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Textbooks have to be one of the worst parts of college. I love to learn, I love my classes, but I hate the textbooks that come with them. It has nothing to do with the content, but the price tag.

In college, you pay a ridiculous amount of money for textbooks because professors either have you buy the newest edition where there isn't a rental or used book to purchase, they make it available only in an E-book format, or they have you buy the textbook that comes with an additional $100 access code just so you can do your homework. It's stressful and ridiculous and I always find myself spending over $200 for textbooks each semester. Yeah, not per year, per SEMESTER.

This semester, I decided to take a little more action when it came to my books. Instead of ordering my books through the school bookstore, I did some research. I tried Amazon, but they were about the same price as the bookstore if not more at times.

So, I scratched that off my list. Then, I turned to buying used books from other students. It worked with a couple books, but a lot of people didn't have the version of the book I was looking for or were also selling it for a ridiculous price. With only two of the six textbooks I needed in hand, I was at a loss for what to do next. Then, I heard about this website called Chegg. I actually stumbled upon it while looking on Pinterest for "Cheap College Textbooks." I had always heard of Chegg, but I always figured it was too complicated and chose to never use it.

Let me tell you, that was stupid. I looked up the three books I needed and the total price for the three of them had my jaw dropping. My total came out to $85, which was the price of just one of my books at the bookstore.

Below my total, Chegg told me I was saving over $200. Can you believe that?! On top of that? They also offered me free shipping and it would be in my hands in 2-3 days. Also, instead of having to return my books the last week of school, I had a whole extra month to do it. I mean, I probably won't need that long, but hey, life happens sometimes and you forget!

They also send you a label to print off and you just have to pack the books up and ship them off! No return lines, no waiting, just returning your books on your own time.

There are also many other features to Chegg that include free E-books of the textbook you just rented, study tips, and lessons that go along with the books you rented. It really helps when it comes time for homework and tests!

There is a Chegg App that you can download to keep track of your orders and you can also use it for some of these features and to sell some of your own books that you might have!

One last thing that made me just fall in love with Chegg is that when I opened my box, it had a bunch of free goodies inside! There was a sample bag of tide pods, a coupon for MORE tide pods (I can never get enough of those honestly), gum, some coupons and even some gift cards that could be used for cute things for my room and also for some meals! It was just a really nice thing to find because it made me feel like more than just a college student trying to get cheap books.

It actually made me feel like a real person. That may sound odd, but it's true! By them just putting in something extra in my box, it helped eased my stress and mind about all the book troubles I had and it showed me that the people who work at Chegg actually care. They could have just sent my rental books, but they took the extra mile, and I think that's what every textbook rental place should be doing. I ordered my textbooks from Chegg and I'm telling you, I'm never using any other rental place.

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Why High School Block Scheduling Works For Students

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Textbooks have to be one of the worst parts of college. I love to learn, I love my classes, but I hate the textbooks that come with them. It has nothing to do with the content, but the price tag.

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This framework for a research based project is very helpful. Would be happy to collaborate in planning to use it.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
Sponsored by Raymond Geddes and Kids Discover

This is an excerpt from a letter written to a Charlotte, North Carolina newspaper in 2002 by a first-year math teacher, a man who was vehemently opposed to block scheduling.

"I am...a first year high school math teacher. (My school) operates on a block schedule - a concept I had never even heard of until I accepted (this) teaching position. My observations of block scheduling have been a shocking education for me. Block scheduling has resulted in less emphasis on core content and more on gimmickry. Classes used to be places where serious learning took place. No more. Under block scheduling, they have become little more than glorified playtime periods. Classes used to consist of core subject material being communicated to students by individuals rich in knowledge and experience. Now teachers are no longer teachers, but merely guides - glorified baby-sitters, if you will. Under block scheduling, the students are now in groups trying to "discover" facts that used to be communicated instantly when teachers actually taught. It's obvious that this format wastes valuable class time - and that doesn't include the time students waste by talking, singing, and becoming restless all-around as a result of the lengthened class periods."

