Checklist for Change

Recently I read a handful of articles dealing with the topic of providing equitable educational experiences to all of the learners we serve. I intentionally sought out pieces that discussed the types of learners I work with most often--learners living in poverty, English Language Learners, learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, and teachers. Teachers may seem an unlikely group in this list, but in my role as Literacy Coach, I think of teachers as a separate group of learners themselves. The article titled, "Equity in Schools: What Administrators Need to Know," was a great reminder for me that whatever we ask our teachers to provide our students--empathy, patience, high expectations, self-reflection--we must first provide this to our teaches. Because I view teachers as the lead learners in our schools, I've come to five changes I'd like to make in my practice and work with teachers. My goal is to make all adult learners in my school feel included so that they have the awareness, strategies, and desire to do the same for their students.  

Change 1: Brain Change is Possible and YOU matter!
      With roughly 50% of our students being labeled "Economically Disadvantaged," the article "Equitable Education for Students in Poverty Starts with the Teacher," presents many relevant points for the teachers with whom I work. My frequent conversations with teachers echo what Liebtag notes in her article about poverty's impact on children; "...students may come to school tired and hungry, be assertive in their behavior and unwilling to follow along, seem disengaged...it is these behaviors and indicators that educators are often left to navigate, in addition to trying to support students academically."  Certainly not always, but more often than not, when I hear teachers talk about the exhausting work of managing behaviors that have causes too large for them to ever fix, it is powerlessness and sadness that I sense much more than bitterness or unwillingness.  The truth that many, many of our students experience stress from living in poverty is not something we can change single-handedly.  The impact that stress has on our students' brains, however, is a change that we have the power to make.

     The first change I would like to make is to share information with teachers that shows them it is possible to change our brains and that they play a really important role in helping diminish the effects of poverty on their students' brains. I would like to start by sharing some information I learned in course I took about Growth Mindset and Neuroscience. Although their brains may not be impacted by poverty, I would like to share some activities with teachers to help them disrupt some thinking around an area of teaching that causes them discomfort in order to "rewire" their brains and create new neuropathways. My idea is to provide teachers the experience and opportunity to see how their own brain can change so they can believe it's possible for their students.  Secondly, I would like to share excerpts from Paul Tough's How Children Succeed to provide concrete examples of specific actions teachers/adults/coaches took to help diminish the negative impact of poverty and other trauma for their students. Hopefully, this information and experience will help teachers see that they do have power to make positive change for students.

Change 2-4: Addressing Beliefs about and Instructional Practices for ELL students.
Providing equitable education to our English Language Learners is an immediate concern for teachers at my school. Our population has changed drastically over the last 5-8 years, and English is not the first language of 66% of our current student body. While state-mandated RETELL certification has helped provide research and a bank of strategies for teachers, the reality of the changing structure of ELL programs in the school continues to challenge teachers' skills and confidence. Changes 2, 3, and 4 all center around providing more equitable education for our ELL students.

The Edutopia blog post, "Equity for English-Language Learners" cites research that ELL students are often subjected to instruction that doesn't offer them enough opportunities to "[engage] critically though oral or written work."  I am not surprised at all by this finding and I think it comes down to assumptions that turn into expectations which become actions. Last spring, I had the chance to discuss Sharon Draper's Out of My Mind with three 6^th grade female students who were in a book club.  They were outraged at how so many teachers in the protagonist's life underestimated what she was capable of and how much she really knew because of her cerebral palsy.  I asked the girls if they thought it was possible for adults to underestimate kids who don’t have an obvious physical disability.  The girls all nodded and one of the girls told us that when she came to the US from Brazil in third grade the teachers assumed she knew nothing just because she didn’t speak English.  She described her frustration at knowing more than she was able to communicate in English and how she was made to do what she considered “baby work.” Change 2 is about identifying the "bright spots" in our instruction where ELL students are being given valuable learning opportunities.

Change 2: Peer Observation is a great way to learn from colleagues but also to see students you might share in a different context.  I would like to increase Peer Observation among staff, specifically focusing on how many opportunities our ELL students are being given to engage in meaningful oral and written discourse.  For those who may be stuck in the mindset of low expectations, I would like to set up observations of classrooms where teachers regularly offer ELL students these kinds of experiences.  Ideally, we would have follow-up discussions that help the teachers discuss many aspects of the lesson—how the teacher intentionally planned to include the ELL students, which supports were provided that allowed the students access, and data from student talk that showed students interacting deeply with the content.  By observing peers with this focus and parsing out the specific teacher and student actions, hopefully, more teachers will offer more ELL students more rich learning experiences.

