Learned Helplessness and Blended Learning: Removing the Teacher as Crutch

Before I began my Blended Learning Journey, I knew I would have to combat learned helplessness since some go immediately to the teacher to ask questions of what to do or how to do something.

In a blended learning classroom some of the instruction, including directions, is online, so I figured I'd see an uptick in questions directed my way that were not content-related. Preemptively, before they begin their stations or online work, I remind them: "Ask 3 before me: group/partner, directions, Google" 

However, I wasn't quite prepared for the level of helplessness some students exhibit. I'll have students call me over and ask "What do I do?" When I ask if they have read the directions or watched the direction video, I'm gobsmacked when they tell me "no" and then look at me, waiting, I assume, for me to tell them what to do.

Now, I'm all for helping students who need other ways of receiving directions or need me to reword directions. That is part of differentiation and differentiation is why I believe so strongly in blended learning. But I also know my campus mission: We will prepare every child to become independent, growth-minded servant leaders. That I build up that child's capacity to be independent is a key part of his or her future success.

It is my job, then, as an educator to respond to a child with the cognitive process that I want the child to internally adopt. Therefore, I've learned to change the question I ask. Instead of "Have your read the directions and asked a peer?" I'm asking: "How can you figure it out? What resources in Schoology can help you?"

And guess what? My students who were chronic "What do I do?" students are starting to make the shift! It's taking a little time for them to figure out when they need to ask to get support versus when their asking is actually causing a hindrance, but we are getting there.

What do you do in your class to grow independent learners?

Moving Toward Mastery: Schoology Test/Quizzes Options

The point of grades is not to put grades in the grade book anymore than the point of school is to get A's. Assessments provide feedback to both teachers and students. For teachers, we take the feedback to be responsive in our lessons and reteach and reengage depending on that data. But what is it we want students to do with this feedback? 

Sometimes we are so focused on using assessments as teachers we can lose sight of what we want students to do: learn. Therefore, I purpose utilizing some of the settings in Schoology to provide feedback to students so they can get immediate feedback on their learning and reenter the assessment to correct mistakes that way they are working toward mastery.

Oral Administration in Schoology

Some of my students have accommodations for oral reading. I am loving Schoology's ability to record my voice for them.

Litterarti App for Green Initiatives (plus a padlet hack for younger students)

The idea behind Litterarti is simple: see litter? Take an artistic picture of it, share, and then throw the piece of litter in the recycle bin or trash bin depending on what it is.

This is an awesome app to promote during April, on Earth Day, or by the school's green club.

I was so excited when I heard about this from Katy Noelle Scott at ISTE 2017. I quickly looked at the user agreement and saw it was for 13+, which means I can't use it at my middle school. So I came up with a Padlet hack that not only works across all devices without an app to install, but also can let me moderate the images.

To make the Padlet, I created on in my account. You can even use the shelf feature if you want grades to compete against one another or just to organize the data.

In settings, I made sure the most recent was first.

Under the Share feature, I toggled on moderation. This would prevent pranksters from posting anything scandalous. (See image below)

Directions were included at the top. You can easily put a link on the school website, as a QR code, and/or customize a Tiny URL to make it easy for students to post. Create a quick video of how to use it for the morning announcements and add some incentives, including sharing some of the best from that week on the announcements.

Classroom Resources Clarity in an LMS

The success of LMS depends in large part on how comfortable students - and parents - feel as they use it. Remember, students are your audience and anything you can do to help them will make the use of an LMS smoother. Here are three quick tips to facilitate buy-in from stakeholders specifically if you are using Schoology:

1. Organize Consistently

For each unit, use the same color coding for folders, nest folders in a consistent manner, and select "display inline" or "Display in a new page" in a consistent manner.

2. Label to Help Students

Folders, pages, discussion boards, and media albums can get a little confusing. Is the media album its own assignment? Part of the assignment above? Just a reference post? Use "STEP 1:" to clarify. If a media album and a page are both part of step 1. Don't forget to set completion rules to force students to complete tasks before going on to the next.

3. Explicitly Teach the Organizational Structure to Students

All of us are unique and the way you organize your units may be markedly different than that of other teachers. When teaching secondary, this can be especially confusing for students as they have to 5-7 other teachers who organize their courses uniquely. Create scavenger hunts, tours of units, and/or quick reference guides for students to give them a map to navigate your course. Allow access to video tours and quick reference guides on your school website for parents to access. Even if parents don't have their own access to your Schoology site, they are the ones helping their children at home.

Save Time with Schoology Save to Resource and Copy to Courses

Read below, watch video, or go directly to video here.

Problem: Having to update a course calendar year after year and/or remaking those digital assignment posts.

Solution: Schoology "Save to Resources" and "Copy to Courses"

When to use "Save to Resources"
If you are making a unit for the first time, it is best to save the entire unit folder to resources. You may want to wait until the unit is complete to save it. That way if you tweaked anything during the unit, you don't have to also update the resources version.

When to use "Copy to Courses"
If you have a pre-saved unit in resources, copy to all course where applicable. Don't forget to update due dates and the like!
If you are creating something in one course and you want to copy it over to different periods/sections, copy to the other periods/sections.

How to:
Outside of the resource (aka you'd have to click on it to access it), press the cog on the right and select save or copy. Drill down to find the right location.

Evidence and Drawing Conclusions: Spacehopper.io to scaffold inferences

I'm always trying to think of a fresh way to introduce the process of drawing inferences. Paramount, inferences are made after evidence is collected. Because there is little text, students don't get bogged down in comprehension and decoding; therefore, Spacehopper.io is a great way to scaffold reading skills.

What is it?

When you go to the website there is a 360 picture of somewhere in the world, a world map with all the possible locations, and a place where you can check answers and get clues.  You can even select certain continents if you want to bring in social studies curriculum. You only get three guesses!

I found that while I can navigate on an iPhone the screen is much too small, so it makes the most sense to do this on devices larger than a phone or whole class.

1. Navigate to spacehopper.io. Refresh the image if you think it too vague. I think an image where there is a little bit of writing on a sign is helpful because that will help establish language. 

2. Explain how the website works and that as a class you will determine the location together. 

3. Scribe or have students scribe all the details that you notice in the image. If using a graphic organizer like the A+ strategy, use that on the board. Mentally, keep track of any students who draw on previous knowledge/experiences. You will be able to reference this later on the importance of building background and knowing a lot about the world to become a better reader.

4. After the class has agreed on a map location and been through the inferencing, repeat with a couple different scenes. You want to have students experience hard ones and difficult ones and get an idea of what it is like to refine ideas. 

5. When done, have students write a short reflection answering the questions: "What did we do to be successful? What did we do when we were not? What were the steps we took to draw conclusions?"

6. As students discuss in groups to refine the "steps", mill about the room looking for academic vocabulary.

7. As a class facilitate creating the steps. Make sure to point out any academic vocabulary you heard from students as well as reference when students used their prior knowledge. 

8. Ask students if they know what it is called when we use our prior knowledge and evidence to draw conclusions. If "infer" is not suggested, introduce the concept. Explain that we do this as well as readers.

9. Reenter a previously read text and ask an inference questions. Reinforce that the first thing we do isn't answer the questions and then look for evidence, but rather just like in spacehopper.io, we look at the evidence first.