This letter articulates the concerns some teachers, parents, and even students have about block scheduling, where class periods last 80 to 100 minutes and only four classes are held each day. This type of schedule became popular in middle and high schools in the 1990s as an alternative to the traditional schedule, where students attend the same six to eight classes, 45 to 50 minutes each, every day. The idea behind the change was that with less transition time between classes, fewer instructional minutes would be wasted, and the kinds of behavior issues and bullying that can crop up during class transitions would also be cut down. On top of that, having extended blocks of time would give teachers the opportunity to dive more deeply into their content.

And in many cases, schools have been successful with block scheduling. They've even found solutions for some of the problems it presents, like offering shorter periods for classes like math and band, where consistent daily practice is more important. But one issue with block scheduling seems to persist, a problem that is highlighted in the letter above, a problem that is still voiced by teachers and students today: The ineffective use of the longer block of instructional time.

So that's what we're going to focus on here. We'll start by looking at the mindset that causes a lot of block scheduling's biggest problems. Then we'll quickly review some best practices for teaching in the block. Finally, I'll walk you through five specific structures you can choose from to plan solid, interesting instruction for an extended class period, the kind of teaching that will make those 90 minutes fly by.

The Big Problem: A Lecture-as-Teaching Mindset

Some of the challenges associated with block scheduling boil down to logistics, like needing more time for AP courses. These issues can often be solved with creative scheduling tweaks.

But the rest of it, the criticisms lobbed at block scheduling and the problems that can crop up with it, can almost all be traced back to one mindset, a single strong, pervasive belief about teaching, and that mindset is this:
teaching = lecture
This mindset, the belief that lecture is the only "real" way to teach, causes all kinds of trouble in block scheduling.

Let's go back to the math teacher who described the extended classes in block scheduling as "glorified play periods" in his letter. One likely reason he felt that way was because he saw his co-workers doing something besides straight-up lecturing. Here's a line from his letter again, where he longs for the good old days of traditional scheduling: "Classes used to consist of core subject material being communicated to students by individuals rich in knowledge and experience." What could he possibly mean besides lecture?

In this teacher's mind, anything that wasn't lecture couldn't possibly be "serious learning," and therefore all the other non-lecture-based activities he observed in his colleagues' classrooms were a waste of time.

And to an extent, he may have a point. We don't know what was going on in his colleagues' classrooms. Maybe the other teachers were using some highly effective techniques that he was just unfamiliar with. Or maybe, if his school was like some who don't invest enough in training teachers in different methodologies, they really were just screwing around. Because if teachers don't have a well-rounded repertoire of instructional strategies, methods that they know are effective, they will only use lecture to teach, and that gives them one of two choices:

1. Lecture for the full 90 minutes, which bores students to tears, can lead to behavior problems, and ultimately has a negative return, since student attention spans can't be sustained for longer than about 15 minutes. So in this case, you're "covering" a lot of material, but students aren't learning it.

2. Lecture for half the period, then give students the second half for "homework time." This is also ineffective, because that means students are actually learning only half the material over the course of a semester or year. This is typically the reason why some teachers object to block scheduling: They say they can't "get through" as much material. But if these teachers knew more strategies, that remaining time could be used for instruction that would actually hit more learning targets.

Best Practices on the Block

Do not rely solely on lecture.
This advice comes from every teacher I have talked to and every piece of research I have read about successful block teaching (for a good summary, see Queen, 2002). Although I do believe a brief, dynamic lecture every now and then is an efficient way to deliver instruction, and does not need to be abandoned entirely, teachers who lean too heavily on it are doomed to failure in a longer class period. Instead, use a variety of instructional strategies, many of which we will get to in a little while.

Switch activities every 15 to 20 minutes.
Students get restless when they are required to sit still or do the same thing for long periods of time, so unless they are working on a task that will truly engage them for a full hour (and we'll get to these later on), look at your class period as a series of 15- to 20-minute chunks of time and switch activities in each chunk.

