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Professional Learning

The Flipped Side of Professional Development

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

I am very honored to be presenting at the upcoming ISTE conference in June. I will be presenting on flipping your professional development. As we all know, there are many challenges to traditional professional development, such as large group instruction with a one-size-fits-all type of delivery. This is why many school districts are turning to the flipped model for their professional development.

Just like the flipped classroom model, flipped professional development involves teachers reviewing resources or watching videos ahead of the designated meeting time. This would then allow the PD time together to be spent in more meaningful ways. Meeting time could turn into a discussion about a topic or planning time with colleagues.

Benefits of Flipping PD

There are many benefits of flipping professional development, for both teachers as well as staff development facilitators. Below are a few:

  • Teachers can learn at their own pace.
  • Teachers have the opportunity to review the material over and over again, if they need or want to.
  • Teachers are engaged and can take ownership of their own learning.
  • Facilitators can spend more time supporting teachers with practice.
  • Facilitators can be involved with teacher learning rather than lecture.

 

Some things I will be sharing in my presentation include:

  • Steps for getting started with flipping your professional development
  • Examples of how schools are flipping professional development
  • Digital tools that can help you move your content online.

 

The ISTE conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on June 26-29, 2016. I hope to see you there!

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flipping
Educational Trends

Flipping Your Classroom

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

With many teachers finding that flipping their classroom makes for more engaging lessons and discussions in class, it’s no wonder that it is one of the growing trends in education. Whether you teach early elementary, advanced academics in high school, or any level in between, you may find that it is a great fit for your class as well. Depending on the needs and maturity of your students, the tools you use can vary. What works for one grade level may not be the best match for another. As you evaluate tools for use in your flipped lesson cycle, consider the following questions:

  1. Is this tool free for my students to use, user-friendly, and customizable to best fit their learning needs?
  2. Does the tool offer me (as the teacher) a variety of ways of interacting with the students, such as a quick feedback loop, data collection options through quizzes, and ways to extend and/or differentiate the information for students who need additional (or different) information?
  3. If the tool uses videos, which platform can it pull from (YouTube, Google Drive, Vimeo, etc.)? And, do my students have access to that platform?

Now that you have several questions to help you evaluate flipped tools, let’s take a look at several. Below are a few of my favorite to recommend. These have a fairly simple learning curve for the teacher and have some nice features that you can take advantage of for free.

  • YouTube Editor – Record and edit right within YouTube. You can add simple transitions, background audio (already curated for you), and even intros and outros…if you want to get fancy. When you are done, you can save it to your YouTube account and share it as needed. [Tutorial Video]
  • Screencast-o-matic – This handy utility is great for creating simple screencasts. You have the option to screencast from a web-based tool or download a small utility file that runs on your computer. [Tutorial Videos]
  • EdPuzzle – Pull from a variety of video sources and create interaction throughout your video…or copy lessons that other EdPuzzle users have created and tweak to meet your students’ needs. [Tutorial Videos]
  • TubeChop – If you just want your students to watch a video but want to trim it to a specific section, TubeChop is your answer. Once you “chop” the video, you’ll get a TubeChop URL to share with your students. [Tutorial Video]
  • VideoNotes – This tool is great for secondary students! Create a file that has the YouTube video on the left-hand side and a simple notetaking section on the right-hand side. Students take notes while they watch the video…and it even syncs their notes to the location of the video at the time of typing! And, it connects with Google Drive making their work shareable. [Tutorial Video]
  • Movenote EDU – Get fancy when flipping your lesson by creating your own picture-in-picture video that allows you to show images, MS Office files, and PDFs. Once shared, the students can watch and download all the documents as a single PDF. [Tutorial Video]
  • Renderforest – Make your introductory videos look even more professional with this free resource. Registration is required.

Other tools to investigate might include: PresentationTube, OfficeMix, Camtasia Studio, Doceri, Explain Everything, Educreations, or TouchCast.

Regardless of which tool you use, remember to keep it focused on the learning objective. Lastly, consider your audience when determining the length of your videos. It’s better to have several smaller videos (2-5 minutes each) rather than one long, 15-minute video. With these tools and your teaching skills, you are sure to create engaging lessons that make flipping your classroom a success!

This blog was updated with additional resources on August 8, 2017.

 

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Educational TrendsGoogle Tips and Tricks

Invaluable, In-Class Flipping Ideas with Google

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

I often hear from teachers, “I’ve tried flipping my class, and it just didn’t go very well.” The reason many of these teachers gave for abandoning the flipped approach was “the at-home learning just didn’t happen.”

In-Class Flipping

That response brought to mind the in-class flip model. If you are not familiar with in-class flipping, it keeps all parts of the flipped model at school. Teachers pre-record direct instruction, which becomes a station in class for small groups of students to rotate through. While students are at their stations, the teacher would work one-to-one with some students, while others students spend time on independent activities or group work. Watch this video to learn more about in-class flipping.


Ways to Use Google Tools for In-Class Flipping

If you are looking to try out the in-class flipped model, Google Apps can help you along the way. Below are a few Google tools you can use:

  • Movenote – With Movenote, you can create a picture-in-picture screencast with you and files from your Google Drive. If you have a lesson you uploaded to your drive or have a lesson you created with Google Slides, it is easy to add video and audio to that lesson with Movenote. Students can then watch you while also seeing the lesson you are teaching.
  • YouTube – With YouTube, you can do everything from finding instructional videos for your classes to recording your own. If you want to create your own video, apps such as YouTube Capture make it easy to record your lesson straight from your mobile device. You can then take advantage of editing your video with YouTube’s Editor, as well as add annotations to your video.
  • VideoNot.es – With the VideoNot.es Google Drive app, students can take notes while they watch your video lesson. Their notes are synced with the video and when they click on a line in their notes, it will jump to that portion of the video. This is a great way for students to make notes about portions of the lesson they didn’t understand so they can go back and watch it again or come to you with questions.
  • Screencastify – With the Screencastify Chrome extension, you can easily create a screencast for your lesson. The extension will record all screen activity and includes audio as well. All you have to do is press record and the content on your screen will be recorded. Recorded videos can be saved or uploaded to YouTube or Google Drive with a single click.
  • Google Forms – With Google Forms, you can easily upload your video lesson and add questions about the lesson. All you have to do is create the form and share the link with your students. Check out this Election Lesson created with a Google Form.

