Episode 75: Tools for Self-Pacing


Voiceover: Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. 


Zach: Hello, and welcome to episode number 75 of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. My name is Zach Diamond and I am a middle school music teacher and I'm a Modern Classrooms implementer and a mentor for modern classrooms. And I am super excited to be hosting my first feature episode of this season. This is the first time I've hosted one of these in this new season-based format. And I'm really excited about this one. We're going to be talking about the tools that we use as Modern Classroom teachers to implement and facilitate self-pacing. And we're going to really get into the weeds and get into the specifics of things. And I'm super excited to be having this conversation with my panel. Here I am joined by a fantastic all Canadian panel of K through eight teachers. So at first we have Karla McEachern, who is a great eight teacher at Irma Coulson Public School in Ontario. Hey, Karla, how are you doing? 


Karla: I am very well, thank you. How are you? 


Zach: I am doing great. Thank you for asking. Welcome to the podcast. Up next, we're actually joined by a pair of teaching partners at the same school, grade four teachers at Traditions Elementary School in Saskatchewan, Emily Johb and Dave Read. Emily and Dave, welcome to the podcast. 


Emily: Hey, Zach. 


Dave: Thanks for having us. 


Zach: Of course. Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it. So before we get started, I'd like to just give the three of you an opportunity to introduce yourselves. You can tell us a little bit about who you are, what you teach, and how you started your Modern Classrooms journey. Emily, why don't you go first? 


Emily: Well, my name is Emily Jo[a]hb. As you said, I teach grade four at Traditions Elementary School in Saskatchewan, Canada. I've been teaching for about nine years, and I've been teaching grade four for the last seven years. And I've been working towards just Modern Classroom and the self-paced classroom for the past five years, but came to Modern Classroom in the fall of 2020 and jumped right in in January of 2021 and have been teaching for self-paced in my classroom for the past year. This past year, actually, just the last couple of months, I've done the mentorship program and now just kind of working through the application for the Distinguished Educator. 


Zach: Oh, fantastic. That's awesome. Karla, how about you introduce yourself? 


Karla: Hi, everyone. My name is Karla McEachern. I am a grade eight teacher in the Halton District school board[b]. This is my 20th year of teaching. I currently teach core, so I have everything from math, science, art, English, history, geography. What can I tell you? I stumbled upon Modern Classroom when it was brought to a group of educators called “The Shift In Halton” were introducing it to teachers. And so I was like, what's this all about? And I stumbled upon it was like, “what is this?” blown away right from the get go. So I started implementing it. I went through the mentorship program in the fall of this year, so fall 2021, and I implemented right away at the same time and then eventually got my teaching partner sucked into it, and he totally was on board. And so we started rolling it out in not one, not two, but three subjects all at the same time while I was in the mentorship program. And then I recently earned the Distinguished Modern Classroom Educator. So I am pleased to be part of that collective as well. So I'm thrilled to be here and share my journey and knowledge with everyone today. 


Zach: Awesome. Thank you. And Dave, how about you introduce yourself? 


Dave: Yes. I'm Dave Read, and I guess I'm Emily's older and wiser teaching partner. So I've been teaching for about 13 years, all in Saskatchewan, grade three, four, five, and six, mostly in grade four. And I guess my story is pretty much identical to Emily because we've been working towards something like this for a while. And then we stumbled into the MCP, I think it was in December of last year. And so that kind of got the ball rolling on a few of the pieces that we were looking for. And, yeah, we did our mentorship. I think we're looking into the Distinguished Educator and kind of just see where it goes from there. 


Zach: That's awesome. Yeah. That's something that I hear a lot from teachers, it's like we were sort of starting to build towards this and Modern Classrooms just kind of tied it all together. That was my experience, too. Okay, so we're really going to get into the nitty gritty here with self-pacing and, like, the stuff we use in our classrooms. And in my head, I've kind of divided up this conversation into two parts. So I want to start out talking about sort of like the general tools that we mostly all use, like pacing trackers, LMS, things that maybe all teachers use, but certainly all Modern Classrooms teachers use. And then the other part of the conversation is going to be sort of more like the things that make each of your classrooms unique - stuff that is sort of like maybe people haven't heard of, more like one-off things. But let's just start off broadly talking about how we present the idea of self-pacing to our students. I think that as a tool for self-pacing, what I was thinking of specifically was like a Lesson Zero or a Unit Zero or something, which I think is a very common thing that Modern Classrooms teachers do. And it felt like a good starting point because that's the very first thing we do at the beginning of the year. So do you do that? Do you teach your students to self-pace, and what sorts of tools do you use to teach your students about self-pacing? 