Overplan.
If you've ever finished your planned activities in a 50-minute period and found yourself with ten awkward minutes to kill, imagine how much worse it is when you have 30. So plan for the essential activities, but also build in some extras that would be nice to get to, but aren't essential. Meagan Brockway, a high school history teacher in Greencastle, PA, says, "Block scheduling requires planning for more than you can accomplish and then continually readjusting based on student needs." This readjustment may vary from student to student and class to class. "If I have a class that is tremendously behind, then it is a matter of looking at the 'extras' and either cutting those out completely to get to the content needed OR if it is a class that is up for a challenge, then I give them extended time to complete it on their own."

Use a smart pacing guide.
One of the challenges of block scheduling is "fitting in" all of the content you might be used to teaching on a daily schedule. Pacing guides, which are used to map out when you will address each learning target or standard throughout the year or semester, are essential to make sure you use class time wisely. But these often value "coverage" over actual learning. The late educator Grant Wiggins, who always offered incredibly insightful ideas on authentic learning, wrote a great post on designing pacing guides that help teachers hit the most essential standards but also build in time for re-teaching and extension when necessary.

5 Structures for a Block Class Period

To make the most of your extended class period, consider one of these five structures, which you can mix and match over the course of a marking period, depending on your instructional needs. For the sake of convenience, I'm going to assume we're talking about a 90-minute class period, but you should obviously make slight adjustments if your block is longer or shorter than that.

The Classic

This would look the most like a typical lesson, except you would have time to do it right and include ALL the bells and whistles that we all know a good lesson should have:

(10 min) An engaging anticipatory set to pique students' interest, build relevance, bring concepts out of long-term memory or just set the stage for learning. This is a step we often skip over when we are pressed for time. (For ideas, see my post on anticipatory sets or this one on How to Approach Your Teaching Like a Master Chef.)

(15-20 min) Some kind of direct instruction, where the teacher delivers the day's lesson through a lecture (Yes! In small doses this is okay!), doing a demonstration, showing a video, having students read through some kind of text or do an interactive online lesson.

(30 min) Student application of the content. This might take the form of individual practice, reciprocal learning, or some other kind of group work.

(15-20 min) An assessment of the content or skill, followed perhaps by re-teaching to those who need it and an extension activity for students who met the standard.

(10 min) A reflection or other kind of wrap-up, where the value of the lesson is reinforced.

Whitney Schultz, who teaches 80-minute blocks of English at a high school in Baltimore, MD, uses this kind of structure on most days, mixing up the activities within each of the segments. "That 10-15 minute review and 10-15 minute introduction might instead be a 20-30 minute quiz followed by self-grading; or, in my AP class, it might be 20-30 minutes of daily AP practice followed by 40-50 minutes of text discussion/analysis. I've found it's easier to fill 80 minutes than try to trim down what I cover each day!"

The Workshop

In this structure, students would spend the majority of time working on their own projects. The class period might start with a brief (10-minute) mini-lesson, and it would ideally end with some kind of a wrap-up, sharing, or reflection time, but at least a full hour would be spent working independently or in groups on a long-term, hands-on project. Meanwhile, the teacher would circulate, conferencing individually with students as needed or using an appointment system like the one used at the Apollo School.

In an English language arts class, this could be independent writing or reading, or a mixture of both, depending on what each student happens to be working on at the time.

If you are running a self-paced math class, or are delivering instruction through hyperdocs or playlists, where students work at their own pace through a series of lessons, then during the hour, students would just get started from wherever they are in the materials.

In any class that has implemented Genius Hour, this time could be devoted to research, writing, or working on presentations.

The Lab

One big, focused activity takes up most of the class period in this structure. Class may start with some kind of an introduction and end with a reflection or wrap-up, but at least an hour is set aside for an activity where the whole class digs into a single meaty task. In this case, the task itself is designed to be active and engaging, so the rule about switching every 15 or 20 minutes is waived. The big activity could be any of the following:

Simulations or role-plays, which can be incredibly useful in helping students understand complex social studies or science concepts.

