learning shouldn't have the student away from the classroom for several hours at a time. In general, NWEA expects that students will complete a MAP Growth test in about 45 to 75 minutes, with high-performing students taking longer in some cases. There is, of course, variability depending upon testing season, student grade level, and the subject area of the assessment.

The NWEA Research team studied the test durations and changes in test durations between terms for grades K-10 and have documented the averages and benchmarks for more unusual times to help inform our partners. The results are now available to MAP Growth users both as a report and a data visualization. While the average durations are not strict requirements, they do offer some ranges and comparative data to consider.

At NWEA, our mission is "Partnering to help all kids learn." The goal of our work and our assessments is to help educators help students improve their learning, not their scores. In other words, improved scores should follow improvements in learning, and not be an end to themselves. One of the great joys I have in working at NWEA is knowing that we are committed to that mission and improving learning. When used properly by dedicated and smart educators, our assessments show what students know and the progress in learning that's happening.

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Testing Duration: How Long is Too Long to Spend on the MAP Growth Assessment?

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As fall is in full swing, and most schools and districts are either testing or starting to view results, we thought it was timely to share some findings from NWEA Research on average test duration. The MAP Growth assessments are untimed, and as such, there is latitude during administration of the tests for students to work at their own pace.

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The most exciting thing I saw during the Super Bowl wasn't the play on the field or the halftime show. It was this commercial from Microsoft.

It's not that I'm a big-time commercial buff. It's that the Microsoft's We All Win campaign - which showcases the company's efforts to build accessible controllers for children of all abilities - meant that accessibility as technological innovation had officially hit mainstream public consciousness.

A large movement is officially growing. Major software and hardware providers like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft are doing their part by making their products usable for individuals with disabilities and it is doing wonders!

In May, the accessible version of MAP Growth will turn 3 years old. In that time, we've made important progress. We've added fully embedded text-to-speech capabilities. We added test-taking features and functionality like notepad, answer eliminator, and line reader. With the support of Desmos, we launched an amazing, fully accessible calculator.

We're proud to be the first-and currently, only-provider of online interim assessments to offer a digitally accessible assessment for students who use a screen reader and/or refreshable braille display.

But our work is far from over on this. Our mission is partnering to help all kids learn, and that means we won't quit until every student has access to the tools and resources they need to learn. For example, some of our partner schools are struggling with online math curriculum that currently isn't accessible by students using screen readers or refreshable braille. It's only available in print braille-an experiential gap that is a disservice to students reliant on digital devices to support their learning.

To get to the ultimate goal, it's going to take a village. All of us in education and education technology can play a role in providing equal access to all students. We're excited to see more education providers involved in the movement, creating accessible digital content and tools. Desmos created four accessible calculators! Pearson created a math equation editor that remarkably allows students to use a refreshable braille display to access Nemeth Braille. Text Help jumped into the math content world and offers an accessible math equation editor called EquatIO. Seeing these new accessible options is like a dream come true.

As we blow out the candles on 3 years with an accessible MAP Growth assessment, our wish is to continue finding more and more assessment, curriculum, and other learning solution providers committed to making accessible digital content. When we work together, more kids can win. And when more kids win, we all win.

Brian brings years of academic and educational technology experience to his position as a product manager at NWEA. He began his career as a college instructor, first as a graduate teaching assistant at Portland State University. After graduating from PSU, he taught at the College of Menominee Nation and later transitioned his teaching career to Portland Community College. Before joining NWEA, Brian worked for Learning.com, an educational technology company that specialize in helping schools create and implement digital content into their curriculum. Today, Brian works as a product manager on accessibility and accommodations and has the goal of making all NWEA products and services accessible for partners.

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The most exciting thing I saw during the Super Bowl wasn't the play on the field or the halftime show. It was this commercial from Microsoft. It's not that I'm a big-time commercial buff.

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Leveraging Growth for Teachers and Administrators

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Leveraging Growth for Teachers and Administrators

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In an earlier post, we shared some insights into how teachers can use MAP® Growth™ assessment data to work with students. Students can leverage growth data to improve their learning and motivation. It can help them creative a positive growth mindset, set learning goals, and help them look ahead. Teachers and principals can also leverage growth data. Here's how...
Putting growth data to work for teachers
Insights from growth data can help teachers develop roadmaps for student success while creating class-wide goals.

1. See where students are in their learning. Assessments like the MAP Suite measure where all students are in their learning and what they are ready to learn next. This can help teachers see how they are meeting student needs, something difficult to do with proficiency tests alone.

2. Gain insights into strength and opportunity areas across the entire class. Teachers can see which subject areas need additional instruction, which helps them manage their classroom time better. They can set collective growth goals based on test insights and learning needs, which can help them provide positive feedback to keep students motivated.

3. It can help inform instruction. Armed with a clear view of where students are in their learning, teachers can determine what skills, competencies, and instructional areas they are ready to learn next. One feature of MAP Growth-the learning continuum-also helps teachers see what students are ready to learn based on their individual performance, allowing them to differentiate instruction and support personalized learning paths.

Putting growth data to work for principals
For principals, growth data provides them with the insights they need to monitor growth trends over time, which can be useful when planning curriculum and school improvement needs. Essentially it helps answer these three questions that all principals ask over time:

1. Are we on track? Are students ready to tackle grade-level course work or handle the year-end summative testing requirements of their state or district.

2. What is working (and what is not)? School-wide reporting provides groupings that deliver the data necessary to determine what goal areas or grades are seeing strong growth and how it can be replicated; what grade, subjects, or focus areas are lagging and what students are struggling year after year; and where teachers and staff need more support.

3. How does our school compare? The School Growth Summary allows principals to see aggregate, school-wide growth compared to typical growth at schools across the country. They can then go deeper with the Similar Schools report, which allows them to compare data against schools with similar demographics and other conditions.

Accurate, reliable assessments can help bring visibility to growth at the student, classroom, and school level. For more details on how to best leverage growth data for students, teachers, and administrators, download our eBook - Ready, Set, Growth!

Derrick Vargason is a Senior Marketing Manager at NWEA. A former journalist and English language instructor overseas, he brings 11+ years of experience informing educators about NWEA assessments and how to use them to help kids learn. He is endlessly curious about the challenges that educators at all levels face each day and what NWEA can do to help solve them. He is passionate about helping educators benefit from the expertise of the NWEA research team and what they know about how kids learn best.

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Leveraging Growth Data for Teachers and Principals

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In an earlier post, we shared some insights into how teachers can use MAP® Growth™ assessment data to work with students. Students can leverage growth data to improve their learning and motivation. It can help them creative a positive growth mindset, set learning goals, and help them look ahead.

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Lately, I've been thinking about the connection between formative assessment and self-regulated learning. This idea of self-regulated learners has been around for a long time with implicit, more than explicit, connections being called out between these two ideas.

Students make decisions all the time about themselves and their peers as learners. They think thoughts like these:

I'm going to do the minimum

I'm going to figure this out

This is too hard for me

They ask questions like these:

What am I supposed to do?

Have I done anything like this before?

Was I any good at it?

What do I know about this stuff?

How interesting is this going to be?

Is it worth the effort?

We need to look at how we can activate them; after all, at the heart of a classroom contract that promotes thinking and learning is the understanding that ultimately, in any classroom, students are the ones who have to do the learning. No one can hand it to them or force it on them.

These ideas really zero in on a couple of key formative assessment practices: activating learners and providing feedback.

Use the learning targets and success criteria to set goals and teach students to monitor the progress of their learning:

Teach them how to peer and self-assess, so they can provide themselves and their peers with feedback in ways we adults can't.

Teach them to use their evidence-their data-to recognize that they are the primary users of assessment data in the classroom and they make all kinds of decisions.

Use progress monitoring to identify where the student is in their learning and what next steps are needed to get them to where they need to be:

Provide feedback both from other students and teachers to move student learning forward:

Students get caught up in the grades they receive and often don't focus on the comments or suggestions that a teacher makes. Consider some techniques that can bring comments and feedback to life.

