A lot of the conversation about blended learning

focuses on like the tools and the software.

But it rarely talks about the on the ground techniques and tools

that the teacher does in the classroom, and that's where we're going now.

What I would call the moves of a blended learning teacher.

Now a caveat; this might be a bit in the weeds, and if you're

not going to be in a actual classroom

setting, feel free to skip this next section.

But I personally think it's by getting into the

weeds that we start to make this real and

tangible, and you can actually start to understand, how do

we succeed as a teacher in these new kinds of classrooms?

>> Doug Lemov wrote this great book, Teach Like a Champion, that

profiles some of these strategies for

getting great student outcomes in traditional classrooms.

So we asked the teachers in our blended learning

schools, what are their strategies for getting great student outcomes.

And they shared some great strategies and systems.

>> Alright if you can hear my voice clap once.

[SOUND]

>> If you can hear my voice put your hands on your head.

If you can hear my voice close your screens.

[NOISE]

And, get ready for mad minute fluency. >> Yes.

>> Some tools and routines that I used in my

blended classroom and I've seen work in other blended classrooms.

Definitely you still always need an attention signal.

lots of blended teachers use lots of different signals, but imagine

you've got 20, 30, 40, 50 kids, with ear buds in.

And they're staring at their screen.

They're not going to hear your ding, they're not going to hear your clap, or

your stomp, or whatever it might be, and so I've

actually done a lot of, kind of, stadium style wave.

With kids, where I might tap a kid on the shoulder

with two fingers, the first kid, and they put their hand up.

But then they, or, I'm sorry, before they put their hand up, they know to

tap the next kid and the next kid and it kind of waves around the room.

And honestly, the attention signal can take a little longer than

a normal kind of classroom a, attention signal, but that's the

sort of thing that we figured out.

>> Think about the act of starting a class, and how teachers

do what we call a do now or some sort of launching activity.

>> In a blended classroom, teachers and students

need entrance procedures and they need exit procedures.

One of the things I like about a

blended classroom is that, if your kids are walking

in, you don't need to create a Do Now, or a warm up, or anything like that.

The Do Now or warm up for those kids,

for whom it's their turn on the computers. It's, go to your computer and start.

Just get right back to work wherever you were when you logged out the last time.

Whether the last time was an hour ago, or two weeks ago, or whatever it was.

When it comes to an exit procedure, I think

it's really important that kids, much like the old adage,

you know, when we're off hiking and camping, we're

going to try and leave it cleaner than we found it.

That you want to be really clear with

kids, about what you want the computer stations

to look like when they exit. So, I used to do one knuckle keyboards.

Which meant the kids would put their knuckle there, and that

was the space between the edge of the table and the keyboard.

And, then we'd look down the rows and

we could see, you know, basically what was correct.

And it really helped kids understand because wires

get crisscrossed, entangled, that this is this station's

mouse and keyboard and everything is the way

it's supposed to be and it gives that kind

of structure and order, and then you can dismiss and it real, I

found that it helped bring kind of an element of rigor to the classroom.

Just the physical maintenance of, of the space.

>> In blended learning, there are often

more transitions than in a traditional classroom.

Just think about a station rotation model where

students are rotating between the online learning and small

group instruction, or think about a lab model

where students are rotating from the learning lab and

then into the traditional classrooms.

Managing these transitions and making them tight, and really

fit well with the learning schedule, is really critical.

[NOISE]

>> Team Courage, please sign out, Team Ghanas,

please go to the iPads. Team, other Team Otter, go to the iPads.

Team Ghanas,

please

go to the

[INAUDIBLE].

[NOISE]

Alright, Team Courage,

please me a folder and

[INAUDIBLE].

[NOISE]

Alright, Team Courage, please sit in the purple, blue, or green rows.

10, 9

[INAUDIBLE]

Sitting on your folder. Two.

[NOISE]

One.

[NOISE]

Devon, our feet are on the line. 'Kay, I want you in and logged on in 10

seconds, let's go. >> In a typical class, we

simply ask students to raise

their hand for support. But in a blended

class, that might look different. >> When we first see students enter

environments where they can learn at their own pace, we

see the ping pong effect, is what we call it.

And students don't know what to do, their hands start shooting up.

The teacher's looking around, there's 20 hands, and they don't know

who to respond to and if you would have put a camera

at the top of the room you would just see them,

it's like whack a mole, they're just ping ponging around the room.

And pretty consistently we've seen folks who

are thinking about pedagogy, and basically inventing pedagogy

on the fly.

But, really getting to the same place where, here's a hierarchy of things that

you need to explore when you need help as a student, and some of that is the online

resources before you, some of that is knowing to turn to a peer next to you,

some of that is knowing who the expert is in the room, either teacher or peer.

some of it's reading the instructions again.

Some of it's asking the teacher, or someone, some of it's asking the

resource person that's around.

But really helping kids know what resources

are available to them, is what allows the

teacher to free up their time in a

way where they can use it really strategically.

>> Getting help in a blended classroom, you need a routine on blended, on

getting help and I, I like to have a really high bar that the kids.

That the teacher doesn't be the, the helper

when the kids are online for a few steps

down the row.

So in a blended classroom, as in any classroom, kids are going to need help.

And one of the things that I think is

really important, is that kids have a long runway

of kind of working and trying to help themselves,

and be as, self directed and, independent as possible.

So in my, what I've seen sometimes is that a kid

might not actually raise their hand and get the teacher's help,

for maybe two or three days worth of sessions

on the computer, struggling and working their way through.

Because they're doing things like taking the hints.

Watching the videos that support, checking another website,

trying to, trying to master that concept in another

program that teaches it a different way, and

bringing the learning then back into the original program.

Maybe quietly checking with a neighbor, lots of, lots of strategies that I

want the students to use before they raise

the hand looking for in-class human teacher support.

>> One of the most challenging things in working with

students when they show up here, is that they're used

to putting their hand in the air and having a

teacher answer their question, and do the learning for them.

So we've had a lot of work to, to undo or things for students to unlearn.

It's taken time, and it's taken intentional lessons that our teachers

have built.

Around how you can be challenge seeking, how you can shift your strategies.

All of the non-cognitive skills that go

along with being, developing perseverance and grit.

We've built lessons for those, and having a common vocabulary and common

lessons goes a long way, especially working with our young sixth graders.

Moves of the Blended Learning Teacher I

Blended Learning: Personalizing Education for Students

Meet the Instructors