 

These are just a few Google tools to help you get started. There are many more, such as Google Sites, Google Classroom, and, of course, there are a lot more Chrome apps and extensions for screencasting. Take a look at the TCEA Chrome App and Extension list if you would like to try others.

So, if you tried flipping and it didn’t work, don’t give up just yet. Give in-class flipping a shot.

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Five steps to data-informed student grouping in the classroom
AssessmentEducational ResearchGood Teaching

How to Make Flexible, Data-Informed Student Groups

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Would you believe that, according to teachers, behavior is the most important factor when it comes to grouping students? There are several reasons to group students, and, recent research suggests that there are benefits to creating student groups. The teacher can tailor them to optimize learning and use grouping students to address varied:

  • learning needs
  • abilities
  • interests

What does the research say?

Unfortunately, student grouping strategies focusing on grouping by ability have poor results. For example, ability grouping for gifted students has a low effect size (d=0.21). An alternative is flexible, data-informed grouping strategies. Let’s take a quick look at the research from Gest and Rodkin’s 2011 study. Teachers in that study reported that they grouped students for several reasons. Here are the top five reasons from most important to least important:

  1. Behavioral Problems
  2. Heterogeneous Ability Grouping
  3. Homogeneous Ability Grouping
  4. New Friendship
  5. Existing Friendship

If behavior was the most important reason for student groups, what was the least important reason for grouping? That would be grouping students by similar ability levels or to reinforce friendships.

Flexible, Data-Informed Student Groups

In this approach, data informs the composition of student groups. This involves assessing, grouping, and regrouping students based on ongoing assessment data. This results in grouping students not by ability or prior achievement but rather by fresh, new data about the phase of learning they are in. This can have a certain appeal, no?

In this approach, you group students to meet the following needs:

  • Needs and performance. This ensures lessons are relevant and meet students where they are.
  • Current understanding and skills. Your informed insight enables you to personalize learning across subjects or topics based on their knowledge.
  • Include students of different abilities. With data in hand, you can more easily mix students of different abilities and backgrounds together.
  • Customize activities. Since you can use data to grasp where students are in their groups, you can create more tailored engagement activities.

While you could rely on digital grouping tools for the classroom, there is another way.

Five steps to data-informed student grouping in the classroom
View full screen | Get a copy

Five Steps for Flexible, Data-Informed Groups

To group your students, consider following the steps below. Note that you can use a variety of digital tools to facilitate each step.

Step 1: Conduct assessment. In this step, use low-stakes, just-in-time assessments to evaluate students and identify their current level of understanding and skill. Recognize that you will be reusing your assessments to track both individual and group progress.

Step 2: Form groups. Once you have processed the latest assessment data, create student groups that align with students’ learning needs.

Step 3: Consider SEL and class culture. Recognize students’ social and emotional needs. Building peer-to-peer relationships is critical. Support classroom culture with a keen awareness of culturally responsive teaching and brain-based learning approaches.

Step 4: Create custom learning activities. Align your instructional strategy (e.g. surface learning, deep learning, transfer learning) to the needs of the group and its members.

Step 5: Provide feedback for self-regulated learners. In dynamic groups, it’s important to provide useful feedback that empowers self-regulated learning.

Using Data to Group Students by Phase of Learning

Mermaid code graph generated by Claude.ai at the direction of the author
Mermaid code graph generated by Claude.ai at the direction of the author

One of the challenges you may encounter with flexible grouping is not grouping students by ability. When you rely on flexible grouping that’s informed via assessment data, you are actually organizing students by the phase of learning they are in. These phases of learning include Surface Learning, Deep Learning, and Transfer Learning. To get a better grasp of where students are at in their learning using assessment data, identify their phase of learning with the SOLO Taxonomy. Here’s a quick overview of The SOLO Taxonomy:

StageSOLO TaxonomyHattie’s TermLearning Phase?What It MeansHES Instructional Strategies
1Pre-structuralNo IdeaMay or may not have Prior KnowledgeLack of understanding or knowledge of the conceptBuild and/or activate prior knowledge
2Uni-structuralOne IdeaSurface LearningHas limited understanding, but doesn’t know how to apply it or how it connects to other ideasThree-Step Jigsaw Method, Summarization, Vocabulary Programs
3Multi-structuralMany IdeasSurface LearningHas a basic understanding, but isn’t sure how to fit ideas togetherDirect Instruction, Flipped Classroom, Note-Taking
4RelationalRelateDeep LearningUnderstands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them; still needs scaffolding and instruction to be successfulConcept Mapping, Metacognition, Self-Judgement, Reflection
5Extended AbstractExtendTransfer LearningCan take what has been learned and make something new; directions are not neededProblem-Based Teaching, Transfer Strategies
Source: Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO Taxonomy descriptors make it easier to identify students’ grasp of ideas or concepts. What’s more, there is a rich group of highly effective strategies you can use depending on the phase of learning students are in.

The SOLO Taxonomy gives you a way to gauge the assessment data and put students in the correct group. The grouping is important because it allows you to match the most effective instructional strategy to the student’s need. For example, students in a surface learning phase may range from lacking any background knowledge to having a basic understanding. However, that basic understanding still lacks a conceptual understanding of how ideas fit together.

Here’s a quick chart you can use to guide you :

Examples of flexible groups that are create based on students' phase of learning.
View full size | Get a copy

Some Parting Thoughts

Grouping students by behavior isn’t the most effective method. Instead, try using fresh data to assist you in creating groups that support learning. Ensure every student receives exactly what they need to thrive. The role you play is crucial. Remember that grouping strategies are about meeting students where they are and using informed insight (e.g. The SOLO Taxonomy) and strategies (e.g. Surface/Deep/Transfer Learning strategies) to guide them to success.