A debate, socratic seminar, or some other long-form discussion strategy

A project-based learning activity

A virtual field trip

Jigsaw or another cooperative learning activity

An actual lab (hello, science!)

Sketchnoting: This idea comes from Jana Maiuri, a middle school English teacher in Oakland, California, who will occasionally set aside a whole class period for students to create sketchnotes on a given topic. It starts with "a ten minute rapid-fire warm-up...followed by a kind of 'okay, show me everything you know about commercial fish depletion in a sketchnote in the next 90 minutes.' Then in the next class we do two concentric circles and everyone gets two minutes to present their sketch: three vital facts, the most unique or compelling thought, and one artistic accomplishment or challenge. The movement and the art are engaging and thought provoking." (To get started with sketchnoting, see Vicki Davis' comprehensive post on sketchnoting here.)

The Performance

At the end of a learning cycle, students should ideally have some kind of final product to share with peers, or even outside visitors. A 90-minute block class would be ideal for sharing and celebrating this student work. This performance could take many forms:

Student speeches

Film festival

Gallery of physical or digital products

Skits

Poetry or other readings

The Variety Pack

On some days, you might opt to just give students a fast-paced mixture of activities, some that might review previously learned content, some that introduce new stuff, others that do a bit of drill and practice, and even some that are just there for fun and enrichment. These can be handled in a station rotation model, with student-selected learning centers, or just by having the whole class do a a series of smaller activities together. Here are just a few possible activities you could include:

Any kind of skills practice, flashcard work, or retrieval practice

Watching a short video clip

Independent reading

Journal writing

Having a short philosophical chairs debate

A short read-aloud from a book you're reading together as a class

Small group work with the teacher

Games like Kahoot or Crumple & Shoot

So whether you're brand-new to block scheduling or you've already been doing it for years, I hope you've found at least one new idea to help you make the most of that extended class period and never again be accused of running a "glorified playtime period." ♦
References
Queen, J.A. (2002). Block scheduling revisited. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(3), 214-222.

There's more where this came from.
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Whether you're brand-new to block scheduling or you've been doing it for years, these strategies will have you handling those 90 minutes like a boss.

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Project Based Learning: Start Here | Cult of Pedagogy

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Maybe you’ve always wanted to try PBL, but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Here’s a set of beginner-level resources to get you started.

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This may be an approach that works well for formative assessment

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Sketchnoting is not just an attractive way to take notes, it can improve retention and learning. These sketchnoting resources will get you started with your students. You don't have to have a ton of talent, just a little know-how. I'll update these sketchnoting resources, so tweet me or leave a comment to add your favorites. Don't get overwhelmed, just get started.

Twitter Tip: If you want to find and share great sketchnotes, follow the # edusketch hashtag on Twitter.

Resources on Sketchnoting and Visual Notetaking:

Most Valuable Sketchnoting Resources

Sketchnoting Tools

Places to See Awesome Sketchnotes

People Who Sketchnote Education Topics

Sketchnoting Resources and Books to Help You Dive Deep

Sketchnoting Research and News

Drawing to Learn | Learning Sciences Research Institute
http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/research/drawingtolearn

"Ainsworth, Prain and Tyler (2011) in a paper in Science argue that drawing can play a number of important roles in learning:, namely:
Drawing to enhance engagement - surveys have shown that when students draw to explain they are more motivated to learn compared to traditional teaching of science.
Drawing to learn to represent in science - the process of producing visual representations helps learners understand how scientific representations work.
Drawing to reason in science - student learn to reason like scientists as they select specific features to focus on in their drawings, aligning it with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas
Drawing as a learning strategy - if learners read a text and then draw it, the process of making their understanding visible and explicit helps them to overcome limitations in presented material, organise and integrate their knowledge and ultimately can be transformative.
Drawing to communicate - discussing their drawings with their students provides teachers with windows into students' thinking as well being a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and understanding."

