Podcast Recap: Feedback & Q&A for February, 2022
Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their students. In this episode, Zach is joined by educator Samantha Koonce Gaines to answer listener questions from the past month and share best practices they have learned while implementing a Modern Classroom.
Once a month, we tackle listener-submitted questions on the podcast. This month, listeners submitted a variety of questions, touching on topics like:
Zach Diamond and Samantha Koonce Gaines share their best practices and lessons learned from multiple years of implementing a Modern Classroom.
Self-Pacing Guardrails
While the free online course recommends self-pacing within individual units, many teachers have found further limiting self-pacing to positively impact their students. In Episode 77 of the podcast, Amy Azaroff shares the idea of self-pacing within an individual lesson for younger students, or even just within a single week. Zach says, “one of the ways that it supports both [students and teachers] is we don't have to teach the students how to self-pace explicitly … instead we put these guardrails in place and it's less work for us because if we've organized our class to guide the kids through the content, we don't need to spend so much time sort of reorienting them back on the right track.”
Another way educators can put guardrails in place for their students is through linear LMS layouts. In Episode 75, educators share this idea of keeping just lessons within Google Classroom, and nothing else. This prevents students from getting lost.
“I think being as consistent as possible and having that layout that truly supports students, like a student-friendly format allows not only students to feel they're in control, but it kind of sets up a classroom norm digitally that really helps and excites the students about where they should pick up the next day,” Sam shares.
Data Tracking
A Modern Classroom is naturally one that runs on data. As an educator, you’re using real-time data to inform what your students need and to better understand what they have mastered. Too often, we limit this data to student grades, when there is a lot more to a student and their mastery than can be summed up in a single number.
Emily Johb says in Episode 75 that she tracks the number of attempts students take to achieve mastery. This is a good frame of reference to not only understand which lessons students struggle to achieve mastery on, but also helps educators to better understand student progress.
Zach tracks how many days have passed since a student has submitted a lesson, and automated that tracking using JavaScript. Read more about how on his blog. This helps him to understand who needs checking in with, or perhaps some additional prodding to keep moving forward. “It doesn't tell us specifically what's going on, but it might show us when there's something else going on,” Zach says.
Mastery-Based Grading and Keeping Up with Grades
Mastery-based grading can be one of the most foreign elements of a Modern Classroom for those of us who grew up with a traditional grading system. Zach focuses his time and attention on mastery checks - students who master content receive a 1; students who don’t, receive a 0 and are eligible to complete revision to achieve mastery. At the end of the unit, he looks at how many lessons they mastered and uses that to define grading. For example, if they mastered eight out of ten lessons, the student would receive an 80%. While this is Zach’s system, Modern Classrooms has seen many different systems that support various subject areas and all use mastery to inform the grades students receive.
More important than the grades themselves, though, are the ways those grades are used. Zach and Sam both use grades to inform communication with students and their guardians. Sam says “I reach out to parents with progress reports that are generated with my LMS Canvas, so it makes it super easy.” Zach also uses automated mail merges to communicate student progress. This keeps parents informed of student progress, and brings them into the work that students are doing. Sam uses the Remind Me app so that everyone can stay in sync, as well. She also makes it a point to check in with students every other week to discuss progress so they always know where they are at. “Students typically also enjoy the one-on-one check-ins that come as a result of these bi-weekly progress reports,” Sam says.
Because of this process, it’s no longer essential for Modern Classrooms teachers to grade every single assignment a student completes. Our hosts tools for keeping up with mastery grades vary - Zach has created mastery checks that he can see quickly at-a-glance whether or not students have mastered the content, while Sam employs the use of Google forms to automatically grade mastery checks and provide automatic feedback to students.
Zach says, “When I see that they got something wrong and I go over and I reteach it to them one-on-one or maybe in a small group with a small group of kids that also got that same lesson wrong, it gives me the opportunity to do the kind of teaching that I really like and so it doesn't overwhelm me.”