Dave: Yeah, I would say for Emily and I, rather than a specific Unit Zero, we looked at the curriculum, we looked at our standards, and what kinds of units could we start with that could be mostly teacher models and allow for more success as the year went on. Anyone who's taught grade three, grade four, something like that, knows about how much modeling needs to come into it. We also do a few different subjects for self-pacing as well. So we use a science and a math unit to kind of model the process. And so the very first day we're teaching kids how to use the LMS, how to log in properly. We find in grade four at our school that kids often haven't even logged into anything. So it's a lot of the work like that at the start and then just modeling the structures and modeling the self-paced tracker. And we watch videos together and we fill out guided notes together and we check off our checklist, our self-paced trackers together and just kind of getting through most of that unit with them. The students can often kind of be released to do things on their own after that. 


Zach: Yeah, that's really cool. I think the idea of modeling and like sort of using the unit to teach implicitly, learning it by doing it, that's a really fantastic way to introduce kids to a Modern Classroom. And I love that you pointed out the idea of modeling, which I teach slightly older kids. But still modeling, showing the kids what to do is just so much better than telling them. 


Emily: I was just going to say that we also like, structure our units to be self-paced. So the first math, the first science unit does have a checklist, like we could use it later on in the year as a self-paced unit, but we choose those ones because we think they're the best to be teacher-guided where we can go step-by-step with the kids. 


Zach: Oh, that makes sense. Yes. Karla, how about you? Do you have a Unit Zero that you would consider to be a self-pacing tool? Do you teach self-pacing? 


Karla: Well, I actually created a Unit Zero for my students when we first introduced the Modern Classroom concept to them. And so it was just basically an overview of what it was like, what is Modern Classroom? What are the rules and routines and things that were going to take place in the classroom? And just so they could kind of get the gist of what this was all about. And it was interesting because the first unit that I rolled out was an English unit. And I would say that that was probably not the smartest move because it was hard. It's harder to roll it out in that. But when we saw it roll out in geography or even math, for example, we saw so much more success. But these kids, the key skills that they are lacking, and I don't know if it's COVID related is it that combination of being virtual and then back in the classroom and then virtual and back in the classroom again. So we've actually had to spend a lot of time just teaching, and I teach grade eight, so those basic, self regulation skills, organization skills, like how do you keep track? And like being very mindful. And for example, like today I pause my class, like midway through, I was conferencing with a group of students, and I could just see some kids were almost like lost because we're just back again from being virtual once again. And so I said to them, okay, “I want you to pause and think about what you're doing right now. What is your body doing? What are you physically doing? And are you meeting your goals of what is expected right now?” And so kind of like just doing those check-ins with them just to kind of get them like, “oh, right, this is what I need to be doing.” And those reminders, I think are so important, those learning skill reminders, right? Those self-regulation, organization, responsibility, like constantly modeling and teaching and kind of going back to what those look like, feel like sounds like in a classroom, they need it. And until they get into these deeper habits and more structured routine, I think it will just come naturally to them. But it's going to take time. These kids have got, unfortunately, developed some pretty bad habits with everything that's been going on, and that's at no fault of their own. But yet it's just a consequence of, I guess, what we've been going through. 


Zach: Yeah, they will develop the habits, though. I think that's interesting, the way that you put that, because it's not so much a Lesson Zero or like a Unit Zero that you front load. It's more like a daily thing, right, teaching the self-pacing in a daily way. And we'll touch more on sort of our daily routines later. But yeah, that's really interesting. But they do learn it. I will say, like having now taught through two full years, I guess there were two rather disruptive years, 2020 and 2021. But still, having been through two full years of Modern Classrooms, you do get to provide less and less support as the year goes on. And they do learn the habits, which I certainly think that as kids go through the grades in Modern Classrooms, they develop them even more. And by the time they get to high school and beyond high school, they're really strong. So, yeah, hold out and hope because they will learn them. Let's dive in a little bit more on the modern classroom specific stuff. And I guess the most obvious tool that we use for self-pacing is our pacing tracker or a progress tracker. So could you describe your progress trackers? Could you describe what sort of format they have? Any special features that you use if they're public or private or if they're like student-facing or class-facing or teacher-facing? Talk about your pacing trackers. Tell me all about them. 