Categories: Education Trends and Topics, Free Resources, How to Guides..., iPads, Tech Tips, Tools

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

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Epic Sketchnoting Resources: How to Get Started Teaching Sketchnoting

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Sketchnoting is not just an attractive way to take notes, it can improve retention and learning. These sketchnoting resources will get you started with your students. You don't have to have a ton of talent, just a little know-how. I'll update these sketchnoting resources, so tweet me or leave a comment to add your favorites.

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371.2  TEA Available in our library

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Research on Block Scheduling - Wellington High School | 1pdf.net

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While block scheduling may offermany advantages, moving to a block schedule from conventional scheduling can be a majora...

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We've all heard the adage: practice makes perfect! In other words, acquiring skills takes time and effort. But how exactly does one go about learning a complex subject such as tennis, calculus, or even how to play the violin? An age-old answer is: practice one skill at a time. A beginning pianist might rehearse scales before chords. A young tennis player practices the forehand before the backhand. Learning researchers call this "blocking," and because it is commonsensical and easy to schedule, blocking is dominant in schools, training programs, and other settings.

However another strategy promises improved results. Enter "interleaving," a largely unheard-of technique that is capturing the attention of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. Whereas blocking involves practicing one skill at a time before the next (for example, "skill A" before "skill B" and so on, forming the pattern "AAABBBCCC"), in interleaving one mixes, or interleaves, practice on several related skills together (forming for example the pattern "ABCABCABC"). For instance, a pianist alternates practice between scales, chords, and arpeggios, while a tennis player alternates practice between forehands, backhands, and volleys.

Over the past four decades, a small but growing body of research has found that interleaving often outperforms blocking for a variety of subjects, including sports and category learning. Yet there have been almost no studies of the technique in uncontrived, real world settings-until recently. New research in schools finds that interleaving produces dramatic and long-lasting benefits for an essential skill: math. Not only does this finding have the potential to transform how math is taught, it may also change how people learn more generally.

The first signs of interleaving's promise appeared in the domain of motor skills. One early study, published in 1986, involved training students to learn three types of badminton serves.Compared with blocking, interleaving produced better recall of each serve type and better ability to handle new situations, such as serving from the opposite side of the court.Similar results were later reported for baseball, basketball, and other sports. In 2003, one of the first studies to examine interleaving outside of sports found that using it to train medical students produced more accurate electrocardiogram diagnoses than blocking. In 2008, another widely-cited study found a similar benefit for teaching college students to recognize the painting styles of landscape artists. Even critical thinking skills benefit: in a 2011 study, students trained with the technique made more accurate assessments of complex legal scenarios.

Foreign language studies however suggest that the effectiveness of interleaving comes with an important caveat. When native English speakers used the technique to learn an entirely unfamiliar language, such as to generate English-to-Swahili translations, the results were better, the same, or worse than after blocking. These mixed results imply that learners should have some familiarity with subject materials before interleaving begins (or, the materials should be quickly or easily understood). Otherwise, as appears to be the case for foreign languages, interleaving can sometimes be more confusing than helpful.

Given interleaving's promise, it is surprising then that few studies have investigated its utility in everyday applications. However, a new study by cognitive psychologist Doug Rohrer and colleagues at the University of South Florida, recently published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, takes a step towards addressing that gap. Rohrer and his team are the first to implement interleaving in actual classrooms. The location: middle schools in Tampa, Florida. The target skills: algebra and geometry.

The three-month study involved teaching 7th graders slope and graph problems. Weekly lessons, given by teachers, were largely unchanged from standard practice. Weekly homework worksheets, however, featured an interleaved or blocked design. When interleaved, both old and new problems of different types were mixed together. Of the nine participating classes, five used interleaving for slope problems and blocking for graph problems; the reverse occurred in the remaining four. Five days after the last lesson, each class held a review session for all students. A surprise final test occurred one day or one month later. The result? When the test was one day later, scores were 25 percent better for problems trained with interleaving; at one month later, the interleaving advantage grew to 76 percent.