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Content AreasEducational TrendsPlanning and PreparationProfessional Learning

Free TeachersFirst Resources for K-12 Educators

by Emily Horn
written by Emily Horn

Have you heard of TeachersFirst from The Source for Learning? Have you checked out any of their free resources for teachers? On their website, they self-describe as “the nation’s most established online creator, compiler, and curator of free learning assets.” Let’s take a look at who they are and what they do.

What Is The Source for Learning?

Originally the Network for Instructional TV (NITV), The Source for Learning was founded by John Curtis in 1983. John Curtis’s potential was recognized by one of his teachers in the 1930s, and this teacher strove to combine education and technology to provide the best education possible for Curtis. Out of gratitude to this teacher, Curtis committed himself to supporting educators by providing quality classroom resources and professional learning. Now, the Source for Learning offers:

  • Rich, reliable content—created, curated, and aggregated by professional educators
  • The web’s foremost collection of K-12 learning resources
  • User-centered professional learning, with topics for early childhood through high school.

Let’s take a look at some of The Source for Learning’s TeachersFirst resources that might benefit you!

TeachersFirst Edge: Safe Web 2.0 In the Classroom

TeachersFirst Edge is a fantastic page that lists hundreds of Web 2.0 tools that can be used in the classroom. But Edge takes it a step further – each tool is thoughtfully reviewed. Each review:

  1. Points out any safety or policy concerns for the tool.
  2. Offers links to management tips for each concern.
  3. Gives grade level recommendations.

Also, you can search by topic/category or sort them by most viewed, most recent, or alphabetical order.

TeachersFirst Edge

Special Topics Collection

TeachersFirst Special Topic Collection offers educators collections of resources grouped by topic. Like Edge, the Special Topics Collection can be sorted by most viewed, most recent, or alphabetical order. They can also be searched by typing in a keyword and/or by subject/grade level.

TeachersFirst Topics Collection

OK2Ask Twitter Chat Archives

Twitter can be such a great tool for quick learning and sharing! And TeachersFirst offers an archive of Twitter Chats for educators to explore! Their Twitter Chats happen twice each month and cover a variety of topics from game-based learning and flipped classroom models to hyperdocs and so much more.

TeachersFirst Twitter Chat Archives

TeachersFirst Reading Treks

This one is my personal favorite! Reading Treks offers educators a Google Maps file and a PDF instructional strategy handout to go with a book. The goal is for educators to be able to provide students with “a virtual field trip of resources about a piece of literature or text using the My Maps feature of Google Maps.” You can search by keyword and also input a low and high grade level for your search.

TeachersFirst Reading Trek

What do you think of these resources? Have fun exploring, and don’t forget to leave us a comment to let us know what you found most helpful and/or what you used.

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top five tech tools
Blended LearningClassroom ManagementContent CreationGood TeachingLMSWeb 2.0 Tool

Top Five Tech Tools for New Teachers

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

What are the essentials you need to share with new teachers? I can’t tell you how many workshops I’ve put together that addressed the needs of new teachers. What combination of must-haves do new teachers need? I asked Clint ISD’s Crystal Fuentes, “What are your ‘top five’ for new teachers every year?” Let’s explore her responses. But before we do that, let’s revisit a related important high-effect size instructional strategy.

The Power of Collective Action

Want to know which is one of the toughest strategies to take advantage of in a school? Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) is the one that most often comes to mind. With an effect size of 1.36, many instructional leaders look at that and say, “Why not us?”

Collective Teacher Efficacy can be defined in the following way:

Through collective action, a staff can have a positive influence on student outcomes. This includes disengaged and/or disadvantaged students.

Meaghan Loftus, Associate, CT3

But how do you achieve CTE in your school? It is suggested that you have these six influencers:

  • Advanced Teacher Influence. This happens when an organization listens, acknowledges teachers, and teachers influence decisions made at school.
  • Goal Consensus. Teachers set the goals for the school, not only the leadership. Who’s writing that campus improvement plan? If it’s your assistant principal on a weekend at home, then this is a #FAIL.
  • Teachers’ Knowledge about One Another’s Work. This involves teachers getting to know what each other is doing. More importantly, getting to know how each other’s work impacts their own.
  • Cohesive Staff. This refers to how teachers agree with each other on core educational values or issues.
  • Responsiveness of Leadership. When leadership listens to teachers and works to cut distractions, that’s responsiveness.
  • Effective Intervention Systems. This ensures there is structure to support teachers and students.

When working to set up new teachers, it’s worth considering these contributing factors. As Meaghan Loftus points out, together, these six points ensure CTE. And when you are preparing new teachers, much of their success depends on these six elements. Without them, new teachers, no matter how enthusiastic and tech-savvy, will struggle.

Now that you have some background on CTE, let’s take a look at Crystal Fuentes’ suggestions.

Tip #1: Classroom Management Tech Tools

Dealing with problems and developing solutions as they arise is one way to manage a classroom. Another way is by empowering students to make choices. Then, permitting them to learn from the consequences of those choices.

My favorite approach to classroom management involves building teacher-student relationships. That is, getting to know students and building trust. The best classroom environment I experienced involved building relationships with students. While disagreements occurred, having a family environment worked best with my bilingual class.

“One technology tool that’s in my top five is ClassDojo,” says Crystal. “I want teachers to know how to use ClassDojo.” No surprise, ClassDojo has these goals for itself:

  • Create a positive culture.
  • Give students a voice.
  • Share moments with parents.

The ability to access ClassDojo on any device makes it handy. For language diverse situations, its message translation is invaluable. And for some too committed to being accessible, you can set quiet time hours.

