Lately I’ve been working on improving the blended learning in my classroom. Blended learning is something I’ve been doing for several years, specifically in math. Teaching the lesson on video and allowing kids to watch it and complete their assignment in their own time has freed up a lot of time for me to meet with small groups. I have more time to work with kids one-on-one during our math block when I’m using a blended learning model. Essentially I’m cloning myself by using video for the whole group lesson, thus making myself available for everything else. When it comes to the differentiation abilities with blended math … I’m a BELIEVER!
For some quick logistics, I use Showbie to share documents, links, photos, etc with my students. It’s a great digital file/folder sharing tool for kids who don’t have email accounts. If you’ve never checked out Showbie, click HERE and peruse it. It’s definitely on my short list of favorite apps.
This year, I wanted to make my math block more robust. So I created a format where once students are done with their blended lesson they can go into “Additional Practice” and choose the right level of practice for themselves. Take a peek at the pictures below to get a better visual of what I’m talking about.
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| Regular Blended Lesson Template |
For the differentiated activities, I scour the internet to find videos that fit the skill, but that teach it in different ways so I have a better chance at reaching a learner who didn’t initially understand it. Then I search for free, game-based activities I can hyperlink into the document for the kids to access. The key here is this: I search for activities that can be housed and completed digitally. For example, if I find a scoot or card game I like, I will link in the cards and have kids use their math notebooks to solve/complete. One of the things that always stood in my way with differentiated activities was the prep work. This eliminates that particular roadblock. Though, when I find a really good activity that doesn’t adapt well digitally, I’ll print/prep it and tell kids to “see teacher for materials” once they’ve gotten to that particular activity.
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| Differentiated Activities Students Self Select |
This has been incredibly successful in my classroom so far. My kids are spending more time in differentiated practice than ever before. And they think it’s fun! It takes me about 30 minutes of prep per lesson … but it’s prep you do once. Once it’s done, it’s done (unless I choose to find better videos and/or practice in the future … but even then I’ll only be editing things here and there).
My reflection on this is that it is WELL WORTH the time put in on the front end. If you’re going to try it out, start with a short unit (maybe one that has 10 lessons or fewer) to see if it’s manageable prep for you, and to see how your students respond to it. I think you’ll LOVE it!
(Excuse the boring formatting and font in these documents … the quickest, easiest way I found to keep the hyperlinks when I import the docs into Showbie is to keep them in Word, so I needed something that would transfer easily. Yes, I could do a PDF with embedded hyperlinks, but I’m trying to work smarter, not harder, and my students really don’t spend much time actually looking at these documents.)