These results are important for a host of reasons. First, they show that interleaving works in real-world, extended use. It is highly effective with an almost ubiquitous subject, math. The interleaving effect is long-term-lasting on the order of months-and the advantage over blocking actually increases with the passage of time (in other words, there's less forgetting). The benefit even persists when blocked materials receive additional review. Overall, the interleaving effect can be strong, stable, and long-lasting.

Clearly interleaving does wonders for 7th grade math. Moreover, when combined with prior work showing similar benefits of the technique across a spectrum of topics ( algebra, exponents, proportions, prisms, and volumes) and with students at different grade levels (elementary through college), interleaving may turn out to be among the most effective math learning techniques.

Researchers are now working to understand why interleaving yields such impressive results. One prominent explanation is that it improves the brain's ability to tell apart, or discriminate, between concepts. With blocking, once you know what solution to use, or movement to execute, the hard part is over. With interleaving, each practice attempt is different from the last, so rote responses don't work. Instead, your brain must continuously focus on searching for different solutions. That process can improve your ability to learn critical features of skills and concepts, which then better enables you to select and execute the correct response.

A second explanation is that interleaving strengthens memory associations. With blocking, a single strategy, temporarily held in short-term memory, is sufficient. That's not the case with interleaving-the correct solution changes from one practice attempt to the next. As a result, your brain is continually engaged at retrieving different responses and bringing them into short-term memory. Repeating that process can reinforce neural connections between different tasks and correct responses, which enhances learning.

Both of these accounts imply that increased effort during training, either to discriminate correct responses or to strengthen them, is needed when interleaving is used. This corresponds to a potential drawback of the technique, namely that the learning process often feels more gradual and difficult at the outset. However, that added effort can generate better, longer-lasting results.

In modern society there is tremendous interest in ways to enhance learning and memory: brain training, learning apps, and so on. Interleaving has the benefit of scientific evidence in favor of its use across a range of circumstances. It also has the practical advantage of requiring no extra training, extra time, or special equipment to work. Only more careful planning is required, and possibly some extra effort at the outset.

Despite these relative advantages, interleaving remains mostly unknown and unused. Consider the example of grade school math. Out of all the math textbooks used in the U.S. today, all but one type-the Saxon series-uses blocked practice. One can only speculate on what would happen if interleaving were widely used in classrooms and in textbooks. The differences in academic achievement could be substantial.

As interleaving research progresses, we stand to learn much more about the technique: other areas where it works, or doesn't, and what other limitations it might have. Yet that doesn't preclude us from putting it to the test right now. For instance, are you studying statistics? Learning to play an instrument? Taking up a new sport? In all of these areas, you are faced with a series of skills or concepts to learn. The typical response would be to practice each of these, one at a time, over and over. Another option would be to mix it up. As it turns out, your brain may prefer doing exactly that.

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The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning

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We've all heard the adage: practice makes perfect! In other words, acquiring skills takes time and effort. But how exactly does one go about learning a complex subject such as tennis, calculus, or even how to play the violin? An age-old answer is: practice one skill at a time.

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We have 4 kits, and access to a wide variety of pre-made games, as well as the resources to create our own games.

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The Power of Breakout EDU - Breakout EDU

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Find it in our library soon!

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 	What Do I Teach for 90 Minutes?: Creating a Successful Block-Scheduled English Classroom 

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 	What Do I Teach for 90 Minutes?: Creating a Successful Block-Scheduled English Classroom 

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Coming soon to our library

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TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

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Resource that Pete Suer shared

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PlayPosit | Interactive Video Learning Objects

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With over 5 million learners and counting, PlayPosit offers a variety of options for interaction customization, premade templates, playback control, LMS LTI integration, and more. Instructors and instructional designers can build lessons as they envision them while expanding the traditional and onli

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Another video resource from Heidi Hanks

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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This is on our Elder Library page

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Use these alternately with your usual TPS

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Ideas, Inspiration, and Giveaways for Teachers

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About this Strategy Guide

This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.