Tip #2: Learning Management Systems

Do learning activities revolve around ancient, paper-bound curriculum resources? You may not be pulling activities from a file cabinet in old manila folders. Instead, you may be relying on primary sources and current information available online. You may be co-constructing rubrics with your students. Sure, you can limit yourself and your students to paper. But who wants to shuffle papers, deal with 3-ring binders, and worry about missing work?

A better way exists if you have robust internet and device access for students. Learning management systems make it easy to:

  • End the paper chase.
  • Distribute resources as needed in an instant.
  • Timestamp student and teacher work.

Today, there is no shortage of learning management systems. That is, digital classroom supports that make access to resources easy. What’s more, they ensure you can connect with students in academic ways. While ClassDojo may be a classroom community builder, LMSs ease the paperwork. And that’s a huge benefit.

Crystal suggests relying on tools like the following:

Google Classroom is the learning management system, and Little SIS provides more granular administrative control over Google Classroom. Skyward is a student information system (SIS) and digital gradebook. There are many combinations of solutions. I would be remiss to not point out other popular options. Those include:

  • Microsoft Teams, OneNote, and the SIS tool of choice (e.g. Skyward, TSDS/PEIMS)
  • Instructure’s Canvas and SIS
  • PowerSchool’s Schoology and PowerSchool SIS

There may be other options, but these are some I have seen in Texas schools. 

Did You Know?

Learn more about your learning management system of choice via TCEA’s online, self-paced courses. These affordable sessions ($29 each) provide you with what you need to know to get started. Courses available include Google Classroom, Canvas Educator, Schoology Educator, and Microsoft 365 (covers Teams and OneNote).

Tip #3: Collaborative Tech Tools

Collaboration and discussion of academic content can have a powerful impact on student learning. Consider this tidbit of research:

jamboard padlet

If students know content, coming up with explanations helps fellows strengthen their understanding. Even when they don’t know content, conversations increase learning (adapted from source).

To aid collaboration, there are many tools. Clint ISD’s Crystal Fuentes recommends Padlet and Google Jamboard. 

Tip #4: Lesson Delivery Tools

While you can still stand and deliver lessons in a classroom, there are alternatives. Now, you can do that, AND make your Google Slides deck available to students. You can mix in checks for understanding as well as turn and talk opportunities. And teachers can put in place low-stakes assessments with rapid-response measurement. What’s more, the right set of lesson delivery tools empowers student voice and choice. They also make it easy to engage students in bell ringer activities.

Crystal suggests these tools that work with Google Slides:

pear deck nearpod

You may find this comparison of the two similar tools by Rachelle Dene Poth (@rdene915) helpful. 

Learn more about the research and best practices for using choice boards in the classroom. Take the TCEA online, self-paced course, Choice Boards for Educators. If you’re ready to become a choice board pro, this course will make you shine. Choice boards promote student choice and voice while providing differentiated instruction. How fantastic does that sound? Not only that but they’re proven to work.

Tip #5: Tech Tools for Creation

To round out the list, Crystal shares two powerful creation tools. These are tools every educator needs to know about. She suggests that new teachers know how to use the following:

  • LucidPress. This tool makes it easy to design visual resources, newsletters, and more. Some may substitute this tool with the free for educators, Canva.
  • Flipgrid. A free, no-cost tool available to support video recording and communication. This is a must-have tool to make student reflection, interviews, and more possible.
  • Screencastify. A screen recording tool that makes flipped classroom lessons a breeze. Students can also record videos and create screencasts.
  • Choice Board Menus. A powerful tool for supporting student choice in learning. This suggestion is less a technology tool and more of an instructional strategy. Yet the ability to blend multimedia sources into choice boards transforms this strategy.
tech tools for creation

A final tool that TCEA Board member Crystal Fuentes finds a powerful aid in Clint ISD: Promethean Panels. Be sure to reach out and follow her on Twitter to learn more. As Crystal shared in one of her tweets:

“Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.”

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Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO) created by author
Educational ResearchGood Teaching

Meet ALDO: Amazing Lesson Design Outline

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever wish you had an easy-to-follow checklist when designing learning for students? I know I have…often. Some of my colleagues effortlessly design amazing lessons, but I have to plod through each point. But lesson design is something that is critical to ultimate success in the classroom for each student. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to share my latest version of the outline I use. At the end, you will find a custom GPT you can use to get an AI spin on ALDO.

You can also explore this choice board organized with the outline in mind:

ALDO Choice Board
Get your own copy

As you work through this list, ask yourself, “What schema or plan do I follow?” If you show me your district’s mandated lesson plan format, well, that may not get the job done. At the end of this blog entry, I’ll share a heuristic, a Google Doc, that you can use. I like it because it combines many resources in one place and works to help you more efficiently plan your lesson design.

For now, let’s work through the major components of my Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO). Ready? Let’s get started.

Did You Know?

Robert M. Gagne’s Theory of Instruction (1965) offers some suggestions worth revisiting. He divides instruction into nine events. Those events include 1) Gaining attention; 2) Informing learners of objectives; 3) Stimulating recall of prior learning; 4) Presenting the stimulus; 5) Providing learning guidance; 6) Eliciting performance; 7) Providing feedback; 8) Assessing performance; and, 9) Enhancing retention and transfer. You might also enjoy Mike Schmoker’s Focus: Elevating the Essentials visual  or Madeline Hunter’s version. Some prefer the Gradual Release Model. When considering amazing lesson design, it’s important to remember this is well-traveled ground. Find what inspires you.

1 – Relationships First: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Connections

Image Source: CASEL

“Teachers must place a strong emphasis on rigor, relevance, but most of all, on developing relationships with children,” says Dr. Asa Hiliard, former Director of Urban Studies at Georgia State University. I’ve seen this firsthand. Let me share that with you.

Watching my wife, a masterful second grade teacher, you’d never guess she had an outline. Her lesson design first includes building powerful relationships with her students. It has her finding out what TV shows they like, what they like to eat, their life story, and building connections through an ongoing conversation with her class. She focuses in to connect academic content to specific students. Her approach leaves me in awe. When she asks her students to get to work, they do. When it’s time to behave, they do.