Sam, on the other hand, makes use of her planning period to update the student tracker and spreads out how frequently she checks in on progress to give herself a little breathing room. She also makes use of peer check-ins to ensure students feel supported, while giving her students a chance to act as an expert for others. She then follows up with students to ensure they have the support they need and to provide a solid grade, if needed.
Setting Due Dates
This problem isn’t unique to a Modern Classroom - it’s one that any teacher who backward-plans their curriculum runs into. But ultimately, due dates will inevitably be too fast or too slow depending on how an individual group of students are moving through a unit.
Both Zach and Sam credit trial-and-error with helping them learn what works for their students. Sometimes, you just have to see how something works in action to know what will resonate. But flexibility, regardless of the method of teaching you are using, will always be a great asset. “Giving students more time when they need it is really never a bad thing,” Zach says. “I will cut out stuff and I will really pare down my curriculum to just the absolute essentials in order to give students the time that they need.”
For those students who are speeding through content, this provides an opportunity to deepen and broaden their depth of understanding. “If a student is working too quickly through your units, that's good. You can teach them more stuff. You can go deeper on the content with them. That's a good problem to have,” Zach says. Allow their interest to guide them to discovering more about the content or to engage with other students who are struggling. This can help them access their natural leadership ability.
Student motivation
Motivating students is a challenge in any classroom, but can become imminently more obvious when students are the drivers of their own learning. Zach identifies relationships as the main motivating factor in his classroom. “Relationship-building is just so important for them to even consider doing the work with any degree of engagement,” he says.
Sam has a few concrete tools she uses to maximize student engagement. First, she uses the classroom seating as a potential incentive. Got rolling chairs in your classroom? These are limited, but hot commodities in some classrooms! Students who have a great week get the dedicated use of the rolling chair in her classroom.
“Another thing that I like to use is phone calls home with praise. Many times phone calls are negative or concerning when it comes to maybe progress academically. But getting a phone call home, even in high school, really feels good for a student just to see their parent proud of them and being able to give them that shout out or that high-five when they get home,” Sam shares.
Additionally, she identifies students who are mastering content, or going above and beyond completing aspire-to-do content and gives them extra credit points or access to an incentive wall that students can select from. These can be small snacks or rewards that can really push a student forward.
Managing and developing instructional videos
Some educators are a whiz with video editing (like Zach!), but the vast majority of us don’t want to spend hours filming and editing videos! But just as Jesse Buck shared in Episode 77, it’s important to invest your time more on the front end of video development - in your planning. “The planning is something that we've done as teachers forever. We have planning periods for that,” Zach says. “And I've always said the hard part is standing in front of a room of children and getting them to listen to you. That's definitely harder, at least in my estimation, than recording a video.”
For many educators, they are able to do this work of planning, recording and editing a video just once, and then re-use for years to come. Zach says that he only goes back re-records videos when they don’t really “land” for students. “I'm taking notes every day on how lessons go!” he shares.
Sam also gave herself some grace her first year of implementing a Modern Classroom. She allowed herself “to put a pin in recording and revert back just for that one unit to a traditional style.” This took some of the pressure off of her. “Committing to trying the model does not mean that you are 100% doing the model all the time, unless you want to,” Zach agrees.
Regardless of whether you are implementing a Modern Classroom for the first time or have been doing so for years, these tools and techniques can help improve your approach and better meet the needs of students.
For more Q&A content from our educator experts, check out past episodes of the podcast, the free online course, or the Facebook group!
Our Guests
Samantha Koonce Gaines lives in Charles County with her husband and 2 sons. She enjoys coaching HS girls basketball, long distance running and tutoring science and math. Her passion is transforming the classroom experience to that of exploration and rigor. Her dream is to see more woman in STEM!
Our Host
Zach Diamond studied Music History and Theory at Oberlin College and received a Masters of Music in Music Education from Boston University. He taught music for five years in Lima, Peru, and is currently a Middle School music teacher at DC International School, a language-immersion school where he teaches in Spanish. He began implementing the Modern Classrooms Model in the 19-20 School Year and enthusiastically continues his work with the organization as a mentor and podcast producer.
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