Recently we began working towards all staff and students coming back to a mix of in person and remote learning. Since parents can decide if they want their child(ren) to stay remote or come back in person for the rest of the year, teachers must prepare lessons for both. What this type of teaching will look like will be addressed in today’s blog post. 

As most of you know, in Springfield we have been remote since March of last year. Prior to the new directive from the state, the district had been moving towards this new model of learning for the last third of the year. The district decided to team up with Better Lesson to come up with a concrete starting point for our learning situation. The presentation from Better Lesson was thorough and focused on student engagement.

One of the great things about Better Lesson is that they have already been working with other school districts who are already doing what we are about to start. This means a lot of wisdom and information will come at us quickly and in turn we need to process and synthesize everything for our classrooms. Since teachers have autonomy in how they teach and run their classrooms, this means that classrooms can vary across the district. The content may be the same but how it’s delivered is where we see the differences. 

Concurrent Learning

When we talk about this different world of teaching and learning, the first thing we must define is “What is Concurrent Learning?” Concurrent Learning happens when you are remotely teaching students, while simultaneously teaching students who are physically in your classroom.  Where do we go and how do we get there? Here are a few thoughts on Concurrent Learning here in Springfield: 

1. No Turnkey Solution: The most important thing I pulled from the Better Lesson presentation that I watched was that there is no “Turnkey Solution”. This type of Concurrent Learning that Springfield is embarking on has not been attempted on this scale before. From what I have seen in my google searching is that Concurrent Learning is new to the world of education. We need to practice giving grace and understanding to each other and more importantly, teach that to our students. There will be experimenting with how we are running our classroom. It’s going to be different and most likely difficult but ultimately, we are going to learn by doing it. As in many things, trial and error will be key. But that doesn’t mean necessarily to try something new. If you are anything like me, it might tempt you to try new tools. I would caution on that approach. From my point of view this is not the time to introduce new tools into your room. If you feel confident that the new tool you are looking to implement is going to help you support good instruction and you are comfortable spending time during the next nine weeks introducing and getting students used to using it, then go for it. It’s important to use and plan with the tools that we already know how to use.
2. ​​Experiment: During the Better Lesson training, you saw a plethora of tools that could be applied to your room including how to set up your classroom and how to use your classroom more effectively.  Things like having a projector in the back of the room projecting the students who are remote or having the right angle to make sure the camera picks up the board behind you. Ultimately, it comes down to you and how you plan on teaching. You will not know how it’s all going to work until you try.
3. Leverage the Tools We Already Have: One of the great things about working in Springfield is that we have access to a lot of high-quality tools that can enhance your teaching. A good place to start is by using our Schoology or Unified Classroom, our Learning Management System (LMS). Within Schoology and Unified Classroom you can assign work, post videos, embed content, and allow students to use video and audio to respond to their classmates through discussion prompts. And because we are also a Microsoft school district, this comes with a ton of advantages with all the tools that we have access to. Whether using Word, PowerPoint, Sway, or Teams, we can create authentic learning experiences where the technology helps what you’re doing in class. Finally, we also have most, if not all, of our curriculum available digitally. This means that no student will miss out on what you are doing.

Another key piece of information that I took away from Better Lesson slides is that the class structure needs to stay consistent. With a complement of students working from home and in front of you, your systems and processes need to be consistent, repeatable, and easily supportable. This means that a Blended Learning approach is one way to find that consistency, repetition, and supportability needed in this concurrent learning environment. I have always been a big supporter to the idea of using Blended Learning as the preferred model of education. Here is a brief summary of what is blended learning:

Blended Learning

Blended learning is any formal education program in which a student learns through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace along with time in the brick-and-mortar classroom.

Here is an article I wrote back in 2019 on Blended Classrooms. Check it out.

Which brings us to three ideas for concurrent learning that were in the Better Lesson presentation: Station Rotation, Asynchronous Learning and Flipped Classroom. Let’s dig in.

Station Rotation

When it comes to the model, the structure usually follows some version of small group, independent and instructional technology. Often these groups are fixed for a length of time, but some teachers will use dynamic grouping (i.e., changing the groups due to student needs). One of the things that we really like about this model is it allows for more differentiation based on the needs. This type of blended learning may make it easier to adjust to teaching concurrently since you will likely have a mixed group of students at home and in person who you work with.