Change 3: Looking at Student Work Protocols and Double scale of Criteria

A major concern I hear from teachers of ELL students is how to assess what the students know.  They’re receiving messages about holding all students accountable to the same high standards which sometimes leads to using the same assessment rubrics, out of fairness, but then often times teachers feel as if students get over-penalized for limited English skills.  Of course, this leads to a great conversation about the importance of being clear about the true goal of the assignment—writing skills or content knowledge—but in the meantime, the idea of “double scale of criteria" to separate out the language skills from students’ understanding of the concept is one I’d like to explore more.

We are fortunate to have Professional Learning Group time built into our schedule, two days per six day cycle, and we are comfortable using protocols. Before asking teachers to use a double scale of criteria, I would like to support the practice by using Looking at Student Work Protocols, such as the Atlas Protocol, in the Grade level team PLGs.  These teams are made up of 4-5 teachers of all different contents who share the same students.  I would like to use the Atlas protocol to look at ELL students work to have the teachers uncover what they can tell that the students do know and understand about the content from the work.  The process of discussing and listing all the students do know, will help dispel assumptions about ELL students' content knowledge.  As a group, we could help the teacher create a rubric that accounts for all the content criteria he/she expects to see in any students’ response.  I could see using the WIDA “Can-Do” statements to help build a languages skills rubric that can be reasonably expected from a student at each level (1-5).  Each teacher in the team could create a double-scale of criteria rubric for an upcoming assignment and bring student work back to the team to evaluate using the criteria.  Hopefully, this practice will reinforce high expectations for ELL students and communicate clearly to teachers and students their content knowledge.


Change 4: Listening to Students and Teachers
Several years ago our UDL Team put together a student focus group of about 45 students.  The group was reflective of our school's diverse population and the students met periodically with members of the UDL team to discuss their learning experiences in the school and how to make learning more meaningful for them. I would like to recreate this feedback group, but focus mostly on the students in the ELL classrooms--this would include the ELL students and the non-ELL students who are in class with them. Initially, we could give the students a survey with some questions about their experiences and then use their responses to guide a conversation. Additionally, I would like to have a focused discussion with the teachers of ELL students, both the ELL teachers and the content teachers who are also SEI endorsed, to hear their perspectives on teaching ELL students. It would be interesting to share with the teachers some of the anonymous feedback from the students to see if there are any common themes.  Ultimately, the point of this change is to just listen to what the people who are most impacted--the students and teachers--have to say about the success and challenges they face so that we can make more informed decisions.

Change 5: Engagement and Feedback Strategies 
The Hanover Research Brief titled "Closing the Gap: Creating Equity in Classrooms" provides a Checklist for Responsive Instruction with explicit teacher behaviors. I appreciate that these instructional strategies, categorized into three groups--engagement, learning environment, and feedback--are applicable across all content, grade-level, and cultural backgrounds.  I can think of many teachers who employ a number of these strategies as part of their regular practice but who may not be able to articulate this to a colleague because it has become such a normal part their practice.  Although this tacit knowledge can sometimes be difficult for a teacher to point out, if you talk with the students of those teachers, it becomes quickly apparent that the students take note of all the small gestures that make such a big difference in how students feel in a classroom.  Rather than passing this list checklist onto teachers and saying, "Reminder, to be culturally responsive you have to do these things.", I would like to enlist a group of colleagues in my building, such as coaches and administrators or the Instructional Leadership Team and review this checklist.  As a small group, I would like us to select a few strategies, for example, "Welcome students by name as they enter the classroom."  and commit to employing this strategy with adults first.  This might mean greeting your colleagues by name when they enter the building in the morning, come into the teachers' room when you are there, enter a PLG meeting, etc.  After we've chosen the few strategies and talked about how that might look for adult to adult interaction, we could start implementing them and make note of our colleagues' responses to us over time.  This sounds like a very small change, but I believe it takes these consistently small actions over long periods of time to build trust and create a climate where everyone feels valued.  At the very least it is hypocritical, maybe impossible, to hold teachers accountable for creating this climate for our students when it does not exist among adults.

Teachers have the Power

I recently listened to a Better Leaders Better Schools podcast recommended by my friend and colleague @KMeniss, about teachers who bully kids.  The specifics of the cases discussed on the podcast are examples of bullying that are verbal and sometimes physical abuse.  While these may represent the extremes of bullying, there are so many important points in this episode that stood out to me which apply to less harsh versions of the way teachers relate to students. 

Listening to the podcast brought me back in time to a course I took about 10 years ago as part of my Masters in Ed program called, "Succeeding with the Resistant Student," taught by Professor Joseph Schechtman.  I've always credited the courses in Cooperative Learning, which provided me many powerful structures, as the courses that had the greatest impact on my instruction. This podcast episode caused me to reflect on Prof. Schechtman's class and the many ways in which his course shaped and gave me permission to act on my beliefs about what students need from me as a teacher, but also as an adult whose job it is to keep them safe and help them feel welcomed.  

