Monday, January 22, 2024
Monday, September 25, 2023
Monday, September 11, 2023
Monday, April 3, 2023
Monday, September 26, 2022
Saturday, September 25, 2021
How Summer PD Impacts Student Learning!
“Implementing Hyperdocs was a complete push out my comfort zone. Relinquishing the control early in the school year was not something I was used to” comments Mrs. Spring, 4th grade at Nance Elementary. Kim Spring has not only been intentional about the professional development she attends, but also intentional about implementing her learning in meaningful ways with students. Two years ago, Kim helped co-lead “Delivering Engaging Lessons with Pear Deck.” This was a tool Kim learned and then implemented consistently with her students. Pear Deck wasn’t just a new tool for Kim. Pear Deck meant continual formative assessment, intentional student discourse, and even a way for students to create assessments for their classmates. By attending and leading Pear Deck sessions, Kim was able to maximize the use of Pear Deck to meet campus and district learning goals.
Last year, Kim decided to attend “Save Time and Give Choice with Hyperdocs” led by Instructional Technologists Shelly Hall and Kylie Lloyd. Immediately after the session, I received an email from Kim with her takeaways and goals for implementing a hyperdoc with her class. Designing a hyperdoc takes intentional planning. Mrs. Spring used backward design and considered her learning targets and desired outcomes as she created each aspect of her hyperdoc. Since this would be a self-paced lesson, she had to plan ahead for students.
During the 3rd week of school, Kim’s students experienced their first hyperdoc! This unit on Place Value was not only engaging and interactive, but also allowed for gradual release of the content and self paced learning. Gabriella, Tommie, and Abby were three students that specifically enjoyed this unit. Gabby mentioned, “I liked learning at my own speed and pace. I was able to take things one step at a time, but always had something I was working on.”
The unit started with students ENGAGING in the topic of place value through direct instruction and focused videos for students to watch. After students had a grasp on place value they were asked to EXPLAIN their learning in Flipgrid. The Flipgrid check in allowed Mrs. Spring to see who understood the content and who needed extra support. Mrs. Spring pointed out, “Flipgrid comes in handy as I'm able to hear the kids verbally explain their reasoning and see their work. I am able to leave feedback to them as well.”
As students progressed through the hyperdoc, they were asked to APPLY their learning. Mrs. Spring had students complete a self-paced Pear Deck to assess their knowledge up to this point. She pointed out, “I LOVE Pear Deck. It allows for self-paced lessons and I’m able to leave feedback at any given time. It helps me keep track of who has finished, so I know where each student is. It’s a great teacher sidekick!”
 |
| Instructor and Student Paced Pear Decks Throughout The Unit |
Next, students SHARE and REFLECT with their peers. They look at problems they’ve completed in their Stepping Stones book, along with the work they’ve explained in Pear Deck and Flipgrid to answer the following questions with others:
1) What was your favorite part of this unit?
2) Was there a part of this unit that confused you?
3) Show a partner how you explained place value to the millions on slide 4.
Lastly, students are given an opportunity to EXTEND their learning. Not all students will have time for this section of the learning, but it’s a great way to challenge students who have successfully grasped the content. In fact, this is a great way to differentiate learning for students. Students were given the opportunity to create their own Pear Deck to share with the class. This task required students to apply their learning by creating their own questions. Both Tommie and Abby pointed out “The most challenging part of this unit was creating the Pear Deck. It was tough making the questions.”
All in all, Mrs. Spring’s first hyperdoc was a success! “I love the independence of it all,” states Kim. “It was really neat to watch the kids take such quick ownership of their hyperdoc. I have a large group of students that are pretty above level in math. This helped with my fast finishers. They instantly went into their hyperdocs and got going!”
This unit is a prime example of the NISD Learning Framework and the intentionality that goes into a well designed lesson in NISD:
 |
| Click HERE to Enlarge Image |
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Robots to the Rescue! - A Virtual Tournament
COVID-19 forced many events to either be cancelled or postponed over this past year. The Northwest ISD Instructional Technology team did not want students to miss out on showcasing their learning as in the previous 9 years. This year, we got creative and hosted a virtual edition of EXPO 2021 with the fitting theme “Coming Together as One.” In conjunction with the traditional EXPO event, the past 3 years, we have hosted a face to face district wide robotics tournament sponsored by the Northwest Education Foundation. COVID also forced our tournament to be reinvented to a VIRTUAL robotics edition.
With the goal of inspiring younger students to pursue engineering in high school, the competition challenges were developed in a pre-COVID world for the VEX and Mindstorm EV3 robots. The challenges were based on real life scenarios and were designed to be judged as a face-to-face tournament by the REACH Robotics teams at Eaton High School with their sponsor, Mr. William Gilbert. Ms. Rene Egle, an Instructional Technologist in Northwest ISD, who leads an annual TechnoCamp and the Robotics Competition at our district EXPO, took two months to tweak the format to a virtual robotics edition. This challenge was differentiated for the younger grades using the Ozobots and Dash robots.
Natalie Spann, Library Media Specialist, at Lance Thompson Elementary stated, "The whole process sets students up for success and discovery. It was truly inspiring to see student curiosity and wonder contribute to such amazingly authentic products and learning outcomes. We can’t wait for next year!"
"I really liked this years remote format to the robotics competition. The real world problem gave students connections to how robotics and STEM projects can prepare them for future careers. We had 3rd through 5th graders involved with three different robots. The format this year allowed me to observe teams and see our learners grow in their technical thinking. I also feel this process gave teams more time and depth to their teamwork skill development. I do think the project had many layers outside of just building a robot. Students had to take notes and reflect on their thinking. Teams had to do lots of problem solving using coding to meet the set parameters of the challenge," said Sara Jones, Library Media Specialist at Justin Elementary.
Katie Delgado, 3rd grade sponsor from Sendera Ranch Elementary stated, "It was so fun watching the team work together to problem solve and beat challenges. I loved watching them cheer each other on."
The NISD IT team has gotten such good feedback from both the sponsors and students! They are loving the challenges and we will be repeating this format again next year.
This type of STEAM competition has inspired 75 teams both elementary and middle school students to learn coding, engineering, and collaborative problem-solving in a real-world disaster scenario. Other elements of the project include an engineering design website, self-scoring rubrics, peer evaluations, and judges interviews that transform this project into a cross-curricular STEAM challenge where students and learn future-ready skills, work with technology, and become more effective communicators in a rigorous and relevant student-driven project environment.
Andy from the Sendera Ranch team stated, "While working on this project, I learned I am good at persevering because when I couldn't get this one pencil I kept trying and trying then, I finally got the pencil. Another reason is that when the robot got stuck I finally got it free!"
"Robotics and the tasks of this tournament are profoundly challenging every step of the way, yet students love the rigor and enthusiastically seek out the knowledge they need to achieve mastery. This is a STEAM education activity with higher level learning that combines with creativity!" said Mrs. Shelia Greene, PLTW educator, from Adams Middle School.
“Robotics just may be the most perfect instructional approach currently available. It offers classroom activities that teach high-value STEM content as well as opportunities to powerfully address ELA Common Core Standards. In fact, there are connections to robotics across the full spectrum of the curriculum. Robotics is also a highly effective way to foster essential work skills like collaboration, problem solving and project management." Mark Gura writes in a blog post from Edutopia
Campus entries for the virtual tournament were due May 7, 2021. The REACH Robotics team from Eaton High School are in the process of judging all the videos and engineering design websites. View NISD Post Here
We would like to thank our awards sponsors again this year. The Northwest ISD Education Foundation.