Adjust teaching strategies based on the cognitive and metacognitive signals that you get from the first three areas.

With students assuming responsibility for a greater part of their own learning, as well as the learning of their peers, successful formative assessment can really transform learning outcomes. Formative assessment and self-regulated learning can go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and jelly, if done correctly.

Kathy Dyer is Manager of Innovation and Learning, Professional Learning at NWEA. Kathy has more than 25 years in education, many spent designing and facilitating learning opportunities for educators. Coaching teachers and school leadership on getting better at what they do is her passion. Follow Kathy on Twitter at @kdyer13 or read her blogs here on Teach. Learn. Grow.

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Four Formative Assessment Strategies to Power Up Self-Regulated Learning

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Lately, I've been thinking about the connection between formative assessment and self-regulated learning. This idea of self-regulated learners has been around for a long time with implicit, more than explicit, connections being called out between these two ideas. Students make decisions all the time about themselves and their peers as learners.

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Lately, I've been thinking about the connection between formative assessment and self-regulated learning. This idea of self-regulated learners has been around for a long time with implicit, more than explicit, connections being called out between these two ideas.

Students make decisions all the time about themselves and their peers as learners. They think thoughts like these:

I'm going to do the minimum

I'm going to figure this out

This is too hard for me

They ask questions like these:

What am I supposed to do?

Have I done anything like this before?

Was I any good at it?

What do I know about this stuff?

How interesting is this going to be?

Is it worth the effort?

We need to look at how we can activate them; after all, at the heart of a classroom contract that promotes thinking and learning is the understanding that ultimately, in any classroom, students are the ones who have to do the learning. No one can hand it to them or force it on them.

These ideas really zero in on a couple of key formative assessment practices: activating learners and providing feedback.

Use the learning targets and success criteria to set goals and teach students to monitor the progress of their learning:

Teach them how to peer and self-assess, so they can provide themselves and their peers with feedback in ways we adults can't.

Teach them to use their evidence-their data-to recognize that they are the primary users of assessment data in the classroom and they make all kinds of decisions.

Use progress monitoring to identify where the student is in their learning and what next steps are needed to get them to where they need to be:

Provide feedback both from other students and teachers to move student learning forward:

Students get caught up in the grades they receive and often don't focus on the comments or suggestions that a teacher makes. Consider some techniques that can bring comments and feedback to life.

Adjust teaching strategies based on the cognitive and metacognitive signals that you get from the first three areas.

With students assuming responsibility for a greater part of their own learning, as well as the learning of their peers, successful formative assessment can really transform learning outcomes. Formative assessment and self-regulated learning can go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and jelly, if done correctly.

Kathy Dyer is Manager of Innovation and Learning, Professional Learning at NWEA. Kathy has more than 25 years in education, many spent designing and facilitating learning opportunities for educators. Coaching teachers and school leadership on getting better at what they do is her passion. Follow Kathy on Twitter at @kdyer13 or read her blogs here on Teach. Learn. Grow.

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Four Formative Assessment Strategies to Power Up Self-Regulated Learning

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Lately, I've been thinking about the connection between formative assessment and self-regulated learning. This idea of self-regulated learners has been around for a long time with implicit, more than explicit, connections being called out between these two ideas. Students make decisions all the time about themselves and their peers as learners.

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MAP® Growth™ K-2 delivers three unique assessments that focus on the learning needs and requirements of young students: growth, screening, and skills checklists. The growth assessment measures each student's performance, regardless of whether they are on, above, or below grade level. This assessment data is useful to inform instruction and track student growth over time.

The screening assessment provides educators with baseline information for students in the earliest stages of learning to support placement decisions. Educators can assess early literacy and early numeracy at the beginning and end of the school year. Finally, educators can use skills checklists to assess how well students know specific skills and concepts, either before or after teaching them. This valuable data can be used to focus instruction to support student growth.

At Stepstone Academy in Cleveland, Ohio, students take MAP Growth K-2 three times per year-in fall, winter, and spring. The computer-based, adaptive format of the assessment fits in seamlessly with other activities, since computers and technology are an integral part of the students' learning. Each season, the assessment results help guide the team in differentiating instruction and evaluating programs. This made the decision to add MAP Growth K-2 to their toolkit a no-brainer, according to Colleen Lennon, Curriculum Specialist:
To be honest, there was no contest. It's the most well-researched test out there. I'm continually impressed by the norm studies and other research NWEA publishes. I feel good about the quality of the results. When I'm asked about the credibility of the test, I know what I'm saying is research-based, and there are many studies to back it up. We've been thrilled to be able to work with a company like this.
With MAP Growth K-2 assessment data, teachers at Stepstone Academy are able to keep small group work and daily online instructional time focused. As Lennon explains:
We use MAP Growth K-2 reports to ensure our college and career readiness alignment is great. We've started to develop a list of skills to incorporate into our teaching so that we can be sure we're setting students up for success.
So far, the results are exceeding expectations. In kindergarten mathematics, Stepstone students achieved a mean growth of 26 points on the RIT scale-a jump from the 4th to the 77th percentile in just one year. In first grade mathematics, students soared from the 8th to the 73rd percentile. In reading, the mean growth was almost 25 RIT points in both kindergarten and first grade (from the 12th to the 63rd percentile in kindergarten, and to the 65th percentile in 1st grade).

As Lennon reflects:
l believe the growth is a combination of everything we're doing: the daily computer time, the differentiation, the focused work on skills we've identified as needing improvement with the help of MAP Growth. Seeing how far we've come this year, we're absolutely thrilled. As we move forward, our goal is for all of our students to be able to reach the benchmarks. We're working to prepare them for our state's upcoming summative assessment. We're ready to continue raising the bar.
For more information on MAP Growth K-2, visit our website or download the fact sheet. To learn more about how Stepstone Academy uses assessment data to drive student growth, read the complete case study.

Kara brings 15+ years of marketing communications experience to her role as the Senior Manager of Digital Content at NWEA. She is passionate about learning and creating opportunities to share NWEA partner stories on a variety of platforms. For the past year, Kara has been creating content for Assessment Literacy.org, working on the NWEA-Gallup assessment perceptions study, and collaborating with the Task Force on Assessment Education for Teachers. Prior to that, Kara held communications and consulting roles in a variety of industries. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Notre Dame and earned a master's degree from Northwestern University.

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See How MAP Growth K-2 Exceeds Expectations for Young Learners

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MAP® Growth™ K-2 delivers three unique assessments that focus on the learning needs and requirements of young students: growth, screening, and skills checklists. The growth assessment measures each student's performance, regardless of whether they are on, above, or below grade level. This assessment data is useful to inform instruction and track student growth over time.

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Evaluate and Adjust: Leveraging Mid-year MAP Gr... | NWEA Connection

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Evaluate and Adjust: Leveraging Mid-year MAP Growth Data

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Thank you for watching this series! All 30 videos and resources are available below for reference.

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Eric Sheninger (@E_Sheninger). Senior Fellow at @RigorRelevance ~ Principal, Learner, Author, Speaker, #digilead | Thoughts are my own ericsheninger.com

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Tech is the tool, not the means for replacing the teacher.

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We're swimming in a world of technologies that have huge implications for the future of schooling. Computers live in teachers and students' pockets, the Internet makes information and media ubiquitous commodities, apps offer to aid with all our daily routines, and artificial intelligence unlocks new possibilities for differentiated instruction.

Yet even with these technologies flooding into schools and classrooms, computers won't be replacing teachers any time soon, and that's why now, more than ever, teachers should be given the critical support they're asking for in the classroom. To illustrate this point, consider these three things educational technology can't do.

1. Technology can't ... provide higher-order feedback

Software is great for generating immediate, automated feedback on students' mastery of basic knowledge and skills. But higher-order feedback falls outside its purview.