Karla: So the pacing tracker and I have been on a journey together because trying to figure out what works and what works for these kids, right? Because I started at the beginning between having all of the lessons kind of laid out in a table in a Google slide, and the students were able to then plot their name where they were. But then the names were getting jumbled up together and it was becoming more cumbersome for them then and they were just kind of ditching it. So I had the class pace tracker, and now I'm using the auto-updating one that is out there, which is, oh, my gosh, blow my mind away. Amazing. But I use it for me. So then we do like a daily check-in and see where we're at for that particular one. The one time I did give students the editing privileges and then they messed up stuff, and then it just went caput. Because if they don't put the right form, like, it just messes things up if they don't follow the proper things. So that was like, “oh, don't do that again.” So I've learned a lot, but I would say that the best tool is the gameboard. I really like the gameboard structured pace tracker for the students. And then I have them have a little icon that I create that they kind of move along as they go. It's a nice visual because then they can see the big picture of “where are we starting? Where are we going? Where are we ending?” They can see where there's potential may do or aspire-to-do tasks that they can do along the way because they like to know like, they like to know what's going on, right? So the gameboard is that really great visual that allows them to see and I find they have had the biggest success with those individuals. The class tracker we're working, and I think we finally found our niche. But it's been a journey for sure. 


Zach: Yeah. And Karla, you shared with me your gameboard tracker and a couple of other trackers, too, actually. And listen, I will put those in the show notes. This show notes for this episode is going to be packed. My three guests have shared a ton of really cool resources with me. But yeah, Karla’s gameboard is in the show notes. And so is that auto-updating tracker, which I agree is like some kind of wizardry? I don't know. 


Karla: Oh, I know, right. 


Zach: You go in and look at the formulas. They are way over my head. But Rob is a genius. So, Emily and Dave, how about you? What kind of tracker do you use? Do you use the same tracker or different trackers? We use the same tracker as each other. 


Dave: Like, we share our trackers, but we tried the gameboard once and we liked the idea of it. And even I was listening to a podcast the other day from the MCP. It was like self-paced learning in the elementary classroom. So it would have been one of the more recent ones. I heard one of the ladies talking about having the game boards be themed. So kind of a good idea to have, like if your unit is on habitats, it's all animal-themed, and maybe they're moving an animal around the board or something like that. But right now our self-paced tracker that we use is more of a checklist. And so the students have a checklist that has all the standards written up at the top, and then it's similar to a game board and that it's sequential. So they start at the very top, they check that off if they've got a complete and they move down to the next one. As I said earlier, that's something that we model very hard and make sure that they're actually checking and going through everything. So our checklists follow a pretty similar pattern, that they start typically with your video and your guided notes and then a form of practice or an activity and then a mastery check. And if they pass that instead of in the game board kind of moving on, they would move to the next column, which would typically be the next standard or the next skill within a standard. 


Zach: I see. Yeah. And Emily shared that tracker with me as well. So there'll be also a copy of that in the show notes to check out. Emily, you also shared a teacher tracker with me. Can you explain what that is? 


Emily: Yeah, I did my teacher tracker I have on Google Sheets, which is one of the Google apps, which is just a spreadsheet. And what I do, I keep all of my subjects on there, and I just put the concept or the standard that the student is working on, which column they're working on. And when they complete their mastery check, I just mark down how well that they did on the mastery check on there. And sometimes I will write down how many tries it took for them to complete that mastery check or to actually move on just for my own knowledge on if they are taking two tries every time to master a concept. Then that might mean that I need to help them a little bit more for the next concept so they're getting it right away. But I keep it all online and we write the concepts as “I can” statements for the kids to go through, so they're understanding exactly the purpose of what they're learning. And so that's kind of how I keep track of it. 