The first part of my lesson design outline? It’s build relationships. As Dr. James Comer (Yale University) says:

No significant learning can occur without a significant relationships of mutual respect, teacher to student.

“Brain-based learning can positively impact student motivation, attitudes and academic achievement,” say researchers. Without relationships, students won’t trust what you have to say. Absent powerful relationships between students, you have no community. And that would be a tragedy because of the next step.

2 – Assessment

As coaches and teachers, we have to, as Dr. John Hattie says, “Know our impact.” If you don’t know where students are, you will be unable to give them feedback on future growth. Worse, students won’t be able to self-regulate their own learning when given feedback. Students have to be clear on what they are to know and do. They have to know where they stand in their own learning relevant to growth.

To gauge where students are in their learning, you need to assess them before, during, and after. And those assessments can be low-stakes. They can tie into a wide variety of strategies that are proven to work, including retrieval practice and spaced vs massed practice. They can also rely on a wide variety of digital tools designed for that purpose.

Tip: You may want to use the SOLO Taxonomy to chart student growth. Learn more about SOLO via this blog entry.

3 – Teaching and Learning

The first step for those savvy with brain-based learning research is to engage students. Once you have figured how to best engage students, give thought to another question.

“What high-impact approaches align to the learning intention?” That’s a question that kept me up and reading. How can we align effective, evidence-based strategies to students’ learning needs? You can find a variety of evidence-based, high-effect size strategies that you can use at the best time.

Remember, only rely on one strategy at a time. For example, don’t try to put in place two teaching strategies like direct instruction and flipped classroom. Pick one. The same for students. Avoid trying to teach students to do concept mapping and outlining at the same time. Focus on one until you and your students can do it really well.

Social Media Response to ALDO

Thanks to those of you on social media who have shared ALDO with others. Here’s what some of you are saying:

Fantastic visual representation of the stages of learning and using a critical lense when creating lesson experiences! I can’t wait to use this with our new Ts as they continue to deepen their thinking abt. teaching/learning. Thx! via Meg Burke

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I’m definitely sharing it with my teachers! After having a coaching conversation this morning with a teacher about her PBL lessons, this is a great resource for deep and transfer teaching/learning with intentional design. TY via Myla Lee

The “Amazing Lesson Design Outline” (ALDO) created by Miguel Guhlin @mguhlin for @TCEA features mountains of terrific teaching strategies intuitively organized. Wow! https://bit.ly/3A99v6M via Todd Finley

Great distinction between Surface, Deep, and Transfer Learning. via LanguageTeachingLab

Did You Know?

Get a guided introduction to Hattie’s work via the TCEA Strategies That Work courses. What’s more, you get powerful videos, a $49 TCEA membership, and CPE hours for the same or less than buying a book. You have fifteen courses to choose from, including the latest Evidence-Based Teaching course.

The Evidence-Based Teaching course provides a detailed walkthrough of the Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO), including the research underpinnings. It’s the perfect way to introduce your instructional coaches, teachers, and administrators to research that works. Participants earn 12 CPE hours, a digital badge, and certificate upon completion.

 

4 – Assess and Gauge Progress

As you did in Step Two, take a moment to re-assess students. Discover where they are in relation to the learning objective(s). You can rely on existing goals.

ALDOA Cry for Help: I Can’t Form an Online Community

An email request for help came in the other day. My diagnosis? The teachers had not put in place (yet) what they needed to create a sense of community. As a result, it made everything they tried to do difficult. My prescription? Intensify relationship-building efforts with teachers and students. Also, put into place the following tips:

1- Model for teachers social and emotional learning opportunities for virtual classroom use appropriate for the middle school students.

2- Set up criteria, such as a rubric, not as a staff assessment but, for a self-assessment checklist teachers can use when planning lessons. That checklist is the Amazing Learning Design Outline (ALDO) that appears later in this blog entry.

3-Adapt evidence-based strategies to support instruction. For example, this includes direct instruction, jigsaw for introducing concepts and ideas, classroom discussion and/or reciprocal teaching for digging deeper, problem-based teaching, and self-reported grades. Remember, use only one strategy at a time depending on the learning intention.

4-Implement coaching for results. I like Diane Sweeney’s model and suggest you explore the Coaching for Results series (Parts Three, Four, and Five are relevant here). Diane Sweeney has a handy one-pager that is designed to assist coaches with teacher work. It incorporates formative assessments, including entry/exit tickets.

5 – Reflect

Make sure to take some time to reflect on what worked and what did not for both you and your students. What role did technology play in enhancing teaching and learning? You might also ask yourself, What could I do differently next time? How can I assist students in becoming more metacognitive about their own learning experience?

Remember that reflection isn’t only for you as the teacher. It is also for students to engage in.

Get ALDO, the Amazing Lesson Design Outline

Ready to get the ALDO? Keep it by your side as you are planning a lesson or preparing activities. The links to digital tools and resources will soon become gateways to new ideas.

Let’s take a moment to walk through the creation of the prompt via video:

Test the ALDO Coach GPT

Update 1/20/2024: Please note that ALDO has been updated with the latest effect sizes from the Visible Learning MetaX database, and converted to Canva format (Canva is free for educators). Feel free to make copies and share widely so long as credit is given as indicated and original authors (cited in bibliography on page one) remain included.

Get a copy of ALDO v2 (shown above) | View Full Size

Want to view the OLD ALDO v1? Use these links: View the ALDO v1 | Get a Copy of v1

 

 

 

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science lesson
Educational ResearchScience

Interactive Science: How to Design Research-based Science Lessons

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Recently, a school district administrator emailed me and asked, “If you were going to blend strategies that work into a science lesson, how would you do it?” That question really piqued my interest. Mixing instructional strategies that are proven to work with best practices in science teaching and learning sounds like a win/win. After much thinking, here’s how I would accomplish this, based on the research.