Consider, for example, essay grading. For years, word processors have been able to point out corrections for spelling and grammar errors; and more recently, intelligent software now offers feedback on elements of structure and style-such as whether a student has a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph and whether each paragraph contains evidence related to the topic sentence and the essay's thesis. But software cannot give feedback on many of the qualities that really define great writing-such as whether the students' rhetoric and logic will resonate with her intended audience. It takes a human to give feedback on the more nuanced aspects of human communication.

The same holds true in other academic domains. Software can't tell students if their research questions for a science project are worthwhile and reasonably scoped; nor can it tell them which engineering and design challenges they should tackle to improve a simple machine. And software can't coach soft skills-such as working effectively in teams, navigating interpersonal conflict, setting personal goals, and persevering through obstacles. In sum, the skills students will need to future-proof their careers against the rise of machines are also the skills they can't learn from machines.

2. Technology can't ... get to know a student

Software today can potentially access a lot of data about a student: home address, race and ethnicity, diagnosed learning disabilities, family income, attendance records, test scores, browser history, and even keystrokes and mouse clicks. But with all that data, can software really know a student? Can a computer understand how his social status at school leads him to feel when he's assigned to work with a particular group of peers on a class project? Or can it predict that she'll enjoy reading a particular novel because it reminds her of her best friend from the town where she used to live? Software can make a lot of useful inferences based on patterns it finds in the data it collects. But it can't collect data on all the important factors that shape a students' learning experiences, nor can it model all of the psychological complexity of childhood and adolescence. Real knowing and understanding is a human-to-human experience.

3. Technology can't ... care about a student

Where do students get the motivation to learn? At times motivation may come from pure intellectual curiosity. But more often than not, motivation comes from relationships. For example, a student stays after class for extra tutoring because he cares what his parents think of his grades and he believes his teacher's confidence that a little extra practice will help him get the grades he wants. Or a student becomes excited about science because a teacher who cares deeply about her also cares deeply about science. Students often work to learn and to achieve for the praise and approbation of people who matter in their lives. Software, for all its wondrous abilities, can't offer that sense of genuine caring.

But teachers can't ...

As the examples above make clear, teachers shouldn't worry about software and devices taking their jobs. The kind of sci-fi-level artificial intelligence that might do the things described above is a long way off. This means the odds of teachers being replaced by machines are pretty slim. Teachers are a performance-defining feature in even the most technologically sophisticated learning environments. Any edtech aimed at replacing teachers sets a low bar for quality education.

But here's the rub: while software can't do the things listed above, neither can most teachers. For teachers, however, it isn't a matter of capability, but a matter of capacity. How often do English teachers conference individually with their students about the quality of their rhetoric, especially when correcting grammar and structure already takes up so much of their time? How many teachers have time to meet regularly with each of their students one-on-one just to ask about how they're doing, let alone attend all their students' extracurricular activities or visit their students' homes to get to know their families? Caring about students isn't constrained by time, but showing that you care is. Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, most teachers' days quickly fill up with planning lessons, writing quizzes, running copies, covering content, participating in staff meetings, and grading lower-order assignments; with little time left for many of the high-value activities described above.

This is why edtech is so important for teachers, in spite of all the things it can't do. If we want all students to thrive in an increasingly complex world, we need teachers to spend more time developing students' higher-order skills, tailoring learning to their personal circumstances, and building strong relationships with them. A key way to unlocking teachers' capacity comes from using technology to take lower-order work off teachers' plates.

In short, educators need technology to automate some of their work so they can focus on the important work technology can't do. For anyone interested in advancing this idea, we're developing a new framework to help educators think about how technology amplifies teacher capacity. We'd love to hear what you think.
A version of this post originally appeared on The 74 Million. Photo courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action.
Thomas Arnett is a senior research fellow in education for the Clayton Christensen Institute. His work focuses on studying innovations that amplify educator capacity, documenting barriers to K-12 innovation, and identifying disruptive innovations in education. Thomas previously served as a trustee and board president for the Morgan Hill Unified School District in Morgan Hill, California, worked as an Education Pioneers fellow with the Achievement First Public Charter Schools, and taught middle school math as a Teach For America teacher in Kansas City Public Schools. Thomas received a BS in Economics from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

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The 3 things edtech can't do illustrate why teachers matter now more than ever - Christensen Institute

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We're swimming in a world of technologies that have huge implications for the future of schooling. Computers live in teachers and students' pockets, the Internet makes information and media ubiquitous commodities, apps offer to aid with all our daily routines, and artificial intelligence unlocks new possibilities for differentiated instruction.

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Secrets to Effective Station Rotation Procedures

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Secrets to Effective Station Rotation Procedures

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Not all critiques are useful, says John Hattie

John Hattie has spent his career trying to pick through the "big ideas" in education to find what has the greatest effect on student learning. But the New Zealand researcher said it took him a decade to realize he was looking at one crucial aspect of learning all wrong.

"I used to think giving more feedback and better feedback was the answer [to improving education], and it's the exact opposite: How do teachers and students receive feedback? How do they interpret it?" said Hattie, currently the director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, in Australia.

Clear, actionable critiques of everything from a student essay to a new discipline policy are essential to continuous improvement, he said, but they are also one of the most common techniques that trip up schools. "Feedback costs. You have to do it again and again, because it wasn't good enough, and people don't want to hear it," Hattie said. "So how do you switch the conversation from giving feedback to helping students receive feedback?" And perhaps the most critical question, he added, is how school administrators can ensure teachers are receiving and acting upon feedback on their own work.

In his newest book, Visible Learning: Feedback, slated for publication in August, Hattie digs into how the culture of both the classroom and its students can affect how feedback works, and what research suggests teachers-and administrators-can do to create a culture in which adults and students encourage each other to keep learning. Education Week sat down with Hattie to talk about what he's found. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
What do people most often misunderstand about feedback?
There's very little research on how students progress; there's a lot more research on how teachers think students should progress. We asked 1,000-plus teachers what they meant by feedback, and it was very much focused on [answering], 'How am I doing? Where am I going?' We asked many thousands of students what they meant and it was simple: 'Help me know what to do now.'

One of the ironies is that students who are above the average are less likely to ask for the 'what now?' feedback because they can usually work it out on their own. The kids who are below average really want that dialogue, want the information-and they're the least likely to get it. They get 'correct, incorrect, you could improve here'-checks and crosses that give them no information.

When teachers spend hours and hours writing comments, if there's no feedback providing concrete steps for the students to improve, students will argue themselves blue in the face that they never received anything. The key question is, does feedback help someone understand what they don't know, what they do know, and where they go? That's when and why feedback is so powerful, but a lot of feedback doesn't-and doesn't have any effect.
Are there differences in how students absorb feedback at different ages?
There are changes over time. Up to around age 10, there's a lot of compliance behavior. Kids think coming to school means, 'Sit up straight, do your work, and watch the teacher work.' ... They want personalization. We know, for example, when teachers give feedback to the whole class, every kid knows it's not about them and they tune out.

By 12, there's a lot more peer involvement and therefore kids welcome feedback much more if it's done privately than they do if it's done publicly. And all of us, regardless of age, welcome praise.
There's been some debate here in the States about the role of praise in teaching students. What do you think?
Teachers, being nice people, have a lot of praise for kids who struggle. The problem with praise is that it has zero-to-negative impact on improving the task or the work. That isn't to say you shouldn't praise kids, because that's the essence of a lot of relationships. But you should separate it, so when you are talking about the work, you should be talking about the work, not the person. If I tell you, 'Here are things you should change to improve,' and then I tell you how good you were, the next day, what do you remember? You'd remember the praise; that dominates.

Praise does make a difference to relationships, and obviously building relationships is critical. But I remind people that the reason to build a relationship is so that you can talk about the errors.
What kinds of feedback are most helpful to teachers early and later in their careers?
The first four or five years of a teacher's [working] life, they are hungry for information about, 'Am I doing it right?' 'Is it good enough?' 'Am I having the kind of impact you expect?'