Zach: That's really cool. I never heard of any other teacher doing that, but I think it's a really good idea to keep track of the number of attempts and things like that, which is really useful for you. It's a great data point, but, like, not that useful to the whole class. So there's no reason to put it in your tracker that the kids see. But for you, it is. That's really cool. And I might sort of steal that idea of having a teacher tracker, like my pacing tracker, which I'm also linking an anonymized version of my tracker in the show notes, it's pretty much the same for me and the students like, it just shows what lessons they've completed and what lesson is on pace in a spreadsheet format, and then it does some calculations and things. But that's a really interesting idea, and I think that I'm going to start thinking about more data points I can keep. I actually just tried implementing one, which tells me how long it's been since a student has submitted a lesson, which is something that has never occurred to me to track before. But I'm starting to see like, “Whoa, you haven't submitted a lesson for a whole week.” And it's like a red flag that I never saw before. And now I'm checking that. So I'm thinking about right now, I'm thinking about more data points. And Emily, that's a really interesting one and a really interesting idea to have a teacher-based tracker. Okay, well, let's talk about another crucial tool in every Modern Classroom and probably every classroom in 2022, which is the LMS or the Learning Management System. I think it's really important to be intentional with our LMS layout in a self-paced class because that's sort of where the self-pacing rubber meets the road. Like, the kids work through our LMS, and if we're not there, they need to know what to do next. A lot of times they want to work from home or they might miss class for any variety of reasons. And so that's where the self-pacing actually happens on the LMS. So could you all describe sort of how you set up your LMS’s, what LMS you use and how you set them up so that students can access their work and navigate through the sequence of activities that you planned at their own pace? 


Karla: At the beginning of the year, we always introduced Google Classroom to our students, so that would be our LMS. We've tried Office Notebook before when we first went online in March of 2020, and then our school moved to Google Classroom that following year. And honestly, we love Google Classroom. We find that it just helps support the students really well. And with the modeling at the beginning of the year before we've done a scavenger hunt with the kids because at our age level, they don't have experience with Google Classroom. So the scavenger hunt will help them just go through different aspects. Like what is the Stream Page? What is it meant for? Where do you find class work? And what is that meant for? We made video tutorials so we could send those home to parents so they understand the Google Classroom too, because at our age level, they don't really have a lot of experience and parents don't. And we want to have that communication. So if a student is working from home that the parents also know how to support their kid and where to go to find things. 


Zach: Yeah, definitely. I love Google Classroom too. It's the one that I use as well. And I will in the show notes be putting a screenshot of my Google Classroom. And Karla, you also shared a screenshot of your Google Classroom, so I'll be sharing that as well. Google Classroom I love because of how simple it is. And I can imagine that for younger kids even more. So it's kind of like I can understand having to learn how to get to the classwork page and find stuff. But it's also like there's not that many places to go besides the classwork page. And so I think it's a really great LMS. 


Karla: I will second that we are Google Classroom and it's great because by grade eight, they've been using it for a number of years now. So they are very familiar with the platform and there's a lot of things and tools within Google Classroom that I love. And so for starters, I always create my own separate Google classrooms for every subject. So some teachers don't love that. Some teachers prefer to have one classroom with everything. I like to keep it very like, “this is English, this is math.” And so it's separate classrooms. And I make sure I use those topics big time because I make sure whatever I'm creating, right now we're doing book club that's run through Modern Classroom, and so the topic of book club, so then everything else they can filter through very easily. I think probably the biggest thing that I make sure of is that I have it nicely ordered, like from top to bottom. So when I organize it, I save everything. I upload everything and I save it. Because I made the mistake the very first run through and posting everything all at the same time all at once for them. That was overload of information. So I am very cognizant now of making sure that I don't post too much too early. And I'll post maybe one or two things. A lesson depends on what we're doing, one or two, three things a week for them. But what it does is that if I upload everything right away and I can move, drop and drag everything in the Google Classroom, what ends up happening is that I can organize it so that it's very clearly organized for them. But I think the kids, once they get older, they realize that there's the To-Do Bar, that they can access their classwork page. They can see what they've handed in, not seeing what they handed in. So they almost have with Google Classroom, there's almost like a built-in organizer for them so that they can see what have they handed in, what is missing and what is still to come. 


