Being a Blended Bear: My Experience with Blended Learning
By: Lauren Graziano, Oakdale High School
grazianosclass.weebly.com
October 2017
Before the Bell — Where I Began:
When I first began my journey with blended learning I had no idea where to begin. Like any teacher, I had to think, “How will my students understand this?” I kept asking myself, “How can I make this work for them and how can I manage it?” But like anything, I just had to try. Try I did. Try and fail. Fail again. And again. But then I found what worked for my classroom and more importantly, what worked for my students. I had a large class of merit level ninth graders and knew I had to keep their attention, so I started with a station rotation model and kept everything simple. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I continued teaching through Google Classroom and adapted my lessons to create student choice. I quickly realized I had to manage the amount of work I was assigning and how long I was allowing them to do it; I felt like a new teacher all over again with struggling pacing, wait time, and vigor. Through trial and error I found a happy medium for my merit and honors level classes and students. I changed the paths they got to choose to learn from and allowed them varying time to get to our essential questions and overall lesson objectives. I used alliteration for the station tasks, so the students could pick up on the concepts quicker. For example, I had to keep track of all the tasks I wanted to get to in a week, month, semester. Wednesdays were always my days to do vocabulary and that stayed that way: Word Wednesday. My stations were originally based off of music lyrics, I came up with four concepts for me to handle my English curriculum with: Check, Connect, Create, and Choice.
During Class — Station Rotations at the High School Level:
I wanted them to create something after the experience, so they could walk away with something learned and I called them Creation Stations. Each station was a concept for what I had already done in the classroom, I was just allowing students to choose how they approached it now. Check (reading checks), with a little help from Ice Cube, “Check yourself, before you wreck yourself!” This was a station I had questions or tasks related to our texts. The Connect Station “The Skills to Pay the Bills” was all about skills to connect to real life or application methods. I wanted to see if students were really understanding material and could apply it. I used many options here for grammar and reading comprehension or skills that applied to the most recent realm of study like idioms for To Kill a Mockingbird. I used websites and games both interactive and non-digital: NoRedInk, NewsELA, QR Cubes, Contest writing, etc. I made the lessons thematic and connected the skill sets to student agency; I created mini lessons for each station with options for students to decide on. I struck gold. I had been teaching this curriculum for a few years and I had so many activities, skills, and lessons up my sleeve, I could finally use them all at once! Later, this year, my third year with blended learning, I felt comfortable adding more models to the mix: Revision Mission, a model built solely on revisions for essays and how the writing process works and I added a Critique Station to my four original Check, Connect, Create, and Choice. I love that alliteration! This was a great conferencing station for me to talk with students about their writing, a way to give my crazy comments some attention and avoid students just looking at writing grades and nothing further. I loved the amount of personal one on one time stations allowed over a few days that I never seemed to build into my curriculum before.
Finally, I had to find a way to organize all I wanted to show, teach, and expose them to in a way that allowed my students a choice in how they learned and discovered it. I modeled. I color coordinated. I alphabetized. I alliterated all.
My Blended Learning Checklist:
Blended learning, personalized learning, was an incredibly hard task to manage for me -- to allow them the control, especially ninth graders. I mean did they even know where to start? Would they actually do the work themselves and advocate for their own learning?! They did. It was scary for me but that incredibly hard task became an extremely simple strategy. Students wanted more work, they got concepts quicker, scores went up, and I scrambled to come up with new material, while challenging all levels of my levels in each class! I easily found the reluctant learners, the weaker students, the stronger students, the leaders, the quiet ones, and the ones who loved the independence and trust I now allowed them to have in my classroom. Digitally or personally, my students created a positive, productive environment and were appreciative for the freedom in their learning. Blended learning allowed me to see the pride in learning through my students’ eyes, trust them, give them a choice, and they will surprise you every time. The importance I’ve found in this process is you are continually learning yourself. I am working on a research tool now to prove the effectiveness of personalized learning on student reading comprehension level. I saw such a change in my students’ demeanor, work ethic, and confidence. I eventually saw and even better testament to their gains with PARCC scores and grades that I felt truly improved. I knew I had to continue allowing students the chance to learn their own way. Today, I continue to research new ways to give them challenges: flexible seating, more resources, Google Scavenger Hunts, and I’m learning with them! There’s never a dull moment.
