If You Give a Teacher an iPad...

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: 

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Answering "Am I Doing This Right?" with Tech-Facilitated Feedback

"Am I doing this right?"

"I'm stuck!"

"I don't know how else to make it better."

"I think I have the hang of it?"

These phrases are ones that are muttered on a daily basis in every content and at every grade. Students are learning new material and are trying their best to show mastery, but are often unsure if they are on the right track or are meeting expectations. Unfortunately, these questions typically don't get answered until the end of a unit through some sort of summative assignment in which the student gets a grade, sees their marked errors, and then immediately moves on to the next topic of study instead of using the feedback for growth towards improvement.

You can't blame the teacher though, right? With 30+ students per class and having several class periods in a day, the shear combined class load of 150+ students to grade is overwhelming, not to mention and it's near impossible to hold a meaningful conference with every student within a 45 minute class period. To add, many teachers are already spending several hours after school preparing for the next school day. Is all hope lost? Do we accept that's just how it is? Is there a better way? YES! 

Check out these highly effective ways to maximize use of technology in delivering immediate, personalized feedback to every student. 

Tip #1: Incorporate tools that automate the process of providing immediate feedback. Check out this example from Carla Dalton's AQR (Advanced Quantitative Reasoning) class in which she maximized the 'conditional formatting' function within Google Sheets to efficiently check progress towards mastery. This auto-coloring box allows the student to know immediately if their calculation was right or wrong. Immediate feedback of this nature enables students to self-monitor the need for referring back to notes or self-regulation of knowing when to ask for help. This also is intended to correct misunderstandings as they occur, rather than addressing misunderstandings the next day after a worksheet's worth of doing it wrong and solidifying incorrect thinking.

Another example of this automated immediate feedback is done through the use of Moodle quizzes when set to behave in Adaptive Mode, such as this example from Tiffany Mackerley's Chemistry class. This mode turns a traditional quiz into a series of formative questions that has a "check" button which allows students to immediately see which answers are right or wrong. Based on the immediate feedback, students can adjust their response accordingly; the teacher can additionally have it be set up to lose a certain percentage of points with each incorrect answer to minimize random, blind guesses.

Tip #2: Empower your students have their voices be heard as a welcomed source of feedback. In April Heffley's Art IV class, students gave anonymous, critical feedback to their peers' artwork in order to make improvements on what was considered "final" artwork for the time-being. The anonymity allows students to be honest about their thoughts while the teacher is able to monitor students responses through the Teacher Dashboard. Though it does save the teacher time from not being the sole giver of feedback, but it it also valuable to the student receiving the feedback as this process allows varied opinions and perspectives that might not have been considered. Not to mention, it also targets higher order thinking skills by those giving the feedback considering evaluation is the second highest cognitive level in Bloom's Taxomony. Beyond collecting the feedback, Mrs. Heffley then uses the peer's feedback to hold individual conferences with each student artist as they review the feedback together; during this time, the teacher assumes a partner position, rather than evaluator position, in supporting the students' growth.

Tip #3: Seek new opinions from audiences outside the walls of your classroom.

Opening the virtual-doors to your classroom does not have to mean you are connecting with people literally across the globe or are blindly matching with unknown audiences. Patti Hayes' 10th-12th graders at Steele Accelerated High School partnered up with Sandra Champion's GT 5th graders at Hughes Elementary School to review each other's ePortfolios and provide feedback to one another. Google Slides were used to pair up the students, collect written feedback, and link to a FlipGrid that facilitated introductions and oral feedback. This partnership benefited both audiences as the younger students were able to hear from more experienced students in this area, while the older students had their content viewed from true 'outsiders' which helped pinpoints things to be explained or clarified. For more information on this partnership, stay tuned for a blog post detailing this experience set to publish here on 12/9/19!