Zach: Yeah. And I definitely don't teach multiple subjects. And I have a feeling that a lot of United States teachers just heard you say that you teach grade eight English and math and might have had their mind blown. But I teach one subject and I agree having a single Google Classroom for a single subject makes sense because it's like you want them to sort of follow a linear path. So I like the idea of having it like you mentioned this, having it be very sequential and linear. And I see it in your screenshot too. It's like you just go down basically, which I think is a self-pacing consideration. I do that intentionally so that my students know what to do next, like the finished one, and they just go on to the next. Transitioning from Google Classroom into lesson classifications. I want to talk about lesson classifications as a self-pacing tool. I actually hosted an episode of the podcast several months ago on lesson classifications just in general, and I guess as I planned for that episode, I realized just how much of a self-pacing consideration the classifications are. I think that at first glance it seems like it's sort of a tool for differentiating more than anything else, which it is. But it is a self-pacing consideration too, because when a kid is behind and needs support in catching up because they have not managed to self-pace, they can skip an aspire-to-do or they maybe can skip a should do. And I like to think about self-pacing and lesson classifications that way. So I'm curious if you all think of this that way as well and how you would characterize your use of the lesson classifications. And by that I mean like must do, should do and aspire-to-do with regards to self-pacing, do you think about it that way? 


Karla: Well, the first thing that I think is interesting is that one of the things I've done in Google Classroom more recently is I've actually started to add color-coded emojis at the beginning of my titles. So like everything is color-coded. So all of my must use are yellows. I call them may dos or purples and all my aspire-to-dos are green. So I'll have like a little box, like also known as a square. I will have a square right before the title so they can visually see that and so I like, really do that. What's interesting is how my may dos and aspire-to-dos have transitioned depending on the subject. If it's English, I look at them very differently, and it's almost something that can be done depending on the particular lesson itself. Whereas math could be potentially like an overall like a grasp task or a big diagnostic that they could potentially do at the very end that they could be working on as they go. Whereas sometimes with an English lesson, like, for example, if we're doing a short story where they're looking at theme and they could potentially therefore have a may do or an aspire-to-do task where it's like “find a story on your own and compare and contrast.” So it's like they're bringing in additional support or additional resources to better their understanding or showcase their understanding. The may dos, for me, are always something that is like to reinforce whatever is being taught in class. The aspire-to-do are those really high-level, far-reaching tasks, and to be honest, are often the tasks that I've had sitting in my Google Drive. And I'm like, “Dang, I wish I could teach this” or “I wish I had time for this.” But then I find that, ”oh, my gosh, this works.” And I can actually throw it in at these kids that are always ahead of pace. And this is something that they can dabble into. But I never have time in class because when you're doing a traditional-type classroom where you're lecturing, I find that you don't have the same kind of time that you potentially could, and then it gives them that opportunity, if that makes sense. 


Zach: Yes, absolutely. That's kind of what I mean. I think we're saying the same thing. It's like, managing your time is something that you do through the lesson classifications. 


Karla: Yes, for sure. Yeah. And that's sort of why I think of it as a self-pacing tool. 


Dave: This is one that we do a tiny bit differently, too. And I think that that's partially because of the age of the students that we teach. And so on our checklist, we don't really have the must do, aspire-to-do, could dos. We take all of that into consideration. But when we plan out our units, our checklist kind of has all of the activities on it. And so we find that at this age level, most of our kids can do most of the work most of the time, and we differentiate along the way. And so because the kids are using the checklist and the tracker, they'll come and see you for a mastery check, or they'll come and see you to check their progress or how am I doing and that kind of thing. And because of the way that we do our teacher tracking and I mean, there's other things - we write on the board as well, like the pace that we think students should be at, often. So on the board there will be a lesson that’s starred. So it could say like “task card number five”, and it'll have a star on it. And that would mean that that's like the recommended lesson. So it's still very self-paced. And then we have a lot of kids that sometimes are, I mean, less than five is starred, but kids are on less than 15. But if a kid is starting to fall behind, they know now that that star is what they should really focus on. And so at the start of every day when our kids come into class, both Emily and I have catch-up on the board. So kids come in and at this point in the year, they're amazing that they just walk in, they look on the board, see what is starred or what is not, and they buckle down and get to work. So we find that our kids typically, now there's always going to be a few exceptions, but typically our kids are within a lesson or two and sometimes just need to see that star to get moving and get to the recommended pace.


