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SElf-paced classroom: learning to love the chaos

4/24/2017

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Imagine. Students in your class are working on different parts of the same unit, different units completely, testing, or working with you on a content skill. For some this may seem overwhelming and insane, and it can be but if you have system of tracking and seating in your room this system can be manageable.

In a self-paced system, it is possible for students to be in completely different parts of your curriculum. That means it requires the teacher to be more flexible and organized in their day-to-day classroom. It really is organized chaos. ​

How to manage the chaos

Tracking System - This goes back to our previous self-paced post. Having a clear and organized system for tracking student progress on your end will make your life so much easier. The goal is to have system that allows you to easily pinpoint where students are at in your curriculum easily while you are up and working on all of the different pieces and have the students understand where they are at as well. 
Seating Plan - This doesn’t mean having a set in stone seating plan. What this means is having a room organized to allow you and the students be working on different pieces of content in the same room. This can definitely be difficult considering all of the limitations we tend to have. Like we discussed before in our seating arrangement post, we recommend having different zones for different types of activities that come up in your curriculum like a testing area, group work area, partner section, etc. Flexible seating is also something to consider as well, since self-paced naturally lends itself to individual work and flexibility.
Concrete, Clear Procedures and Content - This is by far the #1 piece to making self-paced or anything really work in any classroom. When it comes to the self-paced classroom, the teacher needs to spend quite a bit of time teaching the students the procedures for working in the classroom. This is typical for any teacher, but in this scenario you will more than likely need to spend a little more time since this system will be pretty different from what students are used to. Major things that would need to be covered beyond the usual:
  • How to manage their time since you will not be directing every minute of their class time so basically working on self-regulation skills
  • How to use the classroom. With a different type of set-up students will need to know where their resources are, how to use them, and when to use them.
  • How to get assistance from you if needed. You will be pulled in a lot of different directions so to avoid the constant shout of your name, it is good for students to have a protocol for asking for help.
  • How to track their progress through the content and monitor their learning. This is connected to self-regulation skills, but also goal-setting since students have to pace themselves through the content (with your assistance too). 

What our day-to-day is like

Danielle's Classroom:
My classes usually start with me moving students to different work zones depending on their progress if they forget. Then I do a round of check-ins. I go to each zone and check in with students to see if they need me to sign off on work that they have completed, check what their goals are for class that day, and work on relationships. I then start on any administrative stuff I have to do like attendance or whatever. After that what usually happens is one of the following:
  • Walking around the room working with different students that have called me over to review content and sign-off on material. When a student asks me to sign-off on material, I will review their work and then ask them some questions to check comprehension. If they are not answering the questions correctly, we talk about the content and either do a short activity together, or if I realize they just didn’t put the work in before they have to go back and do what they should have done first then we talk about it again.
  • Walking around the room for classroom management purposes. This happens a lot in my more obnoxious classes. I basically just walk and sit with students that have a hard time staying on task.
  • Working 1 on 1 or with a small group of students on a specific skill or review of content. I will have some students that just want me to work with on material or I will notice a need and pick out students that need to go over a specific concept with me.
  • Waiting. This one doesn’t happen very often but occasionally the students are all just working and don’t really need assistance so I am just walking around waiting for the students to need something. I have a really hard time with this because this is when I feel like I am not doing my job but I am also proud because this shows that students know what to do and how to do and don’t really need me. I feel like this also means I need to create more small group activities to do to highlight my content so I am not having this happen too much.

My system is definitely not refined yet. I am still working out some things that I want to change and improve on for next year. I have to say though that I really am loving the chaos of seeing students make connections with the content and learn how to recognize their learning process and self-regulate their learning. Even though it is chaos, I have found that I do not have as many classroom management issues with my tough classes like I did before switching to this system. That does not mean that there still isn’t classroom management issues, but I feel like they are smaller and easier to deal with on an individual basis as opposed to having the whole class issues that can pop up in a more traditional system. 
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Useful Tech Tools: Scoop.it!

4/17/2017

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If you are looking for a way to incorporate current events into your class or just share resources with students or faculty, scoop.it is a great tool to use! Scoop.it is somewhat like a professional Pinterest page.

With scoop.it, you create a profile with topics. In each topic, you collect articles or videos that relate to the topic and you can curate them by adding your own thoughts about the content. Then you publish to your page/topic. Your account is usually connected to a social media account which will post your material as well, but there is an option to create an account not connected to social media.

The website is geared towards businesses with a marketing angle, but if you search users you will find a lot of college professors and teachers that are using the website to collect resources for their classes.

There is a free account option which is great but the downside is you are only allowed to curate one topic on that account and you don’t really have any personalization options. There is also a pro account and a business account. That give you more topics and personalization options.

Once you are signed up, you can set up your topic and begin curating content (basically publishing articles and videos to your topic). It also allows you to add a bookmarklet so when you are browsing the Internet and you find an article or video you want, you can click on the bookmarklet to “scoop it” and curate content on the spot (just like Pinterest).  Your topic can be embedded in a website and/or LMS and can be shared as a link.

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Uses in the Classroom/School as an Educator:
  • Current Events - This is a great way for you to connect current events to your content by adding relevant articles and videos and describe for you students the connections to the content.
  • Research Resources - This also could be used to house good websites for research on particular content.
  • Personal Professional Development - This can be used just for you to collect articles on our great education profession or skills you are interested in building up on.
  • Staff Professional Development - If the district/building has a specific focus, this could be used as place to collect resources on that focus and share with the staff. A building or school could have teacher create accounts and join a community so all resources could be shared.

