Modern Classrooms - Blended Learning Reflections

I go back to work in 10 days, so I decided I'd start blogging about my thoughts as I prepare to return.

Last school year, I listened to the podcast Truth for Teachers featuring Modern Classroom Project, and I was immediately enthralled. My district has pushed for blended learning, but I've never felt 100% confident with it. I've tried it on and off with station rotation, mainly, but I always ended up overwhelmed. I really liked how the MCP was set up to be basically just a self-paced classroom, which is where I've kind of been settling at anyways. I always (try to) make videos for lessons, because it makes my life easier and it's so useful for students to be able to go back and review the video.

Before going fully into it with all of my classes, I started with my CS class, which is what I usually do when I want to experiment with something that I could use for both CS & Math.

I did make some mistakes along the way, but I'm glad that I tried it out first quarter.

Part of what I tried was setting everything up in Nearpod, because my district has purchased it, and ran into issues like I do every year: The transition from digital work to everything on Code.org with basic instructions/activities on Nearpod makes it harder for students. I originally was going to do the work on paper, with Nearpod as the instructions, but with students out so much still, that wasn't a great option. I felt like I still had to make everything remote & limit group work for students who were out. I ended up switching it to just Google Slides instructions with everything graded on Code like I've done in previous years.

Looking back at the materials from MCP for using Google Classroom, I would reorder my units on GC to show the oldest at the top.

I also was having a hard time getting everyone to do the warmups and they eventually melted away, but I want to prioritize those next semester, for math and CS. I tried grouping students by what lesson they were working on, but then students assumed those were their permanent seats and I had a hard time getting them back to assigned seats. I'm going to make sure next semester that they know they start the day in one seat but I may move them depending on what they are working on. That transition can be challenging, for them and me, but I know we can do it with practice.

I think that's enough reflecting for tonight, I'll blog more tomorrow (or maybe another day) on the pacing tracker.

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