grazianosclass.weebly.com
October 2017
Before the Bell — Where I Began:
When I first began my journey with blended learning I had no idea where to begin. Like any teacher, I had to think, “How will my students understand this?” I kept asking myself, “How can I make this work for them and how can I manage it?” But like anything, I just had to try. Try I did. Try and fail. Fail again. And again. But then I found what worked for my classroom and more importantly, what worked for my students. I had a large class of merit level ninth graders and knew I had to keep their attention, so I started with a station rotation model and kept everything simple. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I continued teaching through Google Classroom and adapted my lessons to create student choice. I quickly realized I had to manage the amount of work I was assigning and how long I was allowing them to do it; I felt like a new teacher all over again with struggling pacing, wait time, and vigor. Through trial and error I found a happy medium for my merit and honors level classes and students. I changed the paths they got to choose to learn from and allowed them varying time to get to our essential questions and overall lesson objectives. I used alliteration for the station tasks, so the students could pick up on the concepts quicker. For example, I had to keep track of all the tasks I wanted to get to in a week, month, semester. Wednesdays were always my days to do vocabulary and that stayed that way: Word Wednesday. My stations were originally based off of music lyrics, I came up with four concepts for me to handle my English curriculum with: Check, Connect, Create, and Choice.
During Class — Station Rotations at the High School Level:
I wanted them to create something after the experience, so they could walk away with something learned and I called them Creation Stations. Each station was a concept for what I had already done in the classroom, I was just allowing students to choose how they approached it now. Check (reading checks), with a little help from Ice Cube, “Check yourself, before you wreck yourself!” This was a station I had questions or tasks related to our texts. The Connect Station “The Skills to Pay the Bills” was all about skills to connect to real life or application methods. I wanted to see if students were really understanding material and could apply it. I used many options here for grammar and reading comprehension or skills that applied to the most recent realm of study like idioms for To Kill a Mockingbird. I used websites and games both interactive and non-digital: NoRedInk, NewsELA, QR Cubes, Contest writing, etc. I made the lessons thematic and connected the skill sets to student agency; I created mini lessons for each station with options for students to decide on. I struck gold. I had been teaching this curriculum for a few years and I had so many activities, skills, and lessons up my sleeve, I could finally use them all at once! Later, this year, my third year with blended learning, I felt comfortable adding more models to the mix: Revision Mission, a model built solely on revisions for essays and how the writing process works and I added a Critique Station to my four original Check, Connect, Create, and Choice. I love that alliteration! This was a great conferencing station for me to talk with students about their writing, a way to give my crazy comments some attention and avoid students just looking at writing grades and nothing further. I loved the amount of personal one on one time stations allowed over a few days that I never seemed to build into my curriculum before.
Finally, I had to find a way to organize all I wanted to show, teach, and expose them to in a way that allowed my students a choice in how they learned and discovered it. I modeled. I color coordinated. I alphabetized. I alliterated all.
My Blended Learning Checklist:
- What will make my students want to read and write more?
- How will I keep them engaged? What are their interests?
- How can I make it easy for me to manage?
- What will keep me organized? What will be acceptable to grade?
- If this does/doesn’t work? Why?
- How can I learn from this? How can I get authentic student feedback too?
- What resources can I give students to help?
- How can I model this for them? How can I create a visual? How can I help?
- How can I model this for them? How can I create a visual? How can I help?
Blended learning, personalized learning, was an incredibly hard task to manage for me -- to allow them the control, especially ninth graders. I mean did they even know where to start? Would they actually do the work themselves and advocate for their own learning?! They did. It was scary for me but that incredibly hard task became an extremely simple strategy. Students wanted more work, they got concepts quicker, scores went up, and I scrambled to come up with new material, while challenging all levels of my levels in each class! I easily found the reluctant learners, the weaker students, the stronger students, the leaders, the quiet ones, and the ones who loved the independence and trust I now allowed them to have in my classroom. Digitally or personally, my students created a positive, productive environment and were appreciative for the freedom in their learning. Blended learning allowed me to see the pride in learning through my students’ eyes, trust them, give them a choice, and they will surprise you every time. The importance I’ve found in this process is you are continually learning yourself. I am working on a research tool now to prove the effectiveness of personalized learning on student reading comprehension level. I saw such a change in my students’ demeanor, work ethic, and confidence. I eventually saw and even better testament to their gains with PARCC scores and grades that I felt truly improved. I knew I had to continue allowing students the chance to learn their own way. Today, I continue to research new ways to give them challenges: flexible seating, more resources, Google Scavenger Hunts, and I’m learning with them! There’s never a dull moment.