Unfortunately, many get diverted very quickly into, 'Have you got the right resources?' and 'Is it interesting?' There's one teacher I'm shadowing at the moment who spends all her minutes marking the kids' work and creating resources [for the classroom].

She's going to be exhausted in a few years' time and she's going to say, 'No one supported me,' because she's being taught that the only good teacher is a busy teacher.

But a good teacher is a teacher that has been prepared to have a discussion about the impact [of teaching on student learning.] One of the most effective [instructional practices] is teacher collective efficacy, teachers working to support each other and understand what their impact is. I worry that a lot of the professional learning communities that are being set up to [improve teacher efficacy] are not focusing on [collective improvement], but are focusing once again on curriculum resources and assessment.
In talking with people outside of education, what's the most common thing that they love and think is effective, that is not at all?
We asked 1,000 adults what they wanted most to invest in, in schooling, and it was all negatively correlated [with improving education]. ... It's all the structural things, the things they can see: different kinds of buildings, different kinds of curriculum, different kinds of assessment, academies, smaller class sizes, all these things. If you want a bigger budget to get new computers or to reduce class size, the public would do it; if you wanted to invest that money in building [teacher] expertise, they wouldn't.

We need to be smarter about educating parents about what learning looks like, and how successful many teachers are at acting on learning.
Under ESSA, states are rethinking their assessments and accountability for schools. Is there anything you think they should be considering, to help schools improve?
Every child, no matter where they start, is entitled to a year's growth for a year's input. Here's the irony: Teachers have at their fingertips thousands if not tens of thousands of measures of achievement, but very, very few measures of growth. So I think it's incumbent on the system to provide teachers with the resources they need to do their jobs. ... The whole model here, the psychometric model seems to be, create brilliant tests and then demand teachers use them.

But if teachers don't find value in them, they shouldn't use them. I think for a lot of the tests around today, if teachers weren't required to use them, they wouldn't use them. I'm a strong believer in ... helping teachers have these discussions and when they defend their impact, to be able to use a variety of methods, not just the compulsory method.
Can you think of one clear, low-hanging fruit to help teachers improve their instruction and feedback in the classroom?
[In a study of about 12,000 classrooms in the United Kingdom], we found on average teachers talked about 89 percent of the time; that's not a lot of listening. What we want teachers to do is to interview students about, 'What don't you understand about what I said when I made these comments?'-so we start to focus on how the teacher's comments are being received. I do think the power of teaching is in the art of listening.

Published in Print: June 20, 2018, as Getting Feedback Right

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Getting Feedback Right: a Q&A With John Hattie

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John Hattie has spent his career trying to pick through the "big ideas" in education to find what has the greatest effect on student learning. But the New Zealand researcher said it took him a decade to realize he was looking at one crucial aspect of learning all wrong.

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Summary strategies to use within any classroom

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Summary strategies to use within any classroom

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Quick activities that can be used to check for understanding or emphasize key information at the end of a lesson.

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Summarize what you read. A typical reading task, right? Yes. But it is so much more than that! Summarizing is a powerful thinking strategy that spans all academic areas and even work-related life skills. It is the ability to make decisions about information in efficient ways. More than ever, summarizing is a needed skill for the information age! Here are two ways that summarizing can benefit every classroom as a thinking strategy, not just a reading comprehension skill.

Summarizing involves thinking about information. To summarize, a student must rethink and reprocess what was experienced. This makes summarizing a skill for thinking. During reading, a student will summarize by using four distinct cognitive skills:

1. We must pause and retell what we read.

2. Then the student must decide what was important about the text.

3. These decisions are paraphrased into the student's own words.

4. Finally, the paraphrased thoughts are logically sequenced into a summary.

That's complex! No wonder students struggle with summarizing. It's a skill that promotes learning. Maybe more importantly, it's a skill that increases our ability to learn...much like exercise.

How can summarizing be used in a variety of settings? How can this thinking strategy promote learning in all classroom?

In a science class, students can be asked after each step of an investigation to paraphrase the steps in the process. At the end of the investigation, students can read their paraphrasing and create three sentences to summarize the scientific process. It's more than simply a quiz or exit ticket. It's a task that promotes processing and learning.

In a math class, a teacher can meet with small groups to review errors made on last week's test. After analyzing and discussing each error, students write down the "gist" of the mistake. After this 10-15 minute small group lesson, they read aloud what they wrote and discuss the common thread in all of the mistakes. This discussion is a summary of the students' learning.

Summarizing Strategy for Reading Comprehension

We usually think of summarizing in the context of a reading skill. But a skill is different than a strategy. A skill is a part of the reading process such as decoding words, reading fluently, analyzing a text, etc... Skills make the whole process possible.

Reading skills are the building blocks to fully independent reading. They are the staple of reading instruction. However, the strategy should be embedded across content areas.

Strategies are bigger than skills. Seasoned readers don't just pick up a text and start going at it. They think about the text, what it is, why they are reading it, and how they are going to experience the text. These are strategies. They give the reader control of comprehension.

Summarizing is one strategy a reader can use...if they have been appropriately taught how to summarize. When readers use summarizing as a strategy, the reader will pause during reading and paraphrase the meaning of a segment of text. As the reader continues to read, they continue to create a summary of what they are reading in their mind. It's an ongoing thinking skill that is used by readers to understand texts.

As a thinking strategy, summarizing is a powerful thinking ability that allows students to process information and make sense of it. Isn't that what we are doing in education? Making sense of the world around us? Summarizing is one strategy to help our students get there! Related Teaching Strategies: Visible Learning Makes 200% Growth in 9 Weeks

[thrive_text_block color="blue" headline="Read More on How to Teach Summarizing."] Teaching Summaries, Getting Detailed Part 1

Click to Read [/thrive_text_block]

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Summarizing as a Thinking Strategy - TeamTom Education

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Summarize what you read. A typical reading task, right? Yes. But it is so much more than that! Summarizing is a powerful thinking strategy that spans all academic areas and even work-related life skills. It is the ability to make decisions about information in efficient ways.

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Summarizing means identifying the main idea and most important facts, then writing a brief overview that includes only those key ideas and details. Summarizing is a vital skill for students to learn, but many students find it difficult to pick out the important facts without providing too much detail.

A good summary is short and to the point. The following easy summarizing strategies will help your students choose the correct details from the text and write about them clearly and concisely.

Give Me the Gist

When someone asks for "the gist" of a story, they want to know what the story is about. In other words, they want a summary-not a retelling of every detail. To introduce the gist method, explain that summarizing is just like giving a friend the gist of a story, and have your students tell each other about their favorite books or movies in 15 seconds or less. You can use the gist method as a fun, quick way to practice summarizing on a regular basis.

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5 Easy Summarizing Strategies for Students

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Use these easy, hands-on summarizing strategies to help your students strengthen their summarizing skills.

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Summarizing teaches students how to discern the most important ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what is read. Summarization strategies can be used in almost every content area.

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Summarizing teaches students how to discern the most important ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what is read. Summarization strategies can be used in almost every content area.

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Talking about math helps elementary students deepen their understanding. Use these three tips to get the conversation started.

©Shutterstock.com/Monkey Business Images

Walk into a classroom in the middle of a math talk and you'll see the students gathered in a circle, taking turns showing each other math strategies and questioning each other about the accuracy and efficiency of their solutions. The students are sharing thoughts about a single high-quality math problem they worked on solving earlier in the period without teacher guidance. They are processing the math in a different way than when they worked with paper and pencils, manipulatives, and drawings.

This opportunity to connect math and language benefits all the students and deepens their understanding of math concepts. The teacher listens as students converse about their problem-solving process. This gives her a view into the depth of understanding her students have, and alerts her to any misconceptions that should be addressed in later lessons.

After the students exchange ideas, the teacher will ask them to summarize important takeaways about today's math concepts and strategies. Only then will she chime in with points she wants to emphasize. Here are three tips for guiding math talks.