Step #1: Set Goals for the Science Lesson

Dr. John Almarode, who wrote Visible Learning for Science, suggests setting the following goals for science lessons. The goals are straightforward and represent a wonderful response to the question asked.

  • Get students interested in lifelong learning and science that works.
  • Give students more control over their own learning.
  • Build in ways to assess students to discover where they are, and then match strategies to what they need to learn.

The first goal is practical and makes learning relevant to the learner. The second ties into John Hattie’s strong belief in the need for students to be self-regulated learners, individuals who must have agency and ownership over their learning and are able to track their progress. In tracking their own growth towards learning targets, they can make decisions, which gives them voice and choice.

Step #2: Pre-Assess Student Learning

When determining what students already know about a topic or skill, you have to ask, “How do we pre-assess students where they are at?” This leads to the question, “What are some formative assessments we could use?” These assessments provide insights into where students may fall on the SOLO Taxonomy. SOLO stands for “Structure of Observed Learning Outcome.” This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned SOLO, as have many others.

Let’s revisit what SOLO Taxonomy offers:

SOLO illustrates the qualitative differences. It indicates the differences between student responses and their levels of understanding. It classifies outcomes, relying on complexity and understanding.

SOLO does this so that you can make a judgement on the quality of student responses to assessment tasks. It relies on five levels of understanding:

Prestructural: at this level the learner is missing the point

Unistructural: a response based on a single point.

Multistructural: a response with multiple unrelated points.

Relational: points presented in a logically related answer.

Extended abstract: demonstrating an abstract and deep understanding through unexpected extension.

This FutureLearn chart clarifies the levels:

science lesson

The Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy (Adapted from Biggs & Tang, 2011) as cited in source

The main benefit of the SOLO Taxonomy is that it gives you, as the teacher, a set of specific terms (e.g., Unistructural, Multistructural, Relational) that can describe a student’s level of understanding. This level of understanding pinpoints what strategies may work best for them as they more through the learning process.

For students who are unistructural, they are in the surface phase of learning. This means that you might rely on those types of strategies, which could include vocabulary programs, direct instruction, and/or flipped classroom.

For learners who are relational, in the deep learning phase, different strategies work best. These may include concept mapping, metacognition, and reflection.

Knowing where a child falls on the taxonomy helps identify their level of understanding. It also assists you in knowing what to do next and to set success criteria.

What Is Success Criteria?

This phrase involves students knowing and understanding the answer to a simple question. That is, “How will I know I have learned it?” It is sometimes expressed as a statement, “I’ll know I’ve got it if….” You may want to revisit COLOSO in this blog entry.

Step #3: Build Learning into the Science Lesson

Ready to start on lesson design? Let’s take a look at the process Dr. John Almarode elaborates on. I’ve included a few resources for each area. What would you add?

“Science education needs a mix of demonstrations, labs, and experiments. It also needs reading, writing, and discussing with other scientists,” says Almarode. To that end, the lesson process he describes looks like this:

a) Paired Demonstration and Writing Down Observations

  • Demonstration
  • Encourage students to write about what they observed

b) Clarifying Terms and Vocabulary

  • Discussion about vocabulary terms
  • Have students revise their writing using correct terms

c) Wrap-Up

  • Final wrap-up

One key point that jumped out at me?

Every lesson (surface, deep, transfer) needs to have a clearly articulated learning intention. That learning intention must connect to success criteria. Remember, that is “What am I learning?” (learning intention) and “How will I know I have learned it?” (success criteria).

That’s quite a jump. To help the process make more sense, I put this diagram together that captures my understanding. Don’t be afraid to share your version.

Get a copy of this image via Google Slides or via Diagrams.net (requires you to authorize Diagrams.net in Google Drive account).

As you can see from this diagram, there’s a lot going on. To complicate matters, I’ve included some additional tools and strategy suggestions. How would you approach lesson design in your classroom with these three steps?

Matching Process to Resources

To provide some support, please find some relevant resources organized by the step in the process. I’ve organized them into a meta-collection in Wakelet. Explore and have fun.

science lesson design
Access this Wakelet Meta-Collections online at https://tinyurl.com/stwscience

Feature Image Source

Photo by author.

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game of clue board
Educational Research

Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“Who did it? Was it Colonel Mustard with a rope in the billiard room?” Murder and mystery have enthralled many over the years. If you’re an amateur detective, then you may appreciate the connection to the learning process. Games like CLUE/CLUEDO may come to mind as you consider a different taxonomy of learning than Bloom’s Taxonomy. The learning process isn’t dissimilar to assembling clues and connecting them to solve a crime. Do you agree it is an apt analogy?

Let’s get a little background on a different taxonomy of learning.

“It is unusual for isolated cognitive categories to play a significant role in human thought or behavior. We normally function on the basis of much larger conceptual structures, the schemes or schemas that are constructed out of complex and often dynamic organizations of categories.”
–Frank Smith, Understanding Reading

The Power of Schema

Like a character in the game of CLUE, learning is often about building a schema or framework to better understand what’s happening. When you first play the game, you may not know the conceptual structure of the game. As you learn the structure, or schema, it becomes easier to predict the outcome and see how the clues fit together.

Rumelhart (1980) saw schemes as the building blocks of cognition, comparing them with the scripts of plays that can be performed by different groups of actors in different settings. Comprehension, according to Rumelhart and Ortony (1977), is the confirmation of tentative hypotheses about what schemes are relevant by finding the “slots” into which the details of events fit.
(Source: As cited in Understanding Reading)

When trying to solve a murder mystery, as in CLUE, it’s important to know the actors, how they behave. The only way to do that is to make educated guesses about who they are. It is the same when when learning something new. As learners, like players in CLUE, we work together with (and against) others to construct schemes or stories that fit what’s happened or happening.