Because I am the type of learner who saves notebooks from all of my favorite classes, I was able to go back to my notes from 2009 and reread where my thinking was during Prof. Schechtman's course.
Toward the end of the course, Prof Schechtman asked us to record 10-15 of the most important things we had learned.  

Some highlights from my list:
*Beliefs are at an emotional level, can't be changed by logic. 
*All behaviors have a purpose. 
*Many health/physical issues have an emotional root.
*Kids are innately motivated to master the environment.
*90% of problems occur because the teacher intervenes too late--look for the signals.
*Every intervention should be aimed at increasing self-esteem.
*School is an artificial environment. 
*Every student wants to learn.
*Physical movement positively impact focus, comfort, and learning.
*You can only control how you respond.
*Benefits of music on focus and breathing.
*Teachers have the power.


Reading these highlights a decade later through the lens of Universal Design for Learning it is easy for me to see why I was so immediately drawn to the framework. My fundamental beliefs shaped from this course that all students want to and can learn, that their behavior offers a reflection of the environment I've provided and that I must offer students a variety of ways to express themselves, show up in many places on the UDL framework. After taking this course I introduced daily Brain Gym movements into our routine, as well as a number check-in system for students to communicate with me how they were feeling so I could identify how ready they were to access the learning.  Certain routines faded away for a variety of reasons, but I wish I had learned about UDL in this course to help me make these connections about why these practices are effective with students.

One aspect of my learning, "Teachers have the power," is a belief more than a routine and this is what transported me from my car, listening to the podcast about teachers bullying students, right back to Prof. Schechtman's class.  If I hadn't known it before his class, I certainly thought a lot more about how much power teachers truly do have over students.  We have the obvious power of telling students when and how to do their work, who they can or can't be in a group with, how they can behave or to what extent they are allowed to share their thoughts and opinions in class.  All these tangible rules and guidelines we lay out for students also send implicit messages about what we believe they are capable of and how much we care about them as people first and learners second.  

In the podcast, Jennifer Fraser says that she works to "empower kids to know their rights." I connect with both her sentiment and the conviction with which she states it and it reminded me of a classroom example from several years ago.  While sharing the rule, just one, for our classroom--show respect to all people, ideas and things in our classroom--I explained to the students that I will never be okay with them telling each other to "shut up."  I assured them they can trust I would never disrespect them or their ideas in that way and they really shouldn't accept or allow anyone to speak to them that way.  Months later a building substitute was covering my morning classes and told my Pre-AP class to "shut up."  The students were outraged and told the substitute that no one was allowed to speak to them that way.  They even proceeded to seek the substitute out later in the day to demand an apology.  You may imagine the awkward conversation that ensued when the substitute shared the story of the "disrespectful and entitled kids" with me later that day.  I can't remember all the details of how the issue ended, but I do remember feeling proud that my students felt empowered enough to know that just because a teacher holds the power of being an adult, it doesn't mean that they should use that power to make students feel inferior.  

Post-Podcast Questions Still Rattling Around in My Brain 

• How can some teachers effectively empower students if other teachers in the same building see this as "disrespectful" or students who "don't know their role"?

• If we truly want to empower all students, do we need to redefine "disrespect"?

• Can we really empower students if only some staff members are comfortable with this shift in power?

Final thoughts...
My job as a teacher exists because of students so I recognize that I need to work with students in order to work for them.  For me to sustain the energy, desire, and effort it takes to work for students, I need them to respect and appreciate me--I can't get there without acknowledging that they have power, they have voices.  It is my job to help them use those as positive forces.
I would love to hear others' thoughts and perspectives on this idea of teachers having and using their powers to empower students. 

Power Standards Protocol

"Without a definite process to prioritize standards, teachers will often "pick and choose" those standards to emphasize based on what they like to teach, what they have curriculum materials for, what they think students need to know and be able to do the following year, and/or those standards most likely to appear on the state test. But without using specific criteria for prioritization, everyone will most likely select different standards from their colleagues and then wonder why students come to them each year with such an inconsistent understanding of prior-grade standards."  -Larry Ainsworth, Ed Week Jan 2015

Last Friday the Literacy Coach meeting was expanded to include teachers from grades 2-12 to engage in a protocol around identifying ELA Power Standards in each of these grades.  To Ainsworth's point, since our adoption of the Common Core State Standards, we have never had the opportunity to work in vertical teams like this, discussing and selecting priority standards based on a shared set of criteria.  At the middle school level, I believe our extensive work in content PLGs and the collaboration among the coaches both here and in the 5DP have helped us think about the standards we prioritize, but that criteria on which to prioritize standards had been more implicit. Before jumping into the standards themselves, the protocol in which we engaged began with an explicit explanation of the criteria all grade-level teams would use to select power standards.