Another can be found in your lesson plan format. If you were to divide your lesson into three parts, it would become easier to plan and adapt to this model. Each group of students will get instructions from you during the small group part, then the group travels together for independent work before finally onto the instructional technology. You could spend 20-30 minutes with each group as they move in and out of the groups. Using tools such as Schoology and Nearpod, classroom needs while treating everyone the same; each student gets the group, independent and instructional technology. For more information on station rotation, here is a good blog post from Kiddom which discusses this model of teaching well. You can find that here.
               

            Tools within the district that will work with Station Rotation:

• Schoology
• Nearpod
• OneNote (for group work)
• Curriculum (i.e., iReady)
• PowerPoint
• Office 365 tools

Asynchronous Learning

​Asynchronous Learning is as Playlist/Choice Board. With this style of learning, a teacher will present to their students a sequence of learning activities that students go through at their own pace. This style of learning puts the students in more control of their learning. One aspect that I really like asynchronous learning this, I think of stories like Batman (stay with me on this). Your students are the Batman character, and you are the Alfred in the story. Throughout the Batman story, and challenges Batman when he needs to be challenged. Without Alfred, Batman would not be a strong, principled character and he would easily lose his way. As a teacher using this model, you meet with your students, give them advice, challenge them when you need to, positively reinforce their good work, and help them stay on their path, but those choices are narrowed down by you ahead of time. Now that we have that tangent out of the way…

Here is an example of a Choice Board for an Assignment. The possibilities are endless.

Teachers can structure their class how they want, and it could vary from a unit of study, project, or even through a standard assignment. One key to this type of teaching is to create/curate the main lessons that the students need to interact with.  This lesson could be a PowerPoint/Nearpod that either you would lead or have the students go through own their own with corresponding understanding questions. Once they have completed that lesson then you can give them the choice board to demonstrate their learning.

As for the choice board aspect of the work, you can create it however you like. If it were me, I would create a 3×3 board that the students would have to get three in a row before the last assignment. By doing it this way I could make sure that the students were completing at least one of the choices I wanted them to make. Then again, I had a control issues when I was in the classroom. I would try to predetermine what choices my students would make. (Which completely goes against the idea of giving students autonomy in their choices I know, but I would want the assurance that limiting their choices would give me the desired outcome I desired.)

Using choice boards would also create a way for the students to be creative in their work by giving them choices like making videos, record audio, write papers, make dioramas (do students still do this?), blog posts or whatever idea that you have.

Tools within the district that work well with Asynchronous Learning:

• Schoology (This would be the big tool that guides all other tools in this case)
• Nearpod
• Flipgrid
• OneNote (for group work)
• Curriculum (i.e., iReady)
• PowerPoint
• Office 365 tools

Flipped Classroom

I do not mean to play favorites, but If I were still in the classroom, I would have moved to this model of teaching. Flipping a classroom is not as difficult as you might think. In fact, a lot of the work that you have done this school year so far can be used to flip your classroom. The basics of this model include a video lesson that the students would watch before they come to class. What I would do with this model is provide students with a created/curated video to watch before class that includes a problem or two to try so they come to class ready to work and with questions. Then during class, we would explore what they learned through videos. Class would be more of an applicable, practical place to practice the concept they learned about at home.

Students could watch the video on demand and could repeat it as much as they needed. This would allow me the freedom to move about the room instead of repeating myself over and over again. For teachers, shifting explanations, instruction, and modeling by using video means that you will have more time to interact and support your students. One additional bonus to this style: you can reuse the videos in the following years. Schoology has a great blog series where they have written about this idea of a Flipped Classroom. You can check out what they say about it here.

Tools within the district that work well with a Flipped Classroom:

• Schoology (This would be the big tool that guides all other tools in this case)
• Nearpod
• Flipgrid
• OneNote (for group work)
• Curriculum (i.e., iReady)
• PowerPoint
• Office 365 tools

If you would like to hear more of my thoughts on Flipped Classrooms, check out this article that I wrote in 2019!

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, we have delved a little deeper into each of the blended learning ideas, listed some tools that you have access to, and helped spark some interest in a model that will work best for you. Now, this list of blended learning models is not an exhaustive list or how-to. At the beginning, I mentioned that there is no turnkey solution. Each class is going to be different and each of you has a style that fits into the way you teach in your classroom.

One thing is for certain: we can’t go back to the way teaching was done in 2019. We have learned so much during our remote teaching that we now have skills that have enhanced our instruction, improved our effectiveness and hopefully we will get to a place where we are getting some of our own time back during our hybrid teaching. Let me know what you think. Leave your comments below to open the dialogue. Do you think I missed anything or Agree/Disagree? Let me know.