This week our staff tried something new during our back-to-school inservice time. We experimented with the idea of "flipped" professional development.
Like probably every school in the nation, we find our time very short at the beginning of the year. Just not enough time to in-service staff, team-build, prepare rooms for open house, watch safety videos, and discuss pertinent goals and procedures for the school.
We knew we wanted to provide everyone with some basic information about our expectations for literacy and the teaching of reading within our building but we really only had a half day to provide the information and give teachers time to use the information...so our solution was to try a "flipped" model of professional development. Instead of teachers spending 3 hours listening to someone speak, we provided video clips ahead of time. Instead of having teachers spend 3 hours together reading an article independently, we provided them with reading material and resources ahead of time. We chose to do this so that our teachers could read and watch before coming to the meeting Wednesday morning, resulting in the opportunity to use the 3 hour face-to-face time to assimilate the knowledge into action steps.
We chose to use Google Classroom as our platform for disseminating the resources to our teachers. We uploaded documents and videos in folders and invited the teachers to become a part of our "class" by joining with the code. Almost every teacher was able to access this ahead of time, read, watch, and peruse the resources and then come to the meeting ready to collaborate. The day before we posted the assignment, and the day of teachers worked together to analyze reading data they have already and form instructional groups, select an effective lesson planning page for small group instruction, and plan independent reading activities that will be engaging, rigorous, and relevant for students. Overall, the teachers spent this time very wisely, having conversations about student achievement and setting goals for not only their students, but working to challenge themselves to ensure reading progress for all students.
Teachers certainly do not like to spend hours sitting and listening to someone present information any more than students enjoy it. Reading and viewing videos can easily be done independently at home. The benefit of being together as a staff is the ability to have the conversations and help each other make the best decisions possible.
Next learning steps: how to best create assignments so "students" can access them and how to post (or turn in) completed work. I know I have some superhero teachers that are figuring that out, even as I write this!
Like probably every school in the nation, we find our time very short at the beginning of the year. Just not enough time to in-service staff, team-build, prepare rooms for open house, watch safety videos, and discuss pertinent goals and procedures for the school.
We knew we wanted to provide everyone with some basic information about our expectations for literacy and the teaching of reading within our building but we really only had a half day to provide the information and give teachers time to use the information...so our solution was to try a "flipped" model of professional development. Instead of teachers spending 3 hours listening to someone speak, we provided video clips ahead of time. Instead of having teachers spend 3 hours together reading an article independently, we provided them with reading material and resources ahead of time. We chose to do this so that our teachers could read and watch before coming to the meeting Wednesday morning, resulting in the opportunity to use the 3 hour face-to-face time to assimilate the knowledge into action steps.
We chose to use Google Classroom as our platform for disseminating the resources to our teachers. We uploaded documents and videos in folders and invited the teachers to become a part of our "class" by joining with the code. Almost every teacher was able to access this ahead of time, read, watch, and peruse the resources and then come to the meeting ready to collaborate. The day before we posted the assignment, and the day of teachers worked together to analyze reading data they have already and form instructional groups, select an effective lesson planning page for small group instruction, and plan independent reading activities that will be engaging, rigorous, and relevant for students. Overall, the teachers spent this time very wisely, having conversations about student achievement and setting goals for not only their students, but working to challenge themselves to ensure reading progress for all students.
Teachers certainly do not like to spend hours sitting and listening to someone present information any more than students enjoy it. Reading and viewing videos can easily be done independently at home. The benefit of being together as a staff is the ability to have the conversations and help each other make the best decisions possible.
Next learning steps: how to best create assignments so "students" can access them and how to post (or turn in) completed work. I know I have some superhero teachers that are figuring that out, even as I write this!