We discussed the standards using these four criteria:

• Endurance: extends beyond one year of learning. Applies to real-life concepts & skills students will need beyond your class/school 
• Leverage: Has application in contents disciplines other than yours 
Readiness for the next level of learning: contains the knowledge and skills students need in order to move onto the next level
• External Exams: will be assessed on standardized exams, i.e. Common Assessments, MCAS 2.0                                                (Criteria descriptions "Priority Standards: The Power of Focus" Ainsworth)

The Protocol 

With our shared understanding of the criteria by which we should be evaluating the standards, our director, Dr. Porter, charged us with the task of identifying just 10 priority standards for our grade level.  To organize this, she had placed chart paper around the room labeled with each of the 5 strands and how many standards we should prioritize per strand: Reading Literature(3-4), Reading Informational Text(3-4), Writing(3), Speaking & Listening(2), and Language (2).  

My grade-level team consisted of myself and Briana, a 6th grade ELA teacher at SBA. Each grade level team began by independently reading through all standards in the Reading Literature Strand and independently selecting 3-4 RL standards using the four criteria.  Once we had our agreed-upon standards we posted them on our grade level chart paper.  We then discussed our standards with the grade level team above and below us to see the connection or lack thereof in our standards selection.  There were certainly some differences, but often times when we looked at each particular grade's version of a standard, it helped us make sense of why they had been selected.  In a few cases, teams elected to remove or swap out a standard they had initially selected.

When Briana and I came together to discuss our selected standards we noticed a couple things. First, that we had each focused on many of the same standards and we only had to work to come to an agreement on the 4th of our 4 selected standards. Secondly, we had both used Endurance as our main lens for thinking about which standards to prioritize.  This big-picture thinking is essential, I think, but I also noticed as we moved through the strands and consulted with other grades that we had to adjust our standards at times when we incorporated more of the other criteria. Readiness, for example, was a criterion that we used more in our discussions with vertical teams about how the standards should build on each other.  

  

We repeated this same process of independent selection, grade-level team agreement, vertical team discussions for each of the remaining four strands.  The original parameters from Dr. Porter had given us the freedom to select up to 15 power standards over the strands, with the understanding that eventually we want to evaluate further to get our number as close to 10 as possible.  In our remaining time, we worked to see where we could make eliminations or consolidations in some cases.  Many grade level teams chose to view RL/RI standards 1 and/or 2 as the same general standard with different text-types.

Points to Consider

• These charts of selected standards are DRAFTS and remain open for revision and suggestions for other grade-level teachers who were not present during the protocol.  So please consider your grade level's draft and please feel free to send along feedback about the standards. 
• This does not change anything for the current school year. Once the Drafts are revised and finalized during Spring 2018. we will adopt the Power Standards beginning in the 2018-2019 school year.
• Selecting Power Standards does not mean all other standards are obsolete and can be ignored. The 10-ish standards that make it to the finalized Power Standards documents are the ones you will continue to teach and weave into your instruction on a year-long basis.  The remaining standards will be divided up into the Quarter Anchor Units based on where it makes sense to emphasize those particular standards.  This work begins October 27th.
• You'll notice Writing standards 1, 2, & 3 are absent from the posters. These writing standards are already emphasized in certain quarters of the year based on your anchor unit and the benchmark assessment.  Those writing standards remain where they are, emphasized in each particular quarter, but the Power Standards in the drafts reflect additional writing standards that meet the criteria for year-long priorities. 

Click Here to see a document I created to see the full chart pictured above.  I made a chart for grades 5-9 to give us a complete picture of where our students are coming from and where they are going.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this and to continue this work with anchor units.

Writing Center Observation

Last month I had the privilege to visit the Writing Center at Revere High School for the second time. During my first visit, I witnessed the tutors working with a History class full of students writing papers they had been assigned.  In that session I observed the Writing Tutors taking a variety of approaches.  A few tutors sat with groups of students with Chromebooks open, ready to provide feedback in real time, watch students' writing, processes, comment on students' feedback to each other, and also to ensure students understood the feedback given to them by peers. It was a student-driven, student-managed, highly productive environment. Watching the writing tutors in action sparked in me a desire to see the foundation of this work--to see the work they'd engaged in to become such effective tutors. So, over the summer I reached to the Writing Center Coordinator and she kindly invited me to visit the Center in September during her work with the tutors.

The group of six tutors, three male, three female, sat around a table joined by their teacher, Allison Casper, all holding copies of the same piece of narrative writing.  To practice this process of providing peers feedback on their writing, the tutors begin by offering their own writing to the group for analysis and feedback.  I joined the group as they were in the middle of sharing their feedback and questions about one of their fellow tutor's college essay.  They spoke about her piece with such respect as if they had read every line very carefully because, I sensed, they had.

"You have a lot of powerful phrases and words," one of her peers complimented.