While all of these tips require time to be invested on the front end to prepare and set up, changing when and how feedback is given maximizes a student's understanding of the material by shifting mindset to viewing feedback as a tool for growth as opposed to a numerical final evaluation. Also note that giving quality feedback is a skill that is developed over time and you can't assume any student, regardless of age, should automatically 'know' how to give good feedback. When asking students to give each other qualitative feedback, sentence stems help focus thinking. Lastly, because feedback is a skill, the more times you ask students to give feedback, the more developed they will become in this area.

This post highlights examples of the following ISTE standards:

• Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate learning in a variety of ways. (ISTE Student Standard 1c)
• Use technology to design and implement a variety of formative and summative assessments that accommodate learner needs, provide timely feedback to students, and inform instruction (ISTE Teacher Standard 7b)

Raiders of the Lost STAAR

For many NISD teachers, Spring has been marked by the self-paced BINGO challenge. Cassie Brewton, a fifth grade teacher at Hughes elementary especially enjoyed the choice, self pacing, and excitement that came along with the challenge. Cassie soon began to think, “My students would enjoy a challenge like this, especially as they get ready for STAAR.” Using the format created by IT Coaches Jillian, Kelli, and Shelly, Cassie began creating tasks that would help students review for their upcoming STAAR test.

The tasks that Cassie created were an intentional hybrid of individual and group collaboration, digital and face to face work, and all levels of rigor. When walking into Cassie’s class during review, it was clear that each student was working at their own pace and that the tasks were differentiated for all of her learners.  It was also evident that the students were enjoying the challenge.

Ethan, Kellon, and Makena all agreed that the BINGO board was a fun way to prepare for STAAR. Not only was the challenge fun, but it pushed students to work through questions and problems that they may find difficult. Kellon points out, “My favorite part was the challenge in general.” Makena states, “B4 was really challenging. The picture was really hard to figure out. You have to figure out what’s happening and make observations and a claim. I skipped a few, but then made a note to go back.” Kellon added, “I don’t like skipping a challenge, so I kept trying until I figure it out.”

Each student was eager to share their favorite task on the board. For Makena, this was N3. “We made several STAAR questions and created a quiz on Google Forms for the class.” Ethan enjoyed I3 which prompted him to create a Tweet from a template in Google Classroom. The tweet would sum up the main idea and supporting details from the story "Library Lion." Ethan would have an authentic audience as the tweet was posted to the class Twitter Feed (AKA: Padlet Wall). What Ethan may not have realized, was that I3 provided scaffolding for him as he decided to complete G5 first. G5 helped students define main and supporting details to give them a better understanding of the concept.

Other tools integrated into the tasks include: Prism, Pear Deck, Epic, News ELA, and a variety of GSuite tools (Docs, Slides, Forms).

Differentiation was a key aspect of this challenge. Cassie points out, “I made changes to the board daily based on student responses. For example, After noticing kids struggling on I3, one student realized that another task on the board was a great scaffolding activity, so we created a few additions to the ‘task card’ to explain where they could go to practice the skill before completing that specific activity.”

While the Raiders of the Lost STAAR was a student centered and student paced challenge, it was the intentionality of Mrs. Brewton that made it a success. The articles that she choose for students to read were at the appropriate lexile level, the resources that students used to answer questions encompassed relevant information that they needed to know, and the independent reading time helped with literacy and comprehension.

Not only were students review key terms, concepts, and skills for STAAR, but they were also becoming problem solvers. Mrs. Brewton states, ”I think my favorite part about the Bingo board was seeing the students work so well with their self-management. They were great at managing their time, choosing tasks that fit their schedule, and taking time to stop and reflect on their work before coming to me for a code. They wanted to make sure it was their best before asking for a code because they knew the expectations were high, so the incentive to work hard was powerful!”

Twenty Five task challenges can be quite a bit to create, but the aspect of self-paced lessons and units, can be created on any scale using Hyperdocs. Check out this Basic Hyperdoc Lesson Plan Template (The HyperDoc Girls)