Tag: blended learning

Choice PD Bingo!

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I’ve heard it said many times that Educator TikTok should count as Professional Development! I have to say that I, too, have learned so much from other educators on TikTok! So… as a principal, I decided to try to make TikTok PD a reality on a recent Professional Development Day on my campus. TikTok is blocked in my district, so I started by finding great TikToks that were also available on YouTube. Then, I found other short-form (about 3 minutes or less) videos on YouTube to create a Choice PD Bingo!

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Blended Learning ONLINE Checklist

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On my campus (and I’m sure on many of yours) we are working on growing our blended learning practices. Many define blended learning differently. On our campus, when we say blended learning, we mean teaching our students in differentiated small groups based on data, while students work through a paper checklist that details what they need to complete in the areas of independent work, future ready (collaborative activities), and a digital component (this could be an additional mini-lesson from the teacher which has been recorded or adaptive software that meets students where they are to fill in gaps and take them farther).

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Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

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Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

In his article in Forbes, “The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need for the Future of Work,” Bernard Marr shares that the skills we believe are important in today’s market are quickly changing due to automation and artificial intelligence. What skills will the workers of tomorrow need? His research indicates creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, active learning with a growth mindset, judgment and decision making, interpersonal communication skills, leadership skills, diversity and cultural intelligence, technology skills, and the ability to embrace change. Do these sound familiar? The majority of these skills sound like the future-ready skills we are trying to instill in our students as educators! Creativity, critical thinking, active learning, communication skills – these are the kinds of skills we are being challenged to grow in our students for their future success. Continue reading →

Blended Learning Kindness Lesson Checklist

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Blended Kindness (1)

Jumping into a blended learning checklist for the first time can seem super scary! Letting the students complete tasks at their own pace?! How will you keep students accountable? Allowing students to move around the room and chose the right place for themselves? Will they complete their work or just goof off? Allowing them to go in any order they choose? Will the class turn to loud chaos?

These are the most common fears! Continue reading →

Choice Learning Interactive Hyperslides

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Choice Learning (1)

I was working on preparing for a day-long professional development coming up on my campus. Throughout the year staff members have shared different professional development needs that they would like me to cover when possible. As I began to plan how to cover all of the different topics requested, I realized that not everyone is on the same level or has the same learning needs for each topic. While some teachers need the basics of how to set up a twitter account, others want to know how to effectively use hashtags, and still others are twitter experts. And that’s only the topic of twitter! How could I possibly meet everyone’s needs without having them sit through information they already know or don’t care about? Continue reading →

Cooperative Critical Writing

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Cooperative Critical Writing Graphic

As we plan for improvement, writing is at the forefront of everyone’s mind on my campus, in my district, and across our state. We have been brainstorming practical and meaningful ways to incorporate more writing across academic areas in order to bolster and strengthen students’ skills. As I began brainstorming today, I realized that just writing more won’t entirely solve the problem because students who are struggling with how to write a complete sentence, for example, aren’t going to get any better at this skill by just being required to write more. And we’ve already got quality first instruction in place as well as small group interventions. Continue reading →

Student Created Learning Playlists

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Student Created Learning Playlists

When I was in high school, I recall frequently being divided into groups of four students, each of the four members being given a different section of the textbook to read, and then we would come back together and teach each other the part that we were responsible for. You may know this as the Jigsaw Method.

In this digital age, why not allow students to be more creative than this, use the digital resources freely available online, and create something that they are proud to share with their classmates  – or even a larger, global audience? Continue reading →