Emily: And then to add on to what Dave is saying. So if you have a student who is a little bit farther behind, we then just go up to them and just individually look at their checklist and say, “okay, well, this one, maybe you don't have to do this lesson. This could be your should do lesson. These are the questions we want you to do on this task card or this activity.” So we know what activities might be a little bit more of the ones that the students can skip or not do if they're falling behind. We have that in our head and we kind of just know that and it's more individual for the students. So we have our checklist with the activities that we want all the students to go through. But then if you have a student who's falling behind individually, we'll just go and kind of adopt their checklist for them. 


Karla:  This is another great example of how when you're using something like Google Classroom and when I post whatever the activity or the lesson is for the day for the kids, I'll make a copy for every student. I can go into that student's Google Classroom, into that Doc. And if I see that they're really far behind pace and maybe they're a little reluctant or they're struggling with something and potentially it's like, where do I even start? And a lot of this could be whether it's because of their profile or because they're just having a rough week or whatever the situation is, I can go in and say, you know what, “I'm going to take this out for you. And just to help get you back on pace.” And I've had to do that with some students and just seeing how they start to deflate because they're like, “oh, my gosh, I can feel this is a little bit more manageable now,” because just like what Emily said we know what are some of the tasks that  “like, okay, we could probably let this one go and let's get you back on pace” and working with those students. Another beauty with Google Classroom as how you can just go in and take it out and they would be none the wiser sometimes. 


Zach: Yeah. I love that feature of Google Classroom. And that's really cool. It almost kind of feels like lesson classification on the fly, which is like selfpacing, taking to the extreme with lesson classification. That's really cool. And I agree. Karla the relief that you see in a child who was behind and all of a sudden has less to do. They really appreciate that. They really appreciate that. 


Karla: Yeah, for sure. 


Zach: Cool. So we are going to take a quick break. We have a love note this week, and when we come back, we're going to talk, like I said, a little bit more about some of the more one off or unique things that characterize our different modern classrooms. So we'll be right back. 


Zach: Hey there, listeners. I hope you're enjoying this conversation with Emily, David, and Karla as much as I did. I thought it was super insightful. We have a love note for you this week. This one is from a teacher named Melissa, and Melissa actually touches on a lot of the same things that Emily, Dave and Karla are talking about. Check it out. 


Melissa: My name is Melissa White, and I recently became a Distinguished Modern Classroom Educator. I teach kindergarten in a low income school in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are many reasons I love being a Modern Classroom teacher, but one that really sticks out is watching my kindergarteners become independent in their learning. Introducing this model, explaining the why and the how to them, and building independence took a long time, but it's given me more time to work with students in small groups without distractions. And it's given the students I'm not working with quality instruction and activities that increase their learning instead of just busy work. For anybody who is questioning how this could possibly work with five and six year olds, the advice I would give is to be patient, trust the process, and never underestimate the kids. 


Zach: If you want to submit a love note like this one talking about why you love being a Modern Classrooms teacher or what about the model you love, you can do so by emailing it to us at Podcast.modernclassrooms.org or by following the instructions linked in the show notes. But for now, let's get back into it and talk about more of the tools that we use for self-pacing. All right. We are back with Emily, Dave, and Karla. And as I mentioned before the break, I'd like to get a little bit more specific with each of our individual Modern Classrooms now and let each of you kind of touch on some of the self-pacing tools that make your classrooms unique. Anyway, let's get the ball rolling here. And I guess start off by just describing what a normal day looks like in your classroom. When I have normal in quotes. Right. In a Modern Classroom, I guess every day kind of feels different. But what would a sort of daily routine be in your class? What routine do you use? What in-class, protocols, activities, things like that, specifically with regard to self-pacing. I guess in thinking about this question, one example that I thought of is having something like a lesson All-Stars sort of a system where you know which students are really good at one lesson and you send other students to them to help with, well, first of all, to take some of the burden off the teacher in a classroom full of kids, but also to help kids learn that they have peers who can be sort of like self-pacing tools right there in the room with them. But that's just what I thought of. What would you all say in terms of normal routines that you have daily for facilitating self-pacing? 