Casper probed, "Can you give her an example?" Each of the tutors returned to the text and pulled out a few particularly powerful phrases to share with the writer.

The group talked about the different vignettes in her writing and a couple tutors shared how her piece reminded them of The House on Mango Street and wondered if she was in fact inspired by that text. As the tutors continued their discussion of the vignettes and ways to possibly reorder the stories for different effects, Ms. Casper jumped in to remind the writer about the importance of "following threads" that she has opened up for the reader.  The audience, the reader, was a constant part of the conversations as the tutors shared how certain aspects of the piece impacted them or drew them in.

When Casper moved the group to share what questions the piece raised for them, they asked, "What is the central theme?" "What were you trying to do in this paragraph?" This paragraph here, I wondered if you could elaborate on this type of  love?" "Which sickness do you think impacted you the most? Maybe you could write about that one?"   There was no expectation on the writer to have answers to these questions or even to share her thinking at the moment.  It was all very conversational as the group talked energetically about her writing and she absorbed their comments, sometimes jotting down notes in the margins of her copy of the piece.  To wrap up the feedback cycle, Ms. Casper reinforced for the writer just how much she had to think about as she moved into the revision stage of her writing.  On a practical note, she also reminded the writer to copy and paste into a new document before revising so she would never lose her original pieces.  Each of the tutors returned their copy of her writing back to her with all their notes for her to read later.

The group then moved onto another student whose narrative piece was also a college essay.  Casper began by asking the writer, "What were you trying to convey to the admissions board?" He responded easily, telling the group he was hoping to show that working during high school has made him a more patient person with better time management skills. Again, each member of the group had their own copy of the piece and followed along as the author read his piece aloud.  The group then engaged in a second, silent reading of the piece.

Ms. Casper moved the group from the individual reading into the feedback phase by, reminding them that they provide feedback in a particular order: "What works well in the piece? What questions do you have?"  The group praised his use of comedy and description of situations to which all shoppers could relate. He shared, somewhat nervously, that the chronology of his story probably wasn't accurate but that he had combined a bunch of memories.   One of his peers assured him, "I wouldn't worry about being totally truthful in your writing.  I had to fabricate a little because I couldn't remember all the details exactly."

Their exchange reminded me vividly of something Lucy Calkins had said when I heard her speak at the 2016 Don Graves Write Now! Conference. Calkins talked about the role of memory in narrative writing and she said just what this writing tutor said, you can't get stuck on being 100% truthful in narrative writing.  You may have a strong memory from childhood and you also remember outfits you wore as a child.  In narrative writing, you combine all the little details you remember with the larger memories that you can't forget.  It was beautiful to witness a writer who understood this about narrative assuage her peer's fear that his writing wasn't quite real simply because he'd played with a few details.

At some point, the conversation among the tutors and teacher began to sound a little like listening in on a book club.  They spoke about the details they appreciated and connected with as readers.  They wondered if the writer inserted a little more dialogue into a certain passage if it would help them understand another character more. They shared their confusion at certain parts and wondered at the writer's intentions.  Again, the writer remained fairly quiet during their conversation, soaking in their feedback and reflecting on the changes he will make when revising.

For homework, the students were assigned an article titled, "Minimalist Tutoring: Making Students Do All the Work" by Jeff Brooks. Intrigued by everything I had observed in their feedback session, I sought out and read the article myself. Brooks says, "We ought to encourage students to treat their own writings as texts that deserve the same kind of close attention we usually reserve for literary text." Brooks has many more concrete strategies and specifics on how to be a minimalist tutor, but this one quote sums up for me what I saw in the Writing Center.  There was such respect for each writer and their piece.  Everyone in the circle was giving equal attention, reverence, and reflective consideration to their own and each other's writing.  Again, their discussions brought me back to something Calkins said about the discussion around writing or finding a topic.  When a writer shares their ideas for a piece of writing with you, it is the listener's job to ask questions that increase the writer's energy to talk about and eventually write about their topic.

At the end of the session, Ms. Casper asked for my thoughts and energy was the only word I could think of to appropriately describe my experience there.  It was so clear to me that the constructive feedback and discussions around their pieces left each writer buzzing with energy to revisit their pieces and revise with a purpose. Just as the ideas for writing center has trickled down from college writing centers, I continue to think about what we can do for middle school students to recreate these thoughtful and powerful discussions about writing amongst peers.

UDL Virtual Tours: Environment Design

The start of the school year is often the time when teachers put into place the new decorating ides they've been thinking about over the summer.  It can be really tempting, especially if you've ever fallen into a Pinterest black hole or two, to add details to make your room look cool. An aesthetically pleasing classroom may look great, but it's important to also think about the users.  A universally designed classroom thinks first about its users--the learners--and the cool factor is an added benefit to all users.