1. Spend Time Discussing Just One Math Problem

Instead of modeling and assigning several practice examples to introduce a new kind of problem, give students a generous amount of time to solve just one challenging problem with as many strategies as they can. Requiring at least two strategies builds independence in verifying their own solutions and jump-starts students' ideas for discussion. Once students have had ample time to work on the problem, bring the class together for a conversation.

2. Use the Power of Think, Pair, Share

Before students share with the whole group, teachers first give them a moment to think on their own and then talk to a partner. Their understanding develops at each stage of Think, Pair, Share. This is also a time when the teacher can gather important information from students, by circulating and hearing the thinking behind their problem-solving strategies.

Think: Students take a quiet moment to ready themselves to describe their process in words. Think time allows students who wouldn't otherwise participate aloud (shy students, introverts, slower processors, and English language learners) to gather their thoughts and build courage to express them.

Pair: The teacher asks students to turn to a partner and take turns exchanging math strategies and observations. Pair time holds all students accountable for participating, and it allows students a practice run for sharing with the whole group. During this time, students connect math and language. Light bulbs go off as kids verbalize their mathematical thinking. Students who hesitate to share out to the whole group are given a chance to process and participate.

Share: The teacher asks students to share ideas with the whole group. Many teachers are surprised at how drastically participation increases when students have first had a chance to think to themselves and then practice sharing with a partner. Student shares are more eloquent, and the listeners are alert, making comparisons to how they and their partner solved the problem.

3. Take Advantage of Discussion Aids

Anyone who has taught math knows that it isn't always easy to put math strategies into words. Kids need practice with the essential skill of communicating mathematical thinking, and there are several ways teachers can support them.

Math tools: Pattern blocks, grid paper, and base 10 blocks are examples of math tools that provide entry points for solving challenging math problems. These hands-on tools also give students something to describe as they show how they solved a problem step by step.

Visuals: Teachers can spark a math discussion with a teacher-made visual, like the math talk discussion card for kindergarten and first grade above. Or they can encourage students to show and explain a visual (a drawing or table, for example) that helped them solve a math problem.

Language support: During a math discussion, the teacher tries to talk as little as possible, setting an expectation that everyone is to be ready with a question or comment for the sharer. Sentence stems and vocabulary lists support students who struggle to put their thoughts into words and those who are learning English. Using "accountable talk" sentence starters like these turns one-at-a-time sharing into a class conversation:

I see that you used Math Practice _____ when you _____.
I think it would be more efficient to _____.
I will use your strategy next time because _____.
The part of your strategy I do/don't understand is _____.
When I was stuck I _____.
The most challenging part for me was _____.

Teachers are often surprised at how well their students can question and support each other in describing a problem-solving process with some help from these language aids.

Providing lots of time for talking about and showing math strategies for just one problem may sound scary given teachers' limited teaching time, but the payoff from a math talk is great. Students are exposed to multiple ways to approach the same problem. They hear various explanations of math concepts. As they listen, watch, and talk to each other, students begin to see patterns and make connections.

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Talking about math helps elementary students deepen their understanding. Use these three tips to get the conversation started. ©Shutterstock.com/Monkey Business Images Walk into a classroom in the middle of a math talk and you'll see the students gathered in a circle, taking turns showing each other math strategies and questioning each other about the accuracy and efficiency of their solutions.

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Number talks are short discussions among a teacher and students about how to solve a particular mental math problem. The focus is not on the correct answer, but on all the possible methods of finding the answer. Each student has a chance to explain their method, and everyone else will learn from other people's methods!

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From Achieve3000 series, working to get students to collaborate and talk more about their reading

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Dr. Charlene Marchese Supervisor of Mathematics Freehold Township School District, NJ

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For 20 years, Achieve3000 has been empowering educators and helping them unlock student potential and accelerate learning growth. Now, more than ever, schools and districts need proven solutions that can help them address unfinished learning and prepare students for success. Whether you’re solving f…

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Getting students to have Collaborative Conversations (webinar)

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Getting students to have Collaborative Conversations (webinar)

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Join Dr. Douglas Fisher for this informative live session!

The power of peer-to-peer learning has been well documented in the research base of effective instruction. Perhaps the most influential theorist on the role of peer-assisted learning is Lev Vygotsky, who believed that all learning is mediated by interactions with others. Therefore, collaboration with peers becomes a necessary part of the learning process of a child.

In this session, we will consider the ways in which collaborative conversations compliments instruction in a gradual release of responsibility framework.

Objectives and Outcomes:

Participants will examine components necessary for group work to be productive.
Participants will identify quality indicators of productive group work.
Participants will assess various classroom instructional routines for their usefulness in productive group work.
Watch this on-demand session now !

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Effective Collaborative Conversations with Doug Fisher - Achieve3000

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Join Dr. Douglas Fisher for this informative live session! The power of peer-to-peer learning has been well documented in the research base of effective instruction. Perhaps the most influential theorist on the role of peer-assisted learning is Lev Vygotsky, who believed that all learning is mediated by interactions with others.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Framework

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iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Framework

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What keeps Blended Learning Cultures Successful?

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What keeps Blended Learning Cultures Successful?

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This article is a great read of what the real impact of a blended learning system!

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It takes time to achieve results. Whether starting a new exercise program, restructuring your team, or trying out a new morning routine, we've all realized that it usually takes months or even years to see the results of our hard work. Since I started my role as a blended-learning coordinator in 2016, I have found that implementing blended programs is no exception to this rule: it will take time to see the accurate results of your school's blended-learning program - but not in the way you may think.

I want to start by saying that the argument I am offering here is largely anecdotal at this point, and I do not have a large data pool to illustrate my findings. However, I have conferred with many of my colleagues in the field and we've agreed on the patterns we see associated with the results of blended implementations. Through our collective experience working with close to 100 schools implementing blended-learning programs, we have witnessed the same learning growth trends over and over again, and those are the trends I share with you today.
There is an initial spike in learning growth
Unlike many school-improvement initiatives that often yield no measurable results in the first semester or year, blended-learning programs often show fantastic results in student learning growth early on. I hypothesize that this is a consequence of the personalized software programs that the students use. Many of the sophisticated programs on the market now incorporate the best of learning science and gamification techniques to provide high-quality, engaging learning experiences that reach the students at the levels appropriate for each of them. For many students, this is, unfortunately, the first time they have ever learned in a way that they find exciting and accessible. Their engagement in learning targeted to their specific needs often leads to dramatic growth in their first year of using the online learning programs.
Success in years two and three depend on school culture and quality of instruction
The true test of the program's success, however, comes in years two and three. After the dramatic growth students experience in the first year, the results typically either plateau or continue to steadily increase, and I have seen that this depends almost entirely on the school culture and quality of instruction. No matter how engaging and instructionally sound a program may be, students' progress in online learning programs will almost always slow in the second or third year without strong supports in place from the teacher. As we have written many times before, the teacher is the key to the success of a blended-learning program - and results will confirm that after the initial online learning honeymoon period wears off.

Consider the following scenario to illustrate this point: School A (dark blue line) and School B (light blue line) both start implementing blended learning and see an impressive increase in the percent of students that are proficient in the first year! In subsequent years, the students' growth in School A bottoms out as the students have a series of teachers that do not "blend" learning well. These teachers use the online-learning programs as digital babysitters more than anything else. They rarely check the data from the programs, do not incorporate additional engagement techniques, and do not personalize students' offline learning. In this case, the school is likely relying on the software program to fill students' gaps in knowledge and accelerate their learning, and the results will not be sustained over time.

The students in School B (light blue line), however, continue to grow as their teachers develop tools to engage students in their online learning, become more comfortable using the data to adjust and inform their instruction on a daily basis, find new ways to support students who do not prefer to learn online, and push students beyond some of the basic skills they learn and demonstrate online with application and justification activities in class. Students in School B are likely in a school that invests time in developing their teachers' capacity to deliver effective, differentiated instruction that is supported by, but not reliant on, the software.