Dave: Yeah. So I would say again, one of the benefits of teaching the grade level that we do is that we get to create our schedule so that catch-up time that I had mentioned prior to the break is very helpful for a self-paced classroom. 


Zach: Yeah. I really liked that. I didn't comment on it, but I really like that it's a really good idea. 


Dave: You have a lot of kids that come in and they are doing catch-up, but the kids that are ahead, we give them the option of sometimes it's the very start of the day. Sometimes they might just want to come in and color or do an art project for a few minutes. And if they're ahead, it's a nice, easy way to step into their day. So I like the lesson All Stars idea. We do something similar towards the start of the year just with like a help board. And I used to always do like a black marker. If you signed your name in black marker, it meant that other kids could help you too. But if it was a blue marker, it was something that only I could help with. So maybe it's like a specific question about a mastery check or something like that. 


Zach: What a good idea. 


Dave: Yeah. But as we continue through the year and you really kind of nag kids about like there's a lot of experts in the building, or just as kids get better at being able to ask for help and receive help from each other, because we spent so much time on that towards the beginning of the year. At this point of the year, there are times when we don't because we're teachers, but there are times when you probably could sit at your desk and watch the kids ask each other for help and get through the work and stuff. And it's really cool to be able to walk around and see a kid that looks like they need help and someone else kind of steps in right away. 


Zach: Yeah. 


Emily: My day is very similar to Dave’s. Like, the kids come in, they have that catch-up time. I will choose students and be like, “hey, this is what you're working on, because I know you're a little bit behind on something” with the star, double star or something. So they all know that that's what they need to work on. When it comes to our self-paced class, like Dave said, we're very lucky because we can decide when we want to do it throughout the day so we can set up a chunk of time aside for us to work on it. And then usually I'll start the class and I feel like Dave is very similar with sometimes it's a mini lesson that if we know our recommended lesson is this for today? Well, it might need a mini lesson. So that's what we'll focus on. At the beginning of the year, it was more about teaching the concept, this is what we're going to work on. And now the mini lessons are like, this is a recommended where is everybody and go from there. Sometimes it might just be “this lesson needs certain materials.” So we'll tell them kind of where to find the materials. 


Dave: They might do a science experiment in, like a different room or something. So, you might say, like “in that room is the flashlights to complete this task.” 


Emily: Sometimes we'll come in and just like, “what did we learn from the other day” and have that review or share time, too. So sometimes at the end of the class, we'll come together and share. But sometimes we'll start the class with that share time as well. And another thing is instead of the help board, because throughout the year, sometimes we don't find it's needed because kids just go to each other and we let our kids work together and collaborate through it all. We don't care if our kids work together or not except on mastery checks. Mastery checks you’re doing it by yourself. But when you're doing the work, if you want to work with a friend, you can. I've had students come up to me, and if I'm working with students, another student will step in and be like, “I got this. I can help you with it.” 


Zach: I love that. I love when that happens. 


Emily: Yeah. And we build those routines throughout the year with it. 


Zach: Yeah. But that's really cool because you work really hard at the beginning to build those routines. And then they sort of just take over and the kids start to talk to each other before they even, I love that I've been talking with some other teachers about this recently where I do a sort of a similar thing where if a student comes to ask me a question and I'm sitting at my desk doing something, I'll ask another kid to come over and me and the other kid who has already finished that lesson will sort of conspire and look at it together. And then they'll wind up helping the first kid out instead of me. But all three of us are there having a discussion, and it's just really like it's really fun. Like you said, to see kids doing this for each other. 


Emily: I love when a kid comes and asks me for help and I have a student beside me and be like, “I can go help them!” It's like perfect. Can you go right ahead? Yeah, please. 


Zach: Yes, Karla, how about you? 