Over the summer I watched a live-streamed video from the UDL-IRN that specifically spoke about the intentional environment designs in a classroom to make the room accessible and comfortable for all learners.  7th Grade ELA teacher Tanya Leon let us into her classroom and explicitly talked through the design decisions she had made.  Given that UDL is a problem-solving, solution-oriented framework, Tanya talked about the barriers she had encountered over the years with her writing workshop.  To minimize this barrier she included some small tables for writing groups and small group conferences.  She also appealed to her students to ask what they would like to see in their classroom.  Some students requested high-top cafe tables because it made them feel older.  This is a great example of a design decision she never would have made without asking for students' feedback.  I imagine students probably take pride in their classroom when they've had a say in how it's designed.  It's certainly not realistic or necessary for teachers to purchase furniture like this on their own.  Finding furniture that friends/family are looking to get rid of and using it in your classroom is one way to work on your design.  DonorsChoose.org is also a way for teachers to receive donations from others to benefit their students.  To listen to and see Tanya's portion of the webinar click the link here. http://tinyurl.com/T-L-classdesign

With the importance of intentional environment design and the help of our school's Technology Specialist (@j3dupuis), I recently put together something I'd been thinking about for a quite a while.   Several years ago at the UDL Summer Institute, I  saw a virtual tour of an empty classroom in a district that had been implementing UDL for a few years. Though the classroom had no students or teacher in it, there was still a lot to learn from the environment and materials themselves.  As visitors "toured" the classroom, we were able to click on magnifying glass shaped hot-spots that provided information about what intentional decisions the teacher had made concerning the physical space and available resources in the classroom.  I loved the idea of these virtual tours  but I wanted to recreate this with classrooms from our school to help SBA staff members see the purposeful environment designs their colleagues make to help them think about their students and their classrooms. A quick conversation with the tech teacher helped us stumble upon Roundme.

SBA UDL Virtual Tours
Take a step inside the a few SBA classrooms and see how they've designed their environments thinking about their learners.

360 Virtual Tour of SBA Classrooms
Grade 6  Classroom	http://tinyurl.com/UDL6-360
Grade 7  Classroom	http://tinyurl.com/UDL7-360
Grade 8  Classroom	http://tinyurl.com/UDL8-360

Roundme  
Roundme is a website and an app that allows you to easily create virtual reality tours from your personal photos.

Signing up for a Roundme account is free and allows you to create up to 15 tours a week.  There is a paid version available with additional capabilities and educators are entitled to a 50% discount if you provide the school's Tax Id. For the purposes I needed, the free account was more than enough.

Creating a Tour

Once you've signed into the site, click Create Tour in the upper right-hand corner. 

You can upload one of your own photos or you can browse from a bank of photos available. I used the Panoramic setting on my phone to take pictures of the classrooms I wanted and then uploaded these.  While the photo is being uploaded, it is stretched to created a 360 view of the space, so you want to avoid using a photo of a very small space. 

After selecting the photo, click upload and wait as the photo is turned into a moving 360 tour.

 

Your photo will now appear as a moving photo, giving the view a 360 degree view of the space. 

Creating Info Hot-Spots

The hot-spot element was essential for me when creating these virtual tours because I wanted to encourage thinking beyond "looks awesome" toward "oh, that's why he/she put that in her classroom." Creating hot-spots on Roundme proved to be extremely simple!

Click and drag the round white circle with the "i" and place it on the area of the photo you want to highlight. 

Release the hots spot and these boxes will appear.  Title your hot spot whatever you want users to see when they hover off the "i" circle during their tour.

In the description you can write what you'd like visitors to know and/or add a more zoomed in image of the details you want to share more information about.  Click "Create Hotspot" and it's saved.

Saving & Sharing Your Tour

Click on the settings wheel in the upper right-hand corner and enter the details of your tour and click save.

To Publish and Share your tour, switch the green pencil in the upper right-hand corner from right to left and it will turn to a blue and white eye.  When you click on the three white dots, click Share & Export and you will generate a link to invite visitors to your tour.  

                     

 

Roundme in the Classroom 

Using Roundme to create tours of classrooms prompted me to think about how this tool could be used by students.

One idea I had was a for Getting to Know You purposes: Students take a photo of a space that is important to them and insert hotspots to help teacher and peers gain more insight into their important space.  Possible spaces might be their bedrooms, a park they visit often, a church, a grandparents' house, or many more.  It's an easy way to learn more about students by seeing into their home world--where you will likely never visit.

There are many other ways to use this, I'm sure, and I'd love to hear how others would use Roundme with their students.

Reflections on Write Beside Them

Since becoming a coach a couple years ago, I have had the privilege and pleasure to spend more time in my colleagues' classrooms than I had ever been able to before.  Being welcomed into classrooms from all over the school definitely helps me observe patterns and trends.  One such trend I noticed was the students' enthusiasm and excitement I often witnessed during my visits to ELA theme classes. I saw students writing, reading, and discussing each others' blogs, in Books, Blogs, and Beyond.  Students in Speak Your Mind were presenting animatedly on topics they were passionate about.  And, as seen below, students literally jumping for joy when they published their Journalism podcast in the SBA Freedom student newspaper!

