When I think of the complex task of teaching my students, four things stand out to me as incredible challenges:
A. Data and feedback for all students to push their learning
B. Differentiation (to address low skills, gaps, challenge)
C. Rigorous content instruction aligned to Common Core Standards
D. Engagement and agency for all students
With 145 students with different strengths and needs, this is an overwhelming task. In any given class period, there is just one of me and between 27-31 students. And there are only 55 minutes of class time. Providing all students the instruction they need requires some novel thinking: enter blended learning, the best thing since sliced bread. Really.
Fortunately for my teaching career and for my students, I was introduced to blended learning last year. I researched, explored, and then experimented in my classroom, learning along with my students. At first, it was simply adding in a digital library for students to use during independent reading. Next was adding in the use an online platform for organizing resources, loading lessons, and providing access to students outside of class time. Students were more than excited about the new technologies that have helped to make their classroom a bit more like the world in which we all operate now. Also, student engagement and excitement seems to rise exponentially when you say, “Yes, you can use your phone.”
The informal results were amazing. Through Edmodo, I chatted with Karla on a Saturday afternoon about an upcoming assignment. In class, she preferred to read, maintaining a high F average for the class for nearly the entire year, and opted to skip most assignments. However, when she had the resources with her and could contact me on her own time, she engaged with classwork in a way I hadn’t seen before. I was happy to send her messages with ideas specific to the choices she’d made with the writing assignment. She was thankful for the help and has come back to visit this year, telling her younger brother that I’m the best teacher ever and she’ll hurt him if he ever disrespects me. While I don’t condone violence nor corroborate her assessment of me, I do take to heart that Karla, a student for whom school wasn’t working well, feels a strong connection with a teacher and with school.
Some blended learning models probably won’t work well with my population of students: teaching at a school with high poverty means many do not have computers and/or internet at home. But digital resources change the way I can deliver instruction inside and outside of the classroom. I’ve been thrilled about being able to increase the quality and quantity of what I offer to students and to maximize instruction (primarily through shifting my instruction from whole group lessons to small group instruction) so that all students are getting what they need and are empowered to take a more active role in their own learning.
Case in point: student use of Newsela. Newsela is “Unlimited access to hundreds of leveled news articles and Common Core–aligned quizzes, with new articles every day.” I signed up for this resource after learning about it this fall. I created groups for all of my classes and my students created accounts. I assign articles for my students to read and they read them at a level of their choosing. At the end, they take a quiz. The data is catalogued immediately in my account and comes to me in a summary email each week.
What is most exciting is how engaged my students are with it. Students receive immediate feedback when they take the quiz at the end of an assigned article. Without my prompting, they share results with each other and have figured out how to retake a quiz by changing the lexile (or reading level). When I look at their results, I can see not only their test score, but at which level they read and tested and which Common Core Standards they’re mastering.
This week, I overheard a student ask his peer, who had selected the highest lexile level on her Newsela article, “Why are you reading at that level?” She replied, “Because I want to feel smart reading all those big words.” So, not only would we both get immediate feedback about her results while this student worked to master Common Core Standards, the reading was differentiated and she chose a real challenge to push herself.
Yep, best thing since sliced bread!
msellendorr 