It can be tempting to jump with joy when you see great results from the first year of a blended-learning program - and by all means, you should celebrate your school's success - but the more meaningful results will come in later years, after the initial bump from the software programs. In my experience, I have found that focusing on building teacher capacity leads to long-term, continuous growth. So which will your school be, School A or School B?
Elizabeth Anthony leads blended-learning implementations in K-12 Catholic schools as the associate director of blended learning for the Alliance for Catholic Education

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How to avoid the student learning plateau in blended programs

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It takes time to achieve results. Whether starting a new exercise program, restructuring your team, or trying out a new morning routine, we've all realized that it usually takes months or even years to see the results of our hard work.

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Just because we have 'tech' in the classroom, does that mean we are really a blended school?

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Eric Sheninger (@E_Sheninger). Senior Fellow at @RigorRelevance ~ Principal, Learner, Author, Speaker, #digilead | Thoughts are my own ericsheninger.com

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This article provides a great resources of how to implement for struggling and soaring students in a blended classroom

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Blended learning started in many cases by serving students in nontraditional settings (as disruptive innovations do), but we know that blended approaches have since grown, expanded, and evolved to serve millions of students in a variety of settings. Blended learning is now employed to meet a wide range of needs across student populations, and no two blended classrooms or experiences are identical. There are, however, commonalities that exist across schools, student populations, sectors, and nations as blended-learning practices adapt to meet specific needs.

Blended learning for remediation

Perhaps the most widespread need blended learning is used to meet is that of remediation. The average American student is not on grade level nor on track to be ready for college, which means that more than 50% of American students need some form of remediation in order to master the skills and content at their current grade level (see one study ). Of course, the promise of blended learning is that it can allow students to move at their own paces to master any skills they lack and therefore can provide individualized remediation (and maybe eventually, acceleration) for each student.

As the leader of blended-learning programs in a network of schools that support some of the nation's most underserved students, I have witnessed the potential benefits of blended learning firsthand: many students have achieved nearly double their projected growth on norms-referenced assessments in a single year! I have also, however, seen a number of critical mistakes that cause students to flounder and fall further behind their peers instead of soaring ahead.

Do's and Don'ts

Based on these experiences, I created the following three "do's" and "don'ts" for blended teaching and learning, particularly when it is used to help better serve the most vulnerable students.

1. Don't focus only on filling students' learning gaps; do expose students to grade-level material as well.

When teachers see that students have enormous gaps in their learning, it can be tempting to abandon grade-level standards entirely and focus only on remediating students' learning gaps. Doing so, however, often results in lowered expectations and achievement gaps wider than they were before. Teachers need not lower the level of work they expect of their students simply because a student has not yet learned all of the prerequisite skills. Instead, teachers should ask what each student needs in order to master rigorous concepts and find a way to meet those needs.

This is a lofty charge, but it is far from impossible. The technology in a blended-learning model enables teachers to do exactly this by providing a wealth of information about the skills students still need to master, delivering instruction and practice to each student at his or her "just right" level, and freeing up the teacher to work with smaller groups of students.

2. Don't depend on technology to do all of the remediation; do use targeted small-group or individual instruction to address students' needs.

Having said that, teachers cannot rely solely on technology to remediate students' gaps while focusing all of their own time on grade-level instruction. Adaptive software programs can go a long way in providing personalized instruction, but it would be a mistake to assume that technology can take care of all the remediation.

One of the greatest affordances of a blended-learning approach is the wealth of data teachers receive about the students' strengths and areas of need. Teachers must use the data available to them to make strategic interventions that maximize learning. In some cases, this may take the form of a series of small-group lessons on a broad concept that is difficult for a number of students; in other cases, it could consist of a quick check-in with a single student to correct a small but important error. No matter the form it takes, though, it is crucial that teachers act upon the data available to them and do not rely too much on the technology.

3. Don't make learning an isolated experience; do create opportunities for collaboration and group learning.

When teachers realize that students have such distinct needs, it can be tempting to completely individualize each student's learning. This happens most often when teachers rely too much on technology, but it can also happen when teachers go above and beyond to design personalized-learning activities for each student. In the era of personalized learning in which the terms "average" and "whole-group" are demonized, it can be challenging to find a place for small-group and whole-group instruction and activities, but it is of the utmost importance.

We all know that rich learning happens in a community. For most students, the process of sense-making happens in an entirely new and exciting way when others are involved. In all learning experiences, it is imperative that students have peer-learning opportunities to contrast their thinking with each other, learn from one another, and construct answers together.

Focus on the do's

It might be overwhelming to think about all of the things teachers should do in a blended classroom, so try flipping the way you view these guidelines. For teachers using blended learning to serve students with significant learning gaps, I recommend these best practices:

Continue to expect students to master rigorous content and skills and understand that remediation will play a great role in helping students achieve this level of mastery.

Use data to identify opportunities to deliver targeted remedial instruction.

Ensure that students continually have opportunities to learn from, and alongside, one another.

Keeping these three criteria at the front of mind will help ensure that blended learning is employed to give all students the educational experience they deserve.
Elizabeth Anthony leads blended-learning implementations in K-12 Catholic schools as the blended-learning coordinator for the Alliance for Catholic Education

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The do's and don'ts of blended teaching for remediation

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Blended learning started in many cases by serving students in nontraditional settings (as disruptive innovations do), but we know that blended approaches have since grown, expanded, and evolved to serve millions of students in a variety of settings. Blended learning is now employed to meet a wide range of needs across student populations, and no two blended classrooms or experiences are identical.

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Examples from Seton Schools, St. Anne and Resurrection in Los Angeles

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Meeting the needs of diverse learners in a Personalized/Blended Learning Classroom

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Meeting the needs of diverse learners in a Personalized/Blended Learning Classroom

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Click on the links to see solutions and examples

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Supporting and Engaging Diverse Learners within Blended and Personalized Learning

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With support and feedback from the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), we recently...

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Resources & Guidance from The Learning Accelerator

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We use technology from the Learning Commons to track anonymous visitor behavior on our website to ensure you have a great experience. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Opt In/Out.

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How do I develop student ownership and accountability in a station...

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Implementing a station rotation model requires intentional accountability systems to develop student ownership and ensure student success. This guide will go through strategies for developing student ownership through choice, habits, and student data.

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07 Student Investment and Accountability

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07 Student Investment and Accountability

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3 Changes That Can Boost Blended Learning Performance

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3 Changes That Can Boost Blended Learning Performance

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Implementing innovative ideas in an established, bureaucratic system of education is not always easy and almost never happens seamlessly. As someone who helps traditional schools implement blended models, I constantly see the tension between existing structures or norms and innovative concepts. Many schools see the benefits of combining online learning with face-to-face instruction and want to implement more personalized and competency-based practices, but they do not have the tools to implement these practices with fidelity while also complying with the more traditional requirements mandated by their district, diocese, state, and/or funder.

In an ideal world, policies and widespread practices would change to allow for emerging models to function optimally - but policies are slow to change, and I predict broad-scale change is still a long way off. Having said that, there are smaller changes that can take place at the school, district, or network level that allow students and teachers to reap the benefits of blended models even within a more traditional system. Here are three changes that I encourage every school to make in order to maximize the impact of their blended-learning program.

1. Switch to Standards-Based Grading

A letter grade system typically requires that all students complete the same assignments and receive a numerical score on each of them. In blended classrooms, however, students may master different objectives or choose different ways to display their learning. This presents challenges for a typical "letter grade" system because it is difficult to compare students in this somewhat limited form when the variations in their learning paths are more complex.

In a traditional classroom where all students are expected to master the same standards in the same way at the same time, standards-based grading is not particularly helpful. In a blended classroom where students may be mastering different standards at different times or in different ways, however, standards-based grading allows teachers, parents, and students to see exactly which concepts and skills each student has already mastered and still needs to master, and it eliminates the challenge of comparing students to one another or measuring them against an arbitrary set of skills to determine a letter grade.