I had seen bits and pieces of this type of enthusiasm in my own classroom, but not on a regular basis, so I wondered: What is so different about writing in theme classes versus ELA class? In and out of PLG we began talking about this idea of "Real World" vs. "School Writing" and trying to connect with our most positive experiences teaching writing.  With this in mind, I set out to read a collection of professional books about writing instruction that would help breathe more "Real World" writing opportunities into school.    

 

Write Beside Them by Penny Kittle

I began this book mid-school year and honestly had a difficult time getting into it, so I just finished it at the start of the summer.  Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This had hooked me immediately and because I found practical practices for implementation it was a book I read quickly but definitely need to reread.  Whereas I  could pull a chapter or couple pages from Gallagher's book and say I'm going to try "this," I think Kittle's book reads better as a whole book.  It's a mix of theory, personal experience, and specific classroom practice that I appreciated once I'd finished it.  Without necessarily using the terms "Real World" vs "School Writing,"  Write Beside Them certainly focuses on the "personal investment," "choice of topic," and "authentic audiences," we'd been working to infuse into our "school writing."  

Ideas to Consider 

• Teacher as Writer: I read an excerpt from Gretechen Owocki's The Common Core Writing Book, where she says being a writing teacher who does not write is like being a piano teacher who does not play. Kelly Gallagher believes that the teacher is and must continue to be the strongest writer in the class by writing.  Write Beside Them is no exception as Kittle describes what a big role her own life as a writer plays in her classroom.  She talks about the challenges she found with using literature from her shelves or other published pieces as mentor texts.  Because these pieces were polished and published, she felt her students were missing out on seeing the messy and non-linear process that writing often is.  Instead, she shares messy drafts and unfinished pieces, writes in front of them with her writing projected, and makes her thinking visible and audible as she talks out her decisions. Regardless of how you share your writing with students, for me it comes back to Owocki's point that if we are not practicing the skill and art we're teaching, we will have nothing to share.
• Organization: A few years ago I watched an interview with Nancie Atwell where she talked about her writing workshop and a time when Don Graves visited her classroom.  Initially she was disappointed when his observation was "You're so organized" because she had wanted him to notice something that felt much more profound to her. She realizes that his comment did get to a central element of the writing workshop and she writes more about that here.  Kittle says, "Organization leads struggling writers to competence." (p.8).  It is the way she intentionally designs structures to organizes notebooks, writing groups, workshop time frames, furniture, reading & writing conferences, and more that provides Kittle's students the conditions to succeed and grow as writers.  
• Writers Notebook: Of course the idea of a writer's notebook is not groundbreaking, but I love what she says about why students need one: "The notebook is a place for all that bad writing that is essential to uncover good writing." (p.26). Quick Writes, for which Kittle shares many ideas, are the starting point for students' notebook writing.  The three step Quick Write process is to write, reread the writing to find places where you have more to say, take that idea from the quick write and write more.  "Rereading is an essential and often overlooked part of teaching writing."(p.51). This quote strikes me because I realize that in order for students to reread their work so they can write more they must have a large volume of writing as well as topics they care enough about to go deeper.
• Topics & Choice:  Kittle reflects on an experience she had years ago where she told her students they could write about anything they wanted.  Unsurprisingly, many students responded that they had nothing or didn't know what to write about, which helped her realize that "choice needs to be taught." (p.33).  The teacher's role is not to tell students what to write about, but rather provide students exercises and opportunities that help students figure out their topics themselves. Teachers' must support students affective networks by balancing the demands of the task--writing--and the resources--quick writing & talking with peers--available to students. Quick Writes are one way to help students uncover writing topics and the rereading is a huge part of this process. Kittle cites Lucy Calkins, "Children will never write well if they are accustomed to writing briefly.  Elaboration is one of the very first and most fundamental qualities of good writing," when she emphasizes the importance of rereading your own writing to notice " themes in thinking."  These themes often become the topic for our writing and students need a lot of time to make this happen.  They need time to write, time to talk and flesh out their ideas, time to read, and write again.  
• Response Groups: "Writers need lots of readers" (p.91).  Kittle's Response Groups are comprised of three students who remain together through a couple units of study.  They begin with a teacher-assigned task to examine a mentor texts together and eventually move on to share their own writing.  I LOVE this idea! Like many of the practices in her book, this reminds me of the way many of my creative writing courses in colleges were organized.  These groups are a much more efficient way to get a students' writing exposed to multiple readers before the teacher reads it.  They are also a beautiful way to foster community and collaboration among students because they are depending on each other to provide timely and thoughtful feedback.  It also makes me rethink the idea of authentic audiences that we've been discussing for the last year.  Although these groups are technically in the classroom, it is still a way to extend a student's audience beyond just the teacher.

