Personalising the learning

Using a combination of my Google Rotation method and FLIP learning students have been given much more freedom to personalise  their learning in groups, pairs and as individuals.  I try to give students list of things they can do at each stage of the rotation and for homework.  Sometimes I need to give suggestions of what could be done / or roles taken within a group.  However I prefer students work towards being agents of their own learning by giving them the power to select and design tasks and tools to achieve the learning outcomes (both cognitive and cognitive).  As students cycle through the rotation it is fascinating they are able to create their own pathway to learning.  Of course there  are times when this does not happen but these issues can be picked up using "observations from a far", the Google Forms and during the teacher talk sessions.  Students are also required to share their strategies during the transition times.   I have tried to build as much flexibility into the playlist, where ever possible students can work through in the order they prefer trying to move away from a teacher imposed linear model.  The playlists also have supplementary material  which students can access if they wish to work towards a greater degree of mastery in the areas they or their group would like.  Short YouTube videos are very useful I like to give each group in the rotation and different video to review and then share their reviews in a VLE or BLOG  for the other students.

Role of Adults in the classroom.

Role of Adults in the classroom.

Not being a "sage on the stage" has been hard at times.  However I have reworked my classroom so that I would talk to the complete class for 120 seconds in a 80 minute lesson.  90% of the time it is students talking about their learning and conveying / testing their perspectives and understanding of the issues.  When I do now talk to students it is with them rather than AT them, questioning their assumptions and validity of information sources.

I also have a teaching assistant who is very talented.  He helps identify students who are struggling.  Sometimes she focuses on subject engagement and mastery while at other times he focuses on students social and cognitive skills.

Changing the environment.

The learning environment of my classroom has changed greatly.  I feel students are much more engaged and often comment they are amazed the lesson is over so quickly.  This change in culture can be seen during the sessions at change overtime.  In the second week I started playing music at the transition stages and gave students the task of walking around the room to explain what they had learnt and find out what they were going to do in the next part of the cycle.  This reduced greatly the lead in time for each part of the cycle.  There were also marked differences between the first group who had teacher session  and the last group.  The last group to have a teacher session were much more confident about asking questions which they said was strange as they knew more but needed to ask more.  There was also a shift to higher level questions in the latter group.

The physical environment of my classroom has also changed greatly.  I managed to get two flat screen TVs "temporarily" mounted on the wall for student collaboration groups to display their ideas and resources.  For younger students I had the collaboration phase sitting on the carpet, this let me move one third of my furniture out and open up the room.  Some students wanted to work in isolation at this stage therefore I needed to model what their learning environment would look like i.e. sitting in a circle facing each other.  Special need students at times found the social aspect of this phase hard and I used my teaching assistant to observe at a distance. The assistant then if necessary withdrew the student(s) causing concern at the independent study phase and discussed how they could develop their social skills using a restorative approach.

Above.  Here you can see two of the three rotations (individual work and group work).  Teacher instruction was done in a joining room.

Above.  Here you can see how the classroom has changed.  On the back wall you can see a post it mind map which lets students share their ideas with each other.  Each group of students in a rotation has a personalised learning experience which can then be shared with other. 

The heavy tables are a problem and are now being replaced by a variety of tables that can be moved by the smallest of my students, all tables will have wheels and will be in a variety of shapes and colours, the are supplied by http://www.furnware.co.nz/ .

Clarifying my innovations.

Google Moderator and BLOGS were used as the fourth part of the cycle to give students a truly consequence free environment where they could bounce ideas around and challenge assumptions that each other were making. Part of this strategy used  the concept of intelligent fast failure and an environment not directly monitored by me.  Senior students preferred to us a Facebook page instead of a BLOGG which I was happy with.


Google Forms linked with   Flubaroo script helped me to compose dynamic groups based on student quizes and mood / confidence surveys.  For example I used this to identify students who were doing well and then giving the leadership roles in the group part of the cycle.

Innovation and Risk.

Iterating the model.

I have been using the station rotation model for about 4 weeks and already I have gone through several cycles of improvement and some innovation which adds an extra element where students collaborate online at home as well as during the lesson.  Essentially this uses BLOGGS and Google Moderator  to add a 4th element to the rotation.  From the outset it was important that my senior students were able to discuss the material and develop their ideas further and then bring questions and viewpoints raised to the next lesson.  I am not sure if this 4 stage model is out there but my students decided to call is the Google Rotation as it used Google Moderator, Google Docs and Google forms.

These questions were then used in the next blended learning lesson in several ways.   I would answer questions / deal with misconceptions etc in the teacher part of the cycle.  However a few tweaks were made as I went along.

Some students found it hard to function within their specific stage of the model, most of the time this was students working in the individual part of the cycle who want to work in a collaborative way on the playlist.  Therefore there were times when I needed to ignore this and other times when I had to discuss this as part of the teacher session.  These were learning conversations where I explained the the teaching methods and the reasons for each part of the cycle.

Risk.
I feel a fair level of risk was taken, mainly because so much control of the classroom was handed over to students and they spent about two thirds of their time without direct supervision.  There is also a strong cultural expectation in Hong Kong that the teacher must be the "Sage on the stage".   I also had concerns raised by the Special Education Needs Department about theit students a too challenging environment to work in.

Implications for the future.

Blended learning has shifted the culture of my classroom to a one where students are expected to take charge of their own learning.  It also give students much more room to make mistakes and misbehave / drift of task.  This has implications for the school's discipline policy as blended learning does not lend itself to locking students behaviour down using a rigid framework of rules.  Instead the concept of Restorative Approaches should be used.  Even if this means time is spent discussing students off task behaviour.  I also share with students why we are teaching in this way rather than a more traditional model.

It also has implications for student / teacher conferences.  These meetings in my opinion should be prepared and run by students themselves.  With structured help students should explain to their parents what they have been doing, the way they have been doing it and why in this way.  Many students have been uncomfortable with the culture of giving feedback on lesson to teachers, many give the answers they think teachers want to hear rather than good quality feedback.  So this need to be looked at for the future.

Parents also need help understand this model of teaching as it is so different from their experience of school.

In the future students will be more and more comfortable with this style of learning.  For 14 to 16 year olds were are moving away from a model of doing 12 subjects at GCSE to only 7 or 8 and using this time for non-assessed elective units which will use some form of blended learning.

Staff training will also be vital so colleagues are able to work in this very different environment.  Some colleagues who have observed me teach in this way are very uncomfortable, especially in the way "off task" behaviour is managed (or not as they see it) in my model of blended learning.