Carrie Mehl, Caitlin Patrick, Alysa Greer, and Lauren Graziano,
all OHS Teachers presenting on Blended Learning at SoMIRAC.
all OHS Teachers presenting on Blended Learning at SoMIRAC.
HMH and Student Testimony, 2015:
Student Testimonials
GRADE 9:
"I felt like I was taken into consideration."
-- Ninth grade student, 2015
"Using a Chromebook in my classes has helped me make myself more organized and productive, because it is extremely easy to find where everything is and not lose anything that has been assigned. Using a Chromebook outside of school has made getting work done more fun because we don't have to write everything out we can just pull out our portable Chromebook and log onto it and get our work done. Learning this way has definitely had a positive effect on my grades because access is so easy, checking grades is 10x easier, so all I have to do is click the login button and it logs me in. This is my second year using the Chromebook and I do not want to stop using it now. Last year I was in a merit English class and using the Chromebooks made everything so much easier that I got my grades high enough to move up to honors this year."
--Zach, Tenth Grade Student, 2016, Two year Blended Learning Student
"Blended learning has made me a more organized and more efficient student. It allows me to keep all of my documents in one place so that they are easier to keep track of and I am able to turn them in on time without having to worry about losing them. Also, having all of the assignments in classroom makes it easier to know what I have to be doing at a certain time. The teacher can post multiple links on classroom with a description and then allow the student to finish the work on their own. Using the Chromebooks has definitely had a positive effect on my grades. While doing assignments, I can take out my Chromebook and look up what certain words or phrases mean. I am also able to check my grades at any time during the day, and that makes it easier to notify the teacher about any questions I may have about the grades that have put in. Taking notes and writing papers has become much easier with the use of the computers."
-- Michael, Tenth Grade Student, 2016, Two year Blended Learning Student
GRADE 10:
"I am very grateful that we students of FCPS can have our own laptops for a semester, when we have English. The laptops are necessities for students in my opinion because teachers and more curriculum have been teaching digitally. In the 21st century technology has progressed to a need in our lives. All classes have been using Google Classrooms, Google Docs, online assignments, and more. The laptops have helped me for all my classes, it is the most useful tool that helps progress my learning. I use my laptop for all my classes, Biology, Geometry, English and Modern World. It helps me be more independent and organized. Since I use my laptop in all my classes I can get work done at an efficient rate wherever I have wifi. Also which is a huge advantage is that I do not have to carry the heavy textbooks everyday which would weigh down my backpack even more; but I am the type of person who does not like to read off the screen for a long continuous of time. In Biology I am able to sign out a textbook, and leave it at my house. This is convenient because for my homework assignments I can read off the textbook in front of me, and have my laptop typing up my answers. I prefer to write down my notes on a piece of paper, that is my preference not speaking for all students. Having the laptops do help me, but I like to have an extra note sheet to help myself out for studying or what not. I use my laptop for projects, essays, or worksheets our teacher provides. On another note the laptops help the students stay on top of things, it keeps the class environment running smoothly when we have a sub. It is very convenient to us and our teachers, who already have our assignments out on classroom and there is no hassle waiting for computers. Everyone has their own laptop and can go at their own pace which helps students individually be more independent. The laptops have made such a huge positive impact to my learning, independence, projects, and so much more. I would like for students of FCPS to use the laptops all year long, I know my next semester when I do not have English I am going to struggle with assignments digitally. I am taking Leadership 1 where I write essays, Chemistry where I I type up my labs, and Algebra 2 for completing worksheets. The laptops have such a great impact on my learning I can imagine how helpful they would be again for my next semester. "
-- Madison, Tenth Grade Student, 2016, Blended Learning Student