#30. Modern Classrooms - A Practical Guide

I am excited to share a new professional development opportunity with you! I have spent the summer scouring the internet for an easy to implement framework that works in F2F and remote learning environments. I think I have found it in a free online training offered by the educators at The Modern Classrooms Project! According to their mission statement, The Modern Classrooms Project "equips and empowers educators to create blended, self-paced, mastery-based classrooms in which all students truly learn". (https://modernclassrooms.org/who-we-are)

The project originated at a Title I school in Washington DC. The teachers who founded the program, Kareem Farah @Kareemfarah23 and Robert Barnett @barnett_tweets, were faced with numerous challenges, including chronic absenteeism and differing skill levels in the same classroom. They developed The Modern Classroom Project to meet the needs of every student. Here is a sneak peek at their approach:

https://modernclassrooms.org/approach

Does this sound like something that will meet your needs? If so, read on.

They have developed a FREE, QUALITY online training. The course is divided into 5 modules:

• Your Modern Classroom Starts Here
• Creating High-Quality Blended Instruction
• Designing Effective Self-Paced Structures
• Teaching and Grading for Mastery
• Next Steps for the Modern Classroom

Each module took less than an hour to complete and was full of practical ways to implement a blended/hybrid classroom or remotely. According to the training, there are three "essentials" of a modern classroom. It leverages blended learning to allow students to progress at their own pace and provides meaningful opportunities for the students to demonstrate their mastery of the material.

Why should you consider incorporating blended learning and a flipped instructional model in your classroom?

Flipping the delivery of the content allows for students to access the information when they need it, allows them to progress at their own pace and provides the teacher with time to provide students with meaningful feedback. Instructional videos are the foundation of the flipped classroom. They provide an easy and consistent way to deliver content. According to the Modern Classrooms Project, there are three steps to developing instructional or flipped videos.

Step 1- Build the Video. They strongly encourage teachers to create their own videos using their own voices. Each video should be highly focused and short, between 6-9 minutes. In the case of text, less is more! Use graphics and images to grab the students attention.

Step 2- Enhance the Video. Utilize tech tools like EdPuzzle to embed questions within the video, provide the students with guided notes or use a strategy like Retrieve-Taking (link to previous blog post).

Step 3 - Share the Video. Develop a consistent way to share your video with your students via your LMS (Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, etc).

Building Consistent Policies and Procedures

One aspect of this training that I found particularly helpful was their focus on building classroom policies and procedures that supported student learning. They recommend that your lessons and unit should follow a consistent format that allows the students to navigate through the lesson independently. For example, there are 14 units in my AP Psychology class. It should also follow a logical progression. I number each day's lesson with the Unit # and Lesson # (1.1, 1.2. 1.3 etc.)

See the exemplar image to the left of your screen. Don't you just love the layout?! Ideally, each lesson should follow the same format. You can organize by unit, if teaching face-to-face; or by week, if teaching remotely.

Exemplar Lesson 6.2 Post-War Conferences from The Modern Classrooms Project
https://sites.google.com/modernclassrooms.org/world-history-exemplar-lessons/home/lesson-6-2-post-war-conferences?authuser=0 

Opportunities for Differentiation 

The Modern Classrooms Project allows students to self-pace, within limits. It is imperative to utilize backwards design and to decide at the beginning of the unit your student "must-haves" for the unit. This allows you to differentiate your instruction to meet their needs.

• What do they need to know? All of the students MUST know what is on the test
• What should they know? Most students SHOULD do these assignments that are designed to enhance their learning.
• What should they aspire to know? Some of your students should ASPIRE to do more with the content.These are the most challenging lessons.

I'll be honest, I teach AP Psychology. I expect almost all of my students to fall into the "aspire to know" column. However, we are currently teaching in a pandemic. Our students are facing new challenges outside of the classroom. I think we all need to be a little more flexible in our expectations. If a student is facing illness, or working long hours, or really struggling with mental health issues, I can limit their workload to the "need to know" lessons.

I learned so many new things from this training. Other topics that were covered included ways to incorporate collaborative learning, increasing student motivation and mastery-based grading. It also reinforced practices that I had already planned on implementing like side-by-side grading. At the beginning of the summer, I asked the question how can I best use the time that I am afforded with my students? What do I want to use that precious time for? In the end, I've decided it's not lecturing to them but building relationships with them.

The framework provided by The Modern Classrooms Project will allow for a more flexible and accessible course, that is better for the students and teacher. Are you interested in learning more about The Modern Classrooms Project and access their free, online training resources? You can learn more about their program at https://modernclassrooms.org/ and join the training at https://modernclassrooms.org/online-course. Please share what you learned in the comments below!