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 ...
I recently posted about the collaboration Megan Peschke and I have created a shared Flipgrid grid between her kindergartners and my high school physics students. We conducted introductions which took on a life of their own. We have moved on from hellos to address to science content. My students are currently in a unit on sound and waves. Flipgrid was a great way to share learning during our energy unit. So, my students are sharing their learning with me and the kindergartners. The one major online interactive hub for exploring sound that is easily accessible across devices and different age levels is Chrome Music Lab . If you are not familiar with it. It is a free set of interactive labs created by Google exploring different aspects of sound. This exploration and sharing took place over a couple of different activities. In our physics class, these activities were part of a series of applications of concepts students had learned during flipped interactive lectures conducted in P...