Research Basis

Socratic seminars are named for their embodiment of Socrates' belief in the power of asking questions, prize inquiry over information and discussion over debate. Socratic seminars acknowledge the highly social nature of learning and align with the work of John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and Paulo Friere.

Elfie Israel succinctly defines Socratic seminars and implies their rich benefits for students:

The Socratic seminar is a formal discussion, based on a text, in which the leader asks open-ended questions. Within the context of the discussion, students listen closely to the comments of others, thinking critically for themselves, and articulate their own thoughts and their responses to the thoughts of others. They learn to work cooperatively and to question intelligently and civilly. (89)

Israel, Elfie. "Examining Multiple Perspectives in Literature." In Inquiry and the Literary Text: Constructing Discussions n the English Classroom. James Holden and John S. Schmit, eds. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002.

Strategy in Practice

Choosing a text: Socratic seminars work best with authentic texts that invite authentic inquiry-an ambiguous and appealing short story, a pair of contrasting primary documents in social studies, or an article on a controversial approach to an ongoing scientific problem.

Preparing the students: While students should read carefully and prepare well for every class session, it is usually best to tell students ahead of time when they will be expected to participate in a Socratic seminar. Because seminars ask students to keep focusing back on the text, you may distribute sticky notes for students to use to annotate the text as they read.

Preparing the questions: Though students may eventually be given responsibility for running the entire session, the teacher usually fills the role of discussion leader as students learn about seminars and questioning. Generate as many open-ended questions as possible, aiming for questions whose value lies in their exploration, not their answer. Elfie Israel recommends starting and ending with questions that relate more directly to students' lives so the entire conversation is rooted in the context of their real experiences.

Establishing student expectations: Because student inquiry and thinking are central to the philosophy of Socratic seminars, it is an authentic move to include students integrally in the establishment of norms for the seminar. Begin by asking students to differentiate between behaviors that characterize debate (persuasion, prepared rebuttals, clear sides) and those that characterize discussion (inquiry, responses that grow from the thoughts of others, communal spirit). Ask students to hold themselves accountable for the norms they agree upon.

Establishing your role: Though you may assume leadership through determining which open-ended questions students will explore (at first), the teacher should not see him or herself as a significant participant in the pursuit of those questions. You may find it useful to limit your intrusions to helpful reminders about procedures (e.g. "Maybe this is a good time to turn our attention back the text?" "Do we feel ready to explore a different aspect of the text?"). Resist the urge to correct or redirect, relying instead on other students to respectfully challenge their peers' interpretations or offer alternative views.

Assessing effectiveness: Socratic seminars require assessment that respects the central nature of student-centered inquiry to their success. The most global measure of success is reflection, both on the part of the teacher and students, on the degree to which text-centered student talk dominated the time and work of the session. Reflective writing asking students to describe their participation and set their own goals for future seminars can be effective as well. Understand that, like the seminars themselves, the process of gaining capacity for inquiring into text is more important than "getting it right" at any particular point.

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About this Strategy Guide This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text. Research Basis Socratic seminars are named for their embodiment of Socrates' belief in the power of asking questions, prize inquiry over information and discussion over debate.

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Thinking Inside the Block Schedule: Strategies for Teaching in Extended Periods of Time 

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Thinking Inside the Block Schedule: Strategies for Teaching in Extended Periods of Time 

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Coming soon to our library

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Discover the power of project-based learning at High Tech High with these examples of student work. It's our record of what we've done and how to get there.

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Resources for Assessment in Project-Based Learning

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Looking for tools and strategies for effective assessment in project-based learning? To support you, we’ve assembled this guide to helpful resources from Edutopia and beyond.

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As you probably know, Google Drive is far more than a place to store files online. It also includes a suite of versatile creation tools, many of which perform the same functions as the ones we use in other spaces. These include Google Docs, a word processing program that behaves similarly to Microsoft Word, Google Slides, a presentation program similar to PowerPoint, and Google Forms, a survey-creation tool similar to Survey Monkey. Although Drive also includes other tools, these three are particularly useful for creating rigorous, academically robust projects. If your school uses Google Classroom or at least gives students access to Google Drive, your students are probably already using these tools to write papers or create slideshow presentations, but there are other projects they could be doing that you may not have thought of.