Fortunately, many schools and districts are beginning to adopt standards-based grading practices. This kind of grading can be time-consuming and uncomfortable for teachers at first, but it ultimately allows much more insight into what a student has learned, and still needs to learn, for all parties involved.

2. Focus on Skills Mastered Rather Than Seat Time

Student requirements are typically focused on seat time. Competency-based systems of education, however, focus on the skills a student has mastered, regardless of the amount of time it takes for a student to master them. To start moving toward a competency-based approach, there are small steps that schools can take to focus more on skills mastered rather than seat time.

For example, instead of requiring students to spend 45 minutes per week engaged in online instruction, schools can instead require that students pass two lessons per week in their online program. The latter gives students an incentive to work hard and work smart to master concepts rather than passively go through online lessons to meet an arbitrary requirement. Similarly, schools can build "flex time" into their schedules, which are blocks of time in which students can work to master different skills across subjects rather than being held to a specific lesson. This allows students to progress upon mastery and focus their time and energy on the skills they still need to improve to demonstrate full understanding.

3. Help Students Set & Achieve Individualized Goals

Finally, schools that are still held accountable by high-stakes tests may be tempted to standardize learning goals for all students. If all students need to demonstrate mastery of a specific set of skills by the end of the year, then the goal is for all students to learn those skills, right? Yes and no.

Schools can have overall learning goals for the class while still helping students set individualized learning goals that help them understand what they each need to do to improve or achieve mastery. Rather than setting a single standardized goal for each student, teachers can work with students to identify which concepts or skills they need to work on in order to achieve the desired level of mastery, and what behaviors the student will need to undertake to get there. This might mean that one student has a goal of improving reading comprehension and decides to complete two extra grade-level Newsela articles with quizzes every week, while another student has a goal of mastering the spelling and sounds of words and chooses to complete extra phonics practice every week.

These small changes will certainly not solve all of the discrepancies between the traditional model and blended models, but they will help to make the integration of these two systems more smooth. Instead of waiting on national policies to institute broad-scale change, we must make these subtle shifts to ensure blended programs serve all students within the current system.

Learn about the work our network of schools is doing around blended learning here.

Are you practicing blended learning? Share your story by creating a profile of your classroom, school, or district in the BLU Directory .
Elizabeth Anthony leads blended-learning implementations in K-12 Catholic schools as the blended-learning coordinator for the Alliance for Catholic Education

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3 subtle shifts to boost blended performance

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Implementing innovative ideas in an established, bureaucratic system of education is not always easy and almost never happens seamlessly. As someone who helps

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Setting up a Station Rotation Model in the classroom

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Setting up a Station Rotation Model in the classroom

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How do I set up a station rotation model in my classroom?

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Interested in implementing stations and not sure where to start? This guide will give you tangible resources and research, with key insights and strategies around culture, space, and routines.

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BE Education Podcast: What is Blended Learning?

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BE Education Podcast: What is Blended Learning?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Get New Episodes PLUS Exclusive MEP Content

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

How do we personalize learning for our diverse group of students? If personalization is the challenge, then blended learning is the tool, one of the solutions to get there.

00:48 The Be Education podcast as an offshoot of some of the work that we've done with the Meet Education Project

01:22 Christina's work with teachers

01:35 Universal challenge: How do we create lessons that reach all the kids in front of us? How do we personalize learning for our diverse group of students?

01:55 If personalization is the challenge, then blended learning is the tool, one of the solutions to get there.

02:40 How do you make sure that you're leveraging blended learning in the right way?

03:31 Small group instruction is the easiest first step to blended learning

04:06 Definition of blended learning

04:51 Definition of personalized learning, personalized instruction

05:57 Definition of small group instruction

06:35 Suggestions / action steps for teachers, administrators

Think about what you're already doing and put yourself in that continuum of who's doing the heavy lifting in the classroom

You want your students to be active participants in any lesson that you deliver.

Ask your students what they think about their learning.

10:05 Some teachers may struggle with the perceived giving up of the control of the classroom... Do you find that a lot in the classrooms you work with?

11:18 A teacher's experience on teaching about the GDP of countries

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Get New Episodes PLUS Exclusive MEP Content Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS How do we personalize learning for our diverse group of students? If personalization is the challenge, then blended learning is the tool, one of the solutions to get there.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Get New Episodes PLUS Exclusive MEP Content

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

In this episode, we talk about small group instruction and differentiation.

01:11 How do you provide a consistent experience? Are there structures that you can put in place to do that on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis?

01:53 What is small group instruction?

02:49 So how do you make the time meaningful? What are the keys to small group instruction that really make it work long-term?

05:58 Where does small group instruction go wrong? Are there any mistakes that people make?

07:39 15-7 split
Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain by Zaretta Hammonds

Middle school students learn best for 15 minutes

Ideally, they have 7 minutes to absorb and process what they learned

09:14 Action steps for teachers

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BEP020 - How Does Small Group Instruction Drive Student Success?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Get New Episodes PLUS Exclusive MEP Content Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS In this episode, we talk about small group instruction and differentiation. 01:11 How do you provide a consistent experience?

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START AT 4:38

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Part 2: Tips from blended-learning teachers about the structures and systems that make blended work

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Uploaded by High-Quality Blended Learning on 2014-03-28.

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Part 2: Tips from blended-learning teachers about the structures and systems that make blended work

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Uploaded by High-Quality Blended Learning on 2014-03-28.

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Blended Learning Instructional Rubric [Draft]

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Structures and Systems for a Blended Learning Classroom

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Structures and Systems for a Blended Learning Classroom

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Part 1: Tips from blended-learning teachers about the structures and systems that make blended work

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Uploaded by High-Quality Blended Learning on 2014-03-28.

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Modifying the Station Rotation to Meet Student Needs

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Modifying the Station Rotation to Meet Student Needs

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How Blended Learning is Implemented from Other Teachers Across the Country

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How Blended Learning is Implemented from Other Teachers Across the Country

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Resources & Guidance from The Learning Accelerator

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Small group instruction plays a central role in helping Valor teachers meet a diverse range of learning needs.

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Observation charts are a type of inquiry chart that stimulate studentsâ€™ curiosity. They build background information while providing teachers with a diagnostic tool. And they provide opportunities for language support from peers. During an observation chart, I use real pictures or paintings attached to white poster paper or butcher paper that contain a theme (e.g., food from a culture, ways of transportation, games a culture plays, etc.). My students walk around from observation chart to observation chart and write down either a question they're wondering about, a comment they'd like to make, or just an observation (i.e., statement of fact).

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Computer Support Hand Signals | Blended Video | BetterLesson

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Observation charts are a type of inquiry chart that stimulate studentsâ€™ curiosity. They build background information while providing teachers with a diagnostic tool. And they provide opportunities for language support from peers. During an observation chart, I use real pictures or paintings attached to white poster paper or butcher paper that contain a theme (e.g., food from a culture, ways of transportation, games a culture plays, etc.).

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This strategy helps to lighten the mood and get everyone moving. Students in a blended learning class at the elementary level need time to take a break from blended learning at various moments and engage with each other.This strategy facilitates the opportunity to lower the affective filter and have students engage in academic and non-academic conversations. We review the expectations for the transition and what their next steps are when they find a partner. Students spontaneously select a partner, put their hands up together in the air, and keep them there once everyone has a partner. we then decide by height and shirt color who will share first. Any students remaining are paired up accordingly. The song playing serves as a signal about when to go and when to stop moving.

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Collaborative Hand Signals | Blended Video | BetterLesson

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This strategy helps to lighten the mood and get everyone moving. Students in a blended learning class at the elementary level need time to take a break from blended learning at various moments and engage with each other.This strategy facilitates the opportunity to lower the affective filter and have students engage in academic and non-academic conversations.

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Really Good resource to check out!

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Using Data to influence Reading Interventions

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Using Data to influence Reading Interventions

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Lindsay High School uses daily reading interventions.

