There is no requirement or expectation that you follow the Modern Classrooms Project instructional model or the guidance in MCP’s Unit and Module Playbooks exactly. You know your students best and you should feel empowered to create a modern classroom that works for them, whatever that may look like. The guidance in our Playbooks and Resource Hub is intended only as a suggestion, not an imperative.

There can be a lot of resources to print and materials to keep organized. For printing purposes, consider planning ahead and batch printing. Having everything for a topic/section or two printed in advance means you don’t have to spend time each day making copies or running the risk of not having enough hard copies.

To keep physical copies organized, consider using dividers in binders or file cabinets with clear labels. If you choose to batch print and have one or two topics/sections of resources available at any given time, recycle these papers when the topics/sections are finished and replace them with the next one or two topics of materials.

If you have access to workbooks or your curriculum is online, these are great tools that can be used to limit printing. You might also consider having digital versions of your resources available via your LMS. With some guidance, you can have students complete practice or mastery checks in their notebooks, which you can then check afterwards.

While we provide criteria for mastery on each mastery check, it is ultimately up to you to determine if a student has demonstrated mastery. Just as you would in a traditional classroom, you want to know if a student has proven to you that they understand the content for that lesson. We recommend that you consider not only the answer a student has provided but also the work they have completed to get to their answer.

We recognize that planning your modern classroom can take a lot of time and energy, even with the curricular materials we’ve provided. One piece of that preparation is the filming of instructional videos. To help save time in the video-creation process, we recommend that you:

• Implement a one-take rule. Keep filming through all the mistakes and “umm”s and model for your students that imperfection is okay! 

• Share the workload with your colleagues. If there are other educators in your school or district using MCP, you can take turns filming instructional videos. If you have an instructional coach supporting your work, ask them to get in on the fun, too! 

• Skip the extras. If adding embedded questions is taking too much time, skip them! Guided notes are a very effective engagement tool, so it’s okay to let embedded questions fall to the wayside. 

Remember: while it’s best practice to film your own instructional videos, we have sample videos you can use as a fallback option.