In real life, we don’t always know what twists and turns may result along the way. We’re not sure what steps we will take to achieve the desired end. That’s why a taxonomy of learning can be helpful. It can provide a schema for understanding learning we participate in or facilitate for others.

How the Taxonomy Helps

When we learn, the end goal is the application of new learning to novel situations. Those novel situations may have similar elements to what we may have learned in the past, but they are seldom identical. Extraneous information may be included, and we have to sort out the irrelevant. How do we do that? A learning taxonomy scaffolds our efforts to build a schema. In a meta-cognitive way, it supports our learning until we can make up our own theory. And, these theories are unique to us since we are singular beings.

Image Source: https://edte.ch/blog/2019/11/22/solo-taxonomy-question-chains/

Introducing the SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO Taxonomy has been around since I graduated from eighth grade. In spite of that, I never learned about John Biggs and Kevin Collis’ creation in 1982. It needs little introduction since heavyweights like Peter DeWitt and Pam Hook have spent some time explaining it. Yet, as I mentioned, it’s important to build one’s own theory of understanding. To do so, I have juxtaposed various explanations. These explanations are organized in a simple table.

The SOLO Taxonomy created by author

The SOLO Taxonomy Created by author

Stages of the SOLO Taxonomy Explained

In trying to understand the SOLO Taxonomy, I asked myself a few questions:

  • What do each of the stages represent or mean?
  • How would John Hattie, who supports the SOLO Taxonomy, describe each stage?
  • What learning phase (e.g. surface learning, deep learning, transfer learning) is commensurate with each stage?
  • How could I describe what it means in simple terms?
    Fortunately, Pam Hook has created a four minute video using LEGOs that explains the SOLO Taxonomy. I watched it and tried to adapt the explanation into the table below. Let me know what you think. Does it make sense?
Stage SOLO Taxonomy Hattie’s Term Learning Phase? What It Means
1 Prestructural – incompetence (they miss the point). No Idea May or may not have Prior Knowledge Lack of understanding or knowledge of concept.
2 Unistructural – one relevant aspect One Idea Surface Learning Has an idea of what it is but not what to do with it or how it connects to other ideas.
3 Multistructural – several relevant and independent aspects Many Ideas Surface Learning Has a basic understanding but not sure how to fit ideas together.
4 Relational – integrated into a structure Relate Deep Learning Understands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them. Still needs scaffolding and instructions to be successful.
5 Extended Abstract– generalized to new domain Extend Transfer Learning Can take what has been learned and make something new, directions not needed

As I review the table, it starts to make sense how the SOLO Taxonomy is a good fit for Hattie’s ideas about surface, deep and transfer learning. The next step might be to ask oneself, what strategies fit well within each stage of the SOLO Taxonomy? In some ways, the taxonomy reminds me of the game of Clue.

Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO TaxonomyAs you read the following, ask yourself if this aligns to the five stages listed in the table above. How would you modify them? Don’t be shy, leave your thoughts in the comments.

  1. Something has happened. You’re not sure what happened, why it happened or how it occurred. You simply feel an imperative to learn more to resolve the gap in your understanding.
  2. A clue is found that suggests more information is needed. You try to make this clue fit into your existing schema or understanding of the world, but you soon realize it doesn’t fit. You begin to dig for more clues.
  3. More clues are found, but you’re not sure how these fit together or if they are part of a different problem. You need to make guesses of what happened and figure out how the clues fit together. If you can do this with others, that may help.
  4. Through various means, individual and cooperative, you see the relationship between the clues that have been found. You have a theory of what happened. When you apply it to the current learning problem, it fits and you feel the flush of victory. Your new schema explains the current situation, but you’re not sure if it will work for the next one.
  5. You encounter a fresh problem and you apply your ability to find clues and understand how they fit together to solve this. You adapt your schema, or modify it to make a new one, that fits the clues for the new learning problem. You understand how they are the same and how they are different. You look for new ways to apply your theory of problem solving to other situations.

Does that work for murder mysteries? Let’s put this into the context of instructional strategies that work. That is, strategies that are based on proven research and that accelerate student growth.

SOLO Taxonomy with Strategies That Work

It may come as no surprise that I’ve taken to describing high-effect size instructional strategies (HESIS) as “Strategies That Work.” In fact, you can find two online courses that capture this understanding, along with a chart. As you might imagine, we can easily extend the table above with the Matching Strategies and Digital Tools chart. To give you an idea of what that might look like, here’s a simple version without the SOLO Taxonomy definition of their terms:

Stage SOLO Taxonomy Hattie’s Term Learning Phase? What It Means HES Instructional Strategies
1 Pre-structural No Idea May or may not have Prior Knowledge Lack of understanding or knowledge of concept. Build and/or activate prior knowledge
2 Uni-structural One Idea Surface Learning Has an idea of what it is, but not what to do with it or how it connects to other ideas Three-Step Jigsaw Method, Summarization, Vocabulary Programs
3 Multi-structural Many Ideas Surface Learning Has a basic understanding, but not sure how to fit ideas together Direct Instruction, Flipped Classroom, Note-Taking
4 Relational Relate Deep Learning Understands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them; still needs scaffolding and instructions to be successful Concept Mapping, Metacognition, Self-Judgement, Reflection
5 Extended Abstract Extend Transfer Learning Can take what has been learned and make something new; directions not needed Problem-Based Teaching, Transfer Strategies

As I wrote this blog entry, I was assembling clues about the SOLO Taxonomy. I was figuring out ways to better understand the taxonomy so I can use it as an aid to learning. I moved steadily from pre-structural to relational. The next step is, How can I take what I’ve learned and make something new? That’s the challenge we all face as learners, isn’t it?

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semantic maps
Educational ResearchEnglish Language Arts

Semantic Maps Made Easy

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

What teacher isn’t looking for an amazing way to engage students in learning? Whether it’s a different evidence-based strategy or technology, you want to maximize student learning. In previous blog entries, we’ve explored powerful, high-effect size instructional strategies; if you use the right strategies at the appropriate time, you are guaranteed to accelerate student learning. In this blog entry, we’ll explore another powerful strategy: semantic maps.