This marked-up page looks like most of the pages in my copy of the book, but this one connects the most to our continued struggle with Real World vs School Writing.  We can't ignore the type of writing our students are often asked to do as part of their academic careers, but as Kittle's chapter is aptly titled, we must continue "Seeking Balance" in the types of writing opportunities we offer our students. 

Flipgrid Video Discussion

Before I explain how I created my Flipgrid, I want to note that creating a video to be shared widely is way outside my comfort zone.  I was nervous to do it, I doubted whether I should, and I subjected my kids to being my dry-run audience before I actually posted.  I mention this only because this did feel like taking a risk and one I wouldn't have taken if I didn't see all the possible ways students could benefit. If I had the opportunity to share this with students I would certainly start by acknowledging how I struggled to make this and how unsure I felt posting it to help ease their discomfort and hopefully encourage them to take risks.

Flipgrid
When I first came across Flipgrid, it  instantly prompted me to think about all the ways I would love to try integrating this with students.  Flipdgrid is both a website and an app that can be downloaded on iPads and phones.  Basically, Flipgrid is a tool where you pose a question, either through video or typing, to a community of learners.  Those who've viewed your Flipgrid then have the opportunity to respond to your prompt by creating their own short  response. It took me about 3 minutes to create a teacher/admin account using my email and a password and within 10 minutes I was creating my Flipgrid video!

Groups 

Groups are basically the classes or communities of viewers you want to reach. You might create Groups for each of your class periods, or create one grid for all your students.  Since I don't have any particular classes, I created a Group called ELA PLG.  To create a grid you just click the +New Group, give the Group a name, and upload a picture if you choose. 

Privacy: You can choose who can access your group and how. If you select Student Email, simply input @_____(your students' address) and this will require students to enter their school email to access and participate in the group.  

Topics

Once you've created your GROUP, you can think about creating Topics--the questions you want to pose to generate video responses from your learning community.  I created the ELA PLG GROUP as a way for our PLG to stay in contact during this time.  I added a Topic titled "Idle Hands..." to hopefully start a discussion and for us to share some personal victories in the midst of such uncertainty.

I made this Topic Active so people who have the code are able to view and respond.  You can also set your topic to FROZEN (view only) or HIDDEN (won't be visible or open for responses until you change the setting). Another feature is that you can create a topic and then "set a launch date" to Activate your topic and accept responses. 

Setting for Student Response:

There are many settings you can use to control what students can share, whether or not you moderate and see videos before they are posted, whether or not students can respond to peers, and other responsible use parameters you might consider putting in place depending on the ages of your students.

Alternative to Video:

Students can also respond using the WHITE BOARD feature (visible when they add to the dicussion) which allows them to write with a voice over explanation. This is similar to Explain Everything but will also appear in the grid response.  

Flipgrid in the Classroom

Whether you're already using this or are just hearing about it now, I'm positive you have many creative ways to use this with your students.  Here are just a few I've thought about. :

• Book Talk/Review: Create a Topic(s) dedicated solely to reading and ask your students to post a Book Talk/Review for a book they've recently read or even just make a quick post about a book they are currently reading.  Again, ask students to reply to peers to expand students' exposure to different books and learn from classmates.
• Answer Explanations: This could probably be for any subject but I was thinking about a different way to "show your work" and make students' thinking visible in math.  Pose a question to students and ask them to respond with their answer and explanation.  If it were a HW assignment the first to reply with correct answers could be rewarded.  With the moderate tool, you could wait to post students' videos to the Grid until you've received many answers to avoid "giving away" the answer. 
• Getting to Know You: As a beginning of the year activity pose a question (nothing intensely personal) to your students and ask them to share their responses.  Additionally, have them watch at least two of their peers' videos and respond.  You get to know your students but they get to know each other.
• Read Aloud: Students could record themselves reading aloud sections of a book they are enjoying or the text you've assigned and share their response to the text. One of the challenges with incorporating the reading standards into remote learning is that we're often assessing students' reading through writing.  While writing is often a solid measure of a students' comprehension, it sometimes creates more barriers for students who struggle to write.

These are just a few of the ideas that have surfaced for me since learning about this tool.  If you are interested in learning more I highly suggest following @Flipgrid and checking out the hashtag #FlipgridFever. Both will provide you with many ideas for how teachers all over the world are integrating Flipgrid into their classrooms. There are also a number of articles and other posts about Flipgrid in the classroom.  I recently read one titled, "5 Strategies for Using Flipgrid in the Language Learner Classroom," in which a Language Learner shares his successes and struggles using Flipgrid with his students.