Below I have listed 16 great ideas for projects using Google Docs, Slides, and Forms.

Docs

Annotated Bibliography
By the time a student reaches the later years of high school, and certainly by the time she's gotten to college, it's likely that she'll be required to write an annotated bibliography, a list of resources that not only includes the bibliographical information of each source, but also a short paragraph summarizing the resource and reflecting on its usefulness for a given project. Usually an annotated bibliography is required as a part of a larger research paper, but it could stand alone as an assignment that tasks students with seeking out and evaluating sources just for the practice of doing so. And the research tools in Google Docs allow students to locate, read, and cite their sources all in one place. To learn more, see this guide from Cornell University Library on How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography .

Book Review
Instead of a book report, have students write a book review instead. This is certainly not a new idea, but publishing the work electronically allows students to enhance the final product with the book's cover image, a link to the book's page on Amazon, and even links to other titles the author has written or articles on related topics. For models and inspiration, elementary and middle school students can read student-written reviews on sites like Spaghetti Book Club . Older or advanced students might work toward more sophisticated, nuanced review styles like book reviews written on Oprah.com .

Book Review

Any kind of research paper can be given a big boost when done in a Google Doc, because students can insert images, drawings, and links to other relevant resources, like articles and videos. Using the Media-Rich Research Paper
research tools built into Docs, students can research their topics and include in-text citations with footnotes.

"Blog Posts" without the fuss, written in Google Docs.

Instead of creating a job chart yourself, have students build it from scratch.

Slides

These could take a variety of forms: mini-textbooks, children's books, cookbooks or how-to manuals, personal art or writing portfolios, even yearbook-style memory books. To learn more about the possibilities, see my post from earlier this year on E-book
Student E-Books.

Click the image above to watch a sample Museum Kiosk in action.

Students can upload their own images and add text boxes to a slideshow to create an animated story, then record the slideshow with a Google extension called Short Film
Screencastify. They can either record their own voice as narration, add background music, or both. There are so many different kinds of films students could produce: illustrated stories or poems, final reflections for a 20 Time or Genius Hour project, video textbooks on content-related topics, or news-like feature stories of school or community events. In this quick sample, I added music from YouTube's library of royalty-free music that anyone can use to enhance their recordings:

Using the same screencasting software mentioned above, students could also create their own video tutorials by creating a Slides presentation on their topic (such as "How to Open a Combination Lock"), then recording the slideshow with narration. This would make a nice final product for a unit on informational writing or a way for students to demonstrate their learning at the end of a unit in science ("How to Take Care of Lab Equipment"), social studies ("How to Measure Distance on a Map"), or math ("How to Multiply Fractions"). Student-made tutorials could even be created to teach classroom procedures. And any tutorials students make could be stored for later, so other students can also benefit from them. Video Tutorial
Learn more about how Screencastify works right inside Chrome.

Forms

Whenever students need to gather data to support an Peer Survey
argumentative essay or speech, let them gather data quickly and easily by creating a survey with Google Forms. Links to the survey can be sent out via email, QR codes, or through a post in a learning management system like Edmodo or Google Classroom. When results come in, students can use them to support whatever claim they are trying to make in their argument, or make adjustments based on what they discover in their research.

Way Beyond Worksheets

Just this morning on Twitter, someone posted a comment along these lines: "A worksheet on a Google Doc is STILL a worksheet. Students should be using tech to create!" I've heard this sentiment over and over, and it's exactly why I've put this list together. Google offers some incredibly powerful tools if we know how to use them. I hope this list has given you a few new ideas to put into your students' hands. ♦

There's a lot more where this came from.
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16 Ideas for Student Projects Using Google Docs, Slides, and Forms

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Your students probably already use these tools to write papers or create presentations, but they could be doing other projects you may not have thought of.