A lot of the conversation about blended learning
focuses on like the tools and the software.
But it rarely talks about the on the ground techniques and tools
that the teacher does in the classroom, and that's where we're going now.
What I would call the moves of a blended learning teacher.
Now a caveat; this might be a bit in the weeds, and if you're
not going to be in a actual classroom
setting, feel free to skip this next section.
But I personally think it's by getting into the
weeds that we start to make this real and
tangible, and you can actually start to understand, how do
we succeed as a teacher in these new kinds of classrooms?
>> Doug Lemov wrote this great book, Teach Like a Champion, that
profiles some of these strategies for
getting great student outcomes in traditional classrooms.
So we asked the teachers in our blended learning
schools, what are their strategies for getting great student outcomes.
And they shared some great strategies and systems.
>> Alright if you can hear my voice clap once.
>>
[SOUND]
>> If you can hear my voice put your hands on your head.
If you can hear my voice close your screens.
[NOISE]
And, get ready for mad minute fluency. >> Yes.
>> Some tools and routines that I used in my
blended classroom and I've seen work in other blended classrooms.
Definitely you still always need an attention signal.
lots of blended teachers use lots of different signals, but imagine
you've got 20, 30, 40, 50 kids, with ear buds in.
And they're staring at their screen.
They're not going to hear your ding, they're not going to hear your clap, or
your stomp, or whatever it might be, and so I've
actually done a lot of, kind of, stadium style wave.
With kids, where I might tap a kid on the shoulder
with two fingers, the first kid, and they put their hand up.
But then they, or, I'm sorry, before they put their hand up, they know to
tap the next kid and the next kid and it kind of waves around the room.
And honestly, the attention signal can take a little longer than
a normal kind of classroom a, attention signal, but that's the
sort of thing that we figured out.
>> Think about the act of starting a class, and how teachers
do what we call a do now or some sort of launching activity.
>> In a blended classroom, teachers and students
need entrance procedures and they need exit procedures.
One of the things I like about a
blended classroom is that, if your kids are walking
in, you don't need to create a Do Now, or a warm up, or anything like that.
The Do Now or warm up for those kids,
for whom it's their turn on the computers. It's, go to your computer and start.
Just get right back to work wherever you were when you logged out the last time.
Whether the last time was an hour ago, or two weeks ago, or whatever it was.
When it comes to an exit procedure, I think
it's really important that kids, much like the old adage,
you know, when we're off hiking and camping, we're
going to try and leave it cleaner than we found it.
That you want to be really clear with
kids, about what you want the computer stations
to look like when they exit. So, I used to do one knuckle keyboards.
Which meant the kids would put their knuckle there, and that
was the space between the edge of the table and the keyboard.
And, then we'd look down the rows and
we could see, you know, basically what was correct.
And it really helped kids understand because wires
get crisscrossed, entangled, that this is this station's
mouse and keyboard and everything is the way
it's supposed to be and it gives that kind
of structure and order, and then you can dismiss and it real, I
found that it helped bring kind of an element of rigor to the classroom.
Just the physical maintenance of, of the space.
>> In blended learning, there are often
more transitions than in a traditional classroom.
Just think about a station rotation model where
students are rotating between the online learning and small
group instruction, or think about a lab model
where students are rotating from the learning lab and
then into the traditional classrooms.
Managing these transitions and making them tight, and really
fit well with the learning schedule, is really critical.
[NOISE]
>> Team Courage, please sign out, Team Ghanas,
please go to the iPads. Team, other Team Otter, go to the iPads.
Team Ghanas,
please
go to the
[INAUDIBLE].
[NOISE]
Alright, Team Courage,
please me a folder and
[INAUDIBLE].
[NOISE]
Alright, Team Courage, please sit in the purple, blue, or green rows.
10, 9
[INAUDIBLE]
Sitting on your folder. Two.
[NOISE]
One.
[NOISE]
Devon, our feet are on the line. 'Kay, I want you in and logged on in 10
seconds, let's go. >> In a typical class, we
simply ask students to raise
their hand for support. But in a blended
class, that might look different. >> When we first see students enter
environments where they can learn at their own pace, we
see the ping pong effect, is what we call it.
And students don't know what to do, their hands start shooting up.
The teacher's looking around, there's 20 hands, and they don't know
who to respond to and if you would have put a camera
at the top of the room you would just see them,
it's like whack a mole, they're just ping ponging around the room.
And pretty consistently we've seen folks who
are thinking about pedagogy, and basically inventing pedagogy
on the fly.
But, really getting to the same place where, here's a hierarchy of things that
you need to explore when you need help as a student, and some of that is the online
resources before you, some of that is knowing to turn to a peer next to you,
some of that is knowing who the expert is in the room, either teacher or peer.