The Correct Approach at the Right Time

“What and when are equally important when it comes to instruction that has an impact on learning. Approaches that facilitate students’ surface-level learning do not work equally well for deep learning, and vice versa.

Matching the right approach with the appropriate phase of learning is the critical lesson to be learned.” Source: Hattie, Fisher and Frey (Visible Learning for Mathematics, 2017)

The authors of the Visible Learning books point out that surface learning is a time when students are initially exposed to concepts, skills, and strategies. Surface learning is critical because it provides a foundation on which to build as students are asked to think more deeply. But there are other “buckets” for learning strategies.

semantic map

Matching Strategies to the Right Phase of Learning

When I first started teaching, I imagined one huge bucket of instructional strategies I could reach into regardless of what I was teaching, I could use any instructional strategy to engage students. Some activities worked well; others not so much. One reason may have been my lack of awareness about the appropriate time to use those certain strategies.

semantic maps

For example, have you relied on the flipped classroom strategy? Did you use the strategy to introduce students to new concepts or to encourage them to apply what they’ve learned to a new situation? If the latter, you may have misapplied the strategy. Surface learning strategies like flipped classroom (d=0.58) work great when introducing students to ideas. Consider these points from Mr. Hill:

“By introducing surface level content before class, we can utilize face-to-face classroom time for deeper learning and application. Students need their teachers during these cognitively challenging tasks. Content such as facts and procedures are important but students can access these without the teacher. Our time with students is limited and precious, so we should use it for tasks in which students actually need us.” Source: Hattie on Homework Support for Flipped Learning

Are you using instructional strategies at the appropriate moment? Like me, you may need a few more mental buckets to organize strategies into.

Learning Strategies Buckets

It’s almost irreverent to refer to the various types of learning strategies as “buckets.” But to keep the idea simple, we can sort various strategies like beans into the right bucket. Those can include the following:

  • Surface learning strategies = Content focused
  • Deep learning strategies = Relationship in and among content
  • Transfer learning strategies = Transfer of new skills to new situations or tasks

When we are introducing new content, we reach into the surface learning strategies bucket. Which will work best? For example, if we’re working with K-2 students on reading, we can rely on strategies like vocabulary programs (d=0.63). In this blog entry, we’ll take a closer look at semantic maps and the Frayer Model. These two components fit into the vocabulary programs strategy as a way to make sense of words and concepts. Before we do that, let’s see how semantic maps and the Frayer Model fit into vocabulary programs.

semantic maps

Vocabulary Programs (d=0.63)

John Hattie’s research suggests that vocabulary programs are one of the best surface learning strategies. The effect size of vocabulary programs strategy is (d=0.63). Compared to the hinge point of d=0.40, this means significant acceleration of student learning can take place. This is because vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension have a strong relationship.

Want to Play a Game?

Check out Ashleigh‘s adaptation of Robert Marzano’s six step approach to teaching academic vocabulary (link includes Frayer Model as well). She calls it, Mile-a-Minute, and the game relies on a Google Slides deck you can start with. She offers it as a handy review of academic vocabulary students may have already learned. Give it a try. Is there a game or way that you approach vocabulary instruction?

The vocabulary programs strategy is composed of multiple components, such as:

  • Morphology instruction – This includes learning about root words, prefixes/suffixes, and more. Learn more.
  • Semantic maps/Frayer Model – Exploring word or concept maps that display the relationship between words in a visual manner.
  • Word and concept sorts – Evidence-based phonics approaches (e.g. encoding/decoding) to finding predictable patterns in words. Learn more.
  • Wide reading – This involves providing access to a wide variety of reading materials at different levels of difficulty. See the resources to learn more.

You could spend quite a bit of time learning about morphology instruction, as well as varied vocabulary programs available. Let’s take a look at semantic maps.

semantic maps

yED Live makes it easy to add a hand-drawn effect to any semantic/concept map you construct.

Semantic Maps

As a high school student, I learned to use semantic maps to explore ideas in doodles. It soon became an essential way for me to pick out the critical vocabulary words and concepts in academic readings. In fact, it was such a powerful tool for me that I adopted it for note taking, brainstorming, and playing with words.

semantic maps

That’s because semantic maps offer a visual way of viewing “meaning-based connections between a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts” (source: Reading Rockets).

Semantic mapping is a visual strategy for vocabulary expansion and extension of knowledge by displaying in categories words related to one another” (Kholi and Sharifafar, 2013). These almost graphic organizers are not pre-made, but made by the students to help “web” out their ideas. [Semantic maps] build on students’ background knowledge or schema. While drawing on prior knowledge, it recognizes important components and shows the relationships among them” (Kholi
and Sharifafar, 2013) as cited in Vocabulary and Fluency Classroom Strategies.

Semantic maps, word or concept, are easy to make with paper and pencil. As the digital tools became available, I started relying on an old time favorite, Inspiration. Today, you can find a variety of digital tools to support semantic map making.

semantic maps

Digital Tool for Semantic Maps

Want to use your Windows 10, Mac, or Chromebook to make a semantic map? Check out the amazing yED Graph Editor. The website describes it in this way:

yEd is a powerful desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams. Create diagrams manually, or import your external data for analysis. Our automatic layout algorithms arrange even large data sets with just the press of a button. yEd is freely available and runs on all major platforms: Windows, Unix/Linux, and macOS.

Use yED Graph Editor to create beautiful word maps or concept maps. While you can use the program on your Windows, Mac, or GNU/Linux computer, you can also use it in the browser. yED Live is the online, live version that features Google Drive integration (as well as other cloud storage tools) and the ability to export files. Watch this short video overview combining semantic maps with yED Live:

In the next blog entry, we’ll explore the Frayer Model, as well as concept sorts in another. It’s another amazing tool for vocabulary comprehension.

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