From the series: Developing Students’ Ownership of Learning—from a Distance, too! Check out Posts #1 and #2. Let’s continue our journey to developing assessment-capable, visible learners. At this point, students know what they are supposed to be learning, what success looks like, and how they can monitor their progress. The next
From the series: Developing Students’ Ownership of Learning—from a Distance, too! Check out Post #1 here. This week we’re back and ready to focus on a new aspect of developing assessment-capable, visible learners. As you probably remember, we’re interested in helping students take responsibility for their learning
Minute by minute, our world as we know it is changing before our eyes. Faced with such tremendous uncertainty, imagine what this feels like to our children! How best can we support them? For starters, we must be adaptable and recognize that academics are far less important than offering solace and hope so that we encourage social connections
We have spent the last weeks watching many schools close their doors–some for the rest of this semester—to control the number of COVID-19 infections. I am excited to see our society’s strong commitment to public health. As many of us teachers face the daunting task of serving our students by transitioning to online instruction, most for us the first
With the prospect of schools being out for a while, I will review some of the Visible Learning influences that may help understand what really matters and what does not matter as much. First, does it matter that students are not in the physical place called school? There is a body of research on the effects of losing school time, but
From the series: Developing Students’ Ownership of Learning—from a Distance, too! Over the past several years, we have worked together with our colleague John Hattie to identify key practices that help students develop ownership of their learning. We believe that students can—and should—become their own teachers. And we believe that teachers
Two weeks ago many of us were in classrooms running authentic projects or around tables planning rigorous and engaging PBL experiences for students. All that came to a sudden halt in the wake of COVID-19. I have been so inspired by the informal crowdsourcing that I have seen across
Mackenzie Wright, a classroom teacher who recently completed her Master’s in Library and Information Science, shares her treasure trove of distance learning resources. See a note from Mackenzie below. Information professionals are tasked with the duty of continuous provision of resources for their patrons, especially as
Six years ago, I was faced with a situation where I needed to transfer my face-to-face geometry class to a virtual classroom. I began with a list of pedagogical practices I wasn’t willing to compromise for the convenience of an online setting. These non-negotiable practices
It started with a question: Why do some strategies work better for some teachers than others? Or more specifically, why is that three teachers can implement the same strategy, lesson plan, or instructional materials, and get different outcomes with students? As an example, let’s stay