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For all children to be ready for college and careers, they need a learning experience tailored to their unique needs, skills, and interests. These resources show how data makes this personalized learning possible. When students, parents, teachers, and leaders are empowered with the data they need when they need it, there are so many ways to personalize learning.

View the infographic:

Watch the video:

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You Need Data to Personalize Learning - Data Quality Campaign

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In order for all children to be ready for college and careers, they need a learning experience that's tailored to their unique needs, skills, and interests. Data makes this personalized learning possible. When students, parents, teachers, and leaders are empowered with the data they need when they need it-there are so many ways to personalize learning.

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Use of Pre-Test and Post-Test to measure growth 

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Use of Pre-Test and Post-Test to measure growth 

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Identifying Mastery and Growth Areas with Pretests and Posttests

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Students take tests before and after units to identify areas of focus and growth.

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Using Pretests and Posttests to Identify Learning Growth and Needs

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Students take pretests to identify readiness and prior knowledge before starting a playlist, and...

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Using Unique Data Sets that Inform Teaching and Learning

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Bronx Arena reviews a variety of different data sets to ensure that its approach is having a...

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Using NWEA MAP Data to Plan Small Groupings for multiple Groups

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Using NWEA MAP Data to Plan Small Groupings for multiple Groups

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Using NWEA MAP Data to plan Small Group Instruction for one student

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Using NWEA MAP Data to plan Small Group Instruction for one student

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Small Group Instruction Planning Template01

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Small Group Instruction Planning Template01

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Small group sessions support students to practice the content in a smaller setting to support mastery

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Resources to dynamically re-group students

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Access free resources including helpful case studies, articles, and more, to dynamically re-group students based on formative assessment.

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Teachers work with small groups of students to target specific learning needs.

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Teachers break up students into small groups to target similar needs and allow for student...

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Structural Blended Model: Station Rotation and Individual Rotation

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Trailblazer starts with a station rotation model in the beginning of the year, shifting to...

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See: Navin Elementary using Station Rotation Blended Model

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See: Navin Elementary using Station Rotation Blended Model

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Check out Navin Elementary School @BLU_ #blendedlearning

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At Navin Elementary School, K-4 ELA and math classes operate a Station Rotation model, and educators engage in professional learning in an A La Carte arrangement. In ELA classes, students are assigned rotation groups based on their instructional needs. The school uses the Literacy Collaborative framework for reading instruction, which was developed by researchers at The Ohio State University.

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Apply: Sample Schedules for adjusting Rotations based on Data

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Apply: Sample Schedules for adjusting Rotations based on Data

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MAP assessments have helped Cisco educators better understand students' learning needs and improve...

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Blended Learing Tracking.First Step Action Planning.docx

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See how Roots Elementary collects data for different Learning Cycles throughout the school year

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Students at Roots take a benchmark assessment every 6-8 weeks.

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Check out pgs. 1-2 for whole group look fors

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2017.Next Steps For Targeted Instructon.docx

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Teachers try to deliver instruction in weekly cycles at Lovett, starting with whole group...

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Valor uses short, targeted whole group instruction to fill skill gaps in math.

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By definition, online learning is part of any blended learning classroom. It is the key innovation for enabling student-centered learning at scale. Given this fact, it's easy to get caught up in thinking of technology-devices and software-as blended learnings' core, defining feature. Yet the most powerful and important element in blended learning doesn't have a touch screen, fancy graphics, or artificial intelligence; it isn't built by engineers or computer scientists; and you can't buy it online. The most important element in blended learning is one that's been in classrooms for centuries. That element is teachers.

To illustrate this point clearly, consider how technology and teachers stack up on John Hattie's rankings. Hattie synthesized the results of nearly 1,200 meta-analysis studies to compare various influences on student learning based on their statistically-measured effect size. When we look at hardware and software, their impact on student achievement tends to be moderate, in the rage of 0.1 to 0.6.

Technology with learning needs students - 0.57

Technology in other subjects - 0.55

Interactive video methods - 0.54

Intelligent tutoring systems - 0.48

Information communications technology - 0.47

Technology with elementary students - 0.44

Technology in writing - 0.42

Gaming/simulations - 0.35

Technology in mathematics - 0.33

Technology with high school students - 0.3

Online and digital tools - 0.29

Technology in reading/literacy - 0.29

Technology in science - 0.23

Technology in small groups - 0.21

Web-based learning - 0.18

One-on-one laptops - 0.16

Pure technology, however, isn't the only way to influence student learning within a blended model. Online learning also gives teachers new options for how they group students, provide feedback, and use instructional time. In other words, the real potential of online learning comes not from the tools themselves, but from what the teacher's can do using their toolbelt. When we look at many of the "offline" activities that online learning makes possible-such as small group instruction and mastery-based learning-we see even more favorable effects, ranging from around 0.3 to 0.9.

Micro-teaching/video review of lessons - 0.88

Classroom discussion - 0.82

Deliberate practice - 0.79

Interventions for students with learning needs - 0.77

Mastery learning - 0.57

Providing formative evaluation - 0.48

Small group learning - 0.47

Student-centered teaching - 0.36

Now consider teachers. Even with the best technology has to offer, teachers still stand out as more important than any other element of blended learning, with effect sizes ranging from about 0.4 to nearly 1.6:
Why the focus on tech, not teachers?
Although teachers are clearly the biggest impact lever in blended learning, it's easy to understand why technology often steals the limelight. For one, it's much harder to recruit, develop, and support effective teachers than it is to buy new devices or software licenses; and when you walk into a classroom, new shiny hardware and flashy software are more eye-catching than the skills and expertise living inside a teacher's mind. Thus, education leaders are easily drawn to the electronic aspects of blended learning at the neglect of the real engines of success. Additionally, blended learning and quality teaching can often seem like distinct and separate initiatives. On the landscape of education reforms, blended learning and teacher quality each has its own set of policy proponents, technical support organizations, publications, and conferences.

Yet despite the false dichotomy often drawn between improving schools through excellent teaching and improving schools through technology, teacher quality and online learning are not isolated and independent variables. Rather, they are complementary components of an effective blended learning system.
The missing measures
What doesn't show up clearly in Hattie's rankings are the positive interaction effects between teacher effectiveness, online learning, and the personalized learning practices that blended learning enables. While technology facilitates differentiated instruction, accelerates real-time feedback, and enables mastery-based learning, teachers often help students find their "why." Teachers have the power to motivate and inspire students to engage deeply with educational content; they can provide students with the expert feedback to validate the meaning of their achievements; and they can show students that someone cares about their success.

For example, if we compare high-quality blended learning to the design of a high-end car, you might say teachers are like the engine and online learning is like the transmission. Just as a transmission unlocks a car's potential for speed (imagine trying to merge onto the freeway with only first gear) online learning can enable teachers to do a host of things that are practically impossible to do by hand. But just as a car goes nowhere without the power of an engine, online learning often has little effect without teachers.

This principle bears out in practice. Many of the strongest blended-learning schools make high-quality teaching a priority, and recent reports on effective blended-learning implementation emphasize teacher development as a key to success. Additionally, a number of the leading innovators in blended learning are also experimenting with new staffing arrangements for extending the impact of great teachers.

During teacher appreciation week, we pay tribute to the original and most important educational element in any classroom: excellent teachers. And as schools experiment and iterate on their blended-learning models, we remind them that their best path to success will be through using technology as a catalyst to amplify the impact of teachers.

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By definition, online learning is part of any blended learning classroom. It is the key innovation for enabling student-centered learning at scale. Given this fact, it's easy to get caught up in thinking of technology-devices and software-as blended learnings' core, defining feature.

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Identifying Similar Gaps for Whole Group Instruction

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Identifying Similar Gaps for Whole Group Instruction

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Resources & Guidance from The Learning Accelerator

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Teachers at Cisco use whole group instruction to address common learning needs across the entire class.

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Students have a daily warm-up activity that addresses learning needs and applies cross-curricular...