Thursday, February 6, 2020

Is Blended Learning Really for Everyone?


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.


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