I’ve been part of this blended learning world for quite a
while now, and I’ve trained a lot of educators on blended learning. Sometimes teachers have great success with
blended learning and it all goes great.
Other times teachers come back and tell me things like, blended learning
just isn’t for my kids. That made me
start to wonder. Is that really
true? Are there certain kids who blended
learning is good for and others who it is not good for? Well, let’s dissect this a little bit and
think about it. The purpose of blended
learning is to provide a personalized learning experience for all students by
using data to guide learning and leveraging technology to help facilitate
this personalized learning experience.
If I use that definition, is there any student you can think of that
blended learning wouldn’t benefit? I
can’t think of any. So, if blended
learning really is good for all learners, then why are some having success
while others are not?
Procedures and routines. We all know these are important and
we work really hard on them at the beginning of the school year. Once our kids get into the swing of things,
it’s pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the year. One thing that we often don’t realize is that
every time we do something new with our students, this becomes a new procedure
for them to learn. Let me give you an
example from my first day of teaching. I
had been a student in public school for 12 years, so I knew what school was
like. I had student taught, so I knew
how to be a teacher. You could say that
I learned all the routines and procedures of being a teacher. On my first day of teaching I got started
with my adorable little 3rd graders doing what I had been taught to
do on the first day – go over routines and procedures. About 15 minutes into class, one cute young
lady raised her hand. When I called on
her she said, “Aren’t you going to take us to breakfast, Mrs. Shaw?” I just stood there looking at her not even
knowing what to say. I mean, was I
supposed to take them to breakfast?
Should I take all of them? I
finally said, “Am I supposed to?” All
the students nodded their heads – probably because they were all starving. So, I lined my students up and trotted them
over to the cafeteria. The other
teachers were all in the cafeteria already when we arrived. They came over to me asking why it took me so
long to get down there and I was holding everything up by not showing up. I just stared at them blankly because I had
no idea what was even going on. So, I
bombed my first 30 minutes as a teacher.
I caused a little bit of crazy town on the first day of school, but did
that mean that I was a terrible teacher?
No. I simply had not been taught
the routines and procedures of taking my students to breakfast each
morning. Once I understood the routine,
then my mornings were great and I never caused chaos in the cafeteria
again.
This is the same thing we do to our students. We are going along teaching them in a
traditional manner such as lecturing, giving them notes, having them complete
worksheets, etc. Then all of a sudden we
tell them to do a station rotation where the kids rotate through 8 stations
over the course of a week. On top of
that, each station has different tasks for the kids to do – some that they have
never done before and some that use completely new technology tools. Then we sit back and watch. What is it that we see? Kids who are confused. Kids who don’t get finished. Kids who are off task. So, we decide that blended learning doesn’t
work with “our kids.”
If you have the right procedures and routines in place,
blended learning can be done successfully anywhere. I’ve seen it done very successfully in the
poorest schools where kids have to walk through metal detectors just to enter
their own school building. What do these
schools have that other schools do not?
High expectations, routines, procedures, and strong relationships.
Let’s take a look at four ways that we can make blended
learning a success in all classrooms.
1. Explicit Teaching and Practice, Practice, Practice!
We must intentionally teach students the new
structure that you are going to be using and then have them practice doing a “walkthrough”
of the structure. For example, if you
want to have your students do a station rotation then practice splitting them
into groups and having them move to their first station. For the sake of practicing give each group a
fun, review task to complete while at the practice station. Meanwhile you can walk around to each station
to make sure that students know what they are supposed to do… 1. Read the task
card at your station. 2. Work as
directed on the card (groups, pairs, individual, etc) to complete the task. 3.
Stay on task while at the station.2. I’m Stuck! Now What?
Students need to know what to do if they don’t
understand something or have a question.
I’ve seen different ways to handle this such as having an expert in each
group that can help while the teacher is working with other students. Another strategy I’ve seen is using colored
cups – green goes on top if you are doing well and red goes on top if you need
help. A lot of teachers use the strategy
3 before me where students must ask 3 other students for help before asking the
teacher. Any strategy that you want to
use here is fine, you just need to make sure to have a procedure in place so
students are not constantly interrupting you while you are working with small
groups of students.
3. Student Roles
Create systems that put students in the
driver’s seat to manage their own learning by creating job roles for the
students. If you are doing stations,
then have a student who is the “time keeper.”
Their job is to set the class timer so the whole class can see how much
time they have left in that rotation.
Have “cruise directors” who can help manage the transition from one
station to another. This frees you up to
reset the teacher station and prepare for the next group. Assign one student in each group to be the “materials
manager.” Then this student can make
sure to get all needed materials when the group starts at a new station and
minimizes extra movement within the classroom.4. Data, Data Everywhere!
One important last step that will cement all
of this together is to make sure you are collecting some sort of data every
day. It could simply be a quick exit
ticket or a Quizizz, but you need something to hold the students accountable
for learning and also a way to guide the learning for the next day. Basically, you need to know who got the
concept today and who didn’t. By
collecting data each day, you always have that information at your fingertips
and can use that to create groups, guide re-teaching and inform enrichment.