Thursday, August 13, 2020

Summer Professional Learning Recap

welcome back

Welcome back to school! If the 2020-21 school year is anything like 2019-20, there will certainly be plenty of extraordinary challenges. My advice--BE PREPARED FOR ANYTHING! 

Last year, teachers did an impressive job learning how to leverage instructional technology tools to support "crisis" teaching. During the summer, Barb Ritch and I built on that momentum with our "Twelve Days of Learning" summer professional learning offerings. 

Although we were unable to provide face-to-face workshops as we have in the past, we were able to model one approach to "remote teaching" that was well received by those who participated. Using Google Sites, we built a series of "flipped" lessons that were consistently designed with four instructional components:
  1. Engagement: Links to stimulate thinking about 21st century pedagogies
  2. Direct Instruction: Video tutorials and "how-to" documents 
  3. Independent Practice: A series of tasks to foster "learning by doing"
  4. Reflection: A Google Form to solicit feedback on what worked, what didn't, and what questions lingered
Participants were tasked with completing the online component of the workshop PRIOR to attending a synchronous Zoom meeting where we could provide a quick re-cap of how the tools work, but more importantly, focus on specific questions and discuss pedagogical strategies for implementing the tools effectively. You can find an archive of each of the Zoom meetings on the Resource Page of our Site. We also embedded the Google Forms Response Sheet to share our responses to the questions teachers posed.

We are hopeful that our Site provides you with a model for one approach for effective instruction that maximizes the impact of the precious time you spend with students in a face-to-face setting.