Uses in the Classroom as a Student:
  • Current Events - On the opposite side, you could have students create accounts and use this a place to reflect on current events related to your content. They would curate articles and videos and have to show how they relate to the content being covered.
  • Research Resources - This is good way for students to do research and collect sources and at the same time have to curate them. They can look at to use the source and summarize the content for future use in a research project. ​
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SELF PACED CLASSROOM - TRACKING PROGRESS

4/10/2017

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Danielle’s Classroom:
I have to admit that this has been the most difficult part of the process for me. I have been trying to find the best ways to keep track of student progress, communicate student progress, and promote self-regulated learning.

Here is my current system of tracking:
  1. Roster Checklists - I have a roster sheet for each class setup like a table with boxes for each of the required tasks for the unit.
  2. Student Checklists - I give the students a checklist with the learning goals and success criteria for the unit, a list of the required tasks, a section to record learning data, and a progress check on the learning goals.
  3. Self-regulated Learning Rubric - I recently created this to help both myself and the students keep track of their use of class time.

Roster Checklists
This is a pretty simple method for me to keep track of student progress. I print roster sheets with checkboxes for each of the required tasks. Every day I travel around the room working and talking with the students and as they finish one of the tasks I check it off the list. I try to color code it so I have an idea of when it happens, but I feel like it is something I need to add so that I can keep track of time progress through the material.

Student Checklists
This is what I give the students. I really like how it is a way for the students to see exactly what is expected of them in a particular unit. The front page always has the learning goals and success criteria on it. When a student begins a new unit we review the expectations and go through the checklist. The next section of the checklist is the list of tasks. It is basically a table with the list of tasks and where they can find the materials. There is also a column for me to sign off on when they have completed the task and I have checked it. What I am not happy with right now, is that I don’t really have a way to connect learning with progression. I feel like students are getting that, but I would like to be able to show it.

Self-Regulated Learning Rubric
This I just recently created because I felt like something was missing. I wanted to have a way for students to receive feedback on well they were moving through material and how well they were using class time. I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve from this teaching method and one of the big things I want is for students to become better self-regulated learners. I gave each student a copy of the rubric and I use the score to determine what I call the class work grade. It a grade based on how well students work during class time. My rubric includes 4 sections on a scale of 0-3. Self-Start, Self-Monitor, Goal-Setting, and Self-Assess. Basically can they get themselves started, keep themselves focused, set work goals and stick to them, and recognize when they need help and ask for it.  

My goals for next year:
  1. Improve my roster checklist to include dates to work on tracking timing a little bit better.
  2. Introduce the Self-Regulated Learning rubric in the beginning and create a student tracker for this to monitor their own work behavior each class period.
  3. Create learning goals mastery tracking system for students to track their learning not just their progression through content.
  4. Find a way to better communicate with parents how students are progressing in the class.

Look for more details on our tracking system on our teachers pay teachers page. Look for “Setting up Your Self-Paced Classroom” this June!
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classroom pick me up: find the mistake

4/3/2017

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What did they do wrong? Most problem sets in a math textbook have at least one problem where they look at a student’s work and they have to figure out what the student did wrong and how to fix it so that the problem is solved correctly. ​

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I love problems like this because it really challenges the students to look for mistakes, a great practice to learn for checking answers! Considering how great these types of questions are, we don’t ask them enough.
Training our students to evaluate work and find mistakes can be one of the most useful things we teach them in math (and other subjects!). This is why when I noticed my co-taught Algebra students making common mistakes consistently while learning to solve one step equations, I wanted to give them some training on catching their own mistakes without simply telling them to check their work. The best way to do that, I’ve found, is by turning it into a game! Here's how to do it:


Find the mistake:
Before Class
  1. Print off practice problems you would normally assign your students (20-30 of them should work).
  2. Cut the problems out or write them out on individual notecards. Number each notecard and create an answer key.
  3. “Solve” the problems on each notecard...but get it wrong. Be sure to show your work! Be sure to do this in a different ink color.
During Class
  1. Let your students know that the activity is a competition. Designate an area on the dry erase board or a poster where students can write their names or add a tally for their score. Designate another area, a table or desk, to place all of the notecards.
  2. Have each student get something to write on and something to write with.
  3. Instruct each student to get a notecard from the table and to write out the original problem on their own paper.
  4. Let them know that each solution on the notecards is incorrect and it is their job to figure out the mistake AND solve the problem correctly on their own paper. When they think they have done this, they should raise their hand.
  5. As soon as you see a raised hand, get over there as fast as you can! Running and making the whole thing feel urgent will increase the competition/game feeling! Check their work and have them verbally explain what they did. It is ok if this takes a second and other kids are raising their hands. Again, this helps create urgency and excitement!
  6. If the student is correct, have them write their name on the designated area, put their notecard back, and grab a new one. For each additional correct problem solved and mistake found, they can add a tally mark next to their name.

I love playing this game and hearing the students explain their answers as well as “someone else’s” mistake out loud. It is great to see those a-ha moments and class just flies by!

Try it out and let me know how it works in your class!
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  • Home
  • WWATD Blog
  • Educator Resources
    • Building Fundamentals
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    • PD That Works!
    • The Self Paced Classroom
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  • Signup for Freebies!