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Showing posts from August, 2019

Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
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The Grade Is Not the Goal: Innovate Inside the Box Reflection

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Too often the grade is the goal for our students, and we lose sight of learning in pursuit of a number. School needs to be something bigger than a grade. Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition. Reading the new book by George Couros and Katie Novak Innovation Inside the Box has me rethinking how I communicate purpose in my classroom. It is so easy for me to fall back into a mode where I accept compliance from my learners as an excuse to not define the purpose of what we do in class. Too often the compliance mindset sees the grade as the goal. It is the grade that is earned not the process or even the product. So, once the grade or credit has been earned the work can be forgotten. In the 1972 film The Candidate , Robert Redford play presidential candidate Bill McKay. The clip below shows the ending of the film when -- Spoiler Alert -- McKay wins the election. “What do we do n...
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Answers for Action: Innovate Inside the Box Reflection

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The first day of school is a prime day for hearing the voice of learners. In some way, many teachers use a variety of tools to learn about the students they are welcoming into the classroom. The first day of my class is spent having students make passion pages . But like many of us out there, this information doesn’t necessarily transform the learning in my classroom in the ways that it could. In their new book Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset , George Couros and Katie Novak make a point to stress the importance of discovering students passions One of the best ways to work with people is finding out what they love and tapping into it. The teachers who spent time finding out my passions made me feel like they had a genuine interest in who I was and what I loved. Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition. A quality formal...
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Applications for Flipgrid Camera in the Classroom.

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The new Flipgrid Camera has many incredible features that can be utilized in the classroom. If you are unaware of these features, read about them here on the Ditch that Textbook blog post. In this brief post, I will touch on some possible applications in the classroom. Student Generated Keys By using the whiteboard background, students can work through the problem solving process. Not only can they show their work visually, students can talk through the problem solving process. The key here is making use of the pause feature in the recording for simple breaks. If students don’t have touchscreens and drawing is too difficult with a trackpad, encourage them to use text boxes. Check out this amazing video by Jen   Saarinen! Student Introductions At the beginning of the school year, many students are asked to complete worksheets explaining who they are in terms of who they are as a learner and person. Many teachers have innovated this process by having students introduc...
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