Karla: I’m usually very similar. I will start my day and build our day together as a class, and we'll talk to them and say, okay, guys, what is it that you need today? What do you need more time of? And so depending on what's going on in maths or English or science or there's so much going on, there's so many moving pieces and so many subjects that we have to cover. I'll often say to them, okay, what is it that you need today? And sometimes they'll have like 100 minutes of time versus sometimes they'll only have like a 50-minute period or something like that. So the time will shift. And so we'll build our day together, which I think is important because giving students that voice and that opportunity to really say, like, what is it that they need out of their day? And they're very reflective about that and they're amazing at sharing that information. So I love that component. And then when it comes time to, depending what we're doing. So right now because in language we're doing Book Club, I'll just kind of do a quick check in because I often find that students will continue doing whatever their independent tasks are. They'll do it and potentially finish up for homework. So I'll find usually at the very beginning of each day for a particular class, whether it be math or English or whatever, that there are a bunch of kids are in need of a mastery check. So then one of the key tools actually, that because we were virtual and we rolled out our algebra unit in Modern Classroom, we were kind of dabbling, like, “how do we best do the mastery check being virtual? How do we want to tackle this?” And we actually started using the Google Classroom question piece. And then what you can do is that you can release for each student individually when they're ready for it. So you can have the questionnaire and deselect, like where it says at the top, it says all students and deselect that. So now I can say, oh, Bob is ready for his mastery check. So I can click on Bob and then send it to him directly and then hit Save. And then when Susan is ready, then Susan is ready. And then when Walid is ready, okay, Walid is ready now. And so you can do it that way, which has been mind blowingly awesome. And it's been such an easy, versus Google Forms, which we've used. So I find that usually the beginning of class is like, “oh, I need mastery.” So there's like a bunch of masteries happening and just updating our pace tracker. Like, “okay, where are people at?” Just making sure we're doing that. And I have in my classroom, like on the one whiteboard, I have an expert station. So if there are people that I will highlight and say, “okay, these are some experts that you could potentially go to for certain lessons.” When it comes to certain subjects, like math, everybody knows who the experts are in the math class. I don't even need to put names up there, which is great, right? Because they're way smarter than me in math, even. So, props to them. But yes, because some of the tests that I'll have them do is like the partner corner, where they have to find a partner in class and complete a task together. So if somebody is looking for a partner and is at the same particular lesson, they can go to there. But just like Emily said, it's amazing to see them collaborating and coming together and people that and students that you wouldn't necessarily normally gravitate together will gravitate together. It kind of forces that hand, especially if they're at that same pace and they want to keep going and they're like, okay, “well, let's get going. Let's work together.” What's the word I'm looking for? Like, it just naturally allows them to come together and work together. So there's a lot of different moving pieces. And I've seen it's very different from one class to the next in terms of how the day and how it unfolds. And there's no right or no wrong, right? Because a lot of times even in math class, we'll start off with a number talk that we do as a whole class. And then I'll say, okay, let's giddyip and get into today's Modern Classroom stuff. So it varies class by class, day by day, right? 


Emily: Yeah. And I think just even kind of bouncing off what Karla said. One thing that I've really liked and how we can structure our day is when the kids are all collaborating together. That frees you up to be able to work individually with students. I can pull students or pull a group of students that I know might be struggling on a concept or work one-on-one with kids because then my other kids know I'm busy and they will help each other if they're stuck on like, “where do I find something?” So that's another way that, I don't know, that works really well with Modern Classroom and just the structure that we have our days just frees you up so much to be able to work one-on-one with students. 


Zach: It absolutely does. But I think that also that sort of comes from, I don't know, congenial, like, familial feeling that you develop in a Modern Classroom where it's like, some kids know this and some kids know that, and you can all ask each other stuff. And then if it's some very simple question, like, “where do I find lesson three” or something, kids will ask each other because that's just what you do in a Modern Classroom. And you're right, it definitely frees the teacher up to work really intensively with the kids that need it, but also it makes the classroom just run more smoothly. And Karla, you said something that I thought was really cool, which is how you sort of, like, modify the schedule each day based on what the kids say they need. 


Karla: Yeah. 


Zach: That is awesome. 


Karla: It's kind of funny. I don't have a timetable. I have the periods that I am covered. So my French and my music. So when the kids go to either French or to go to music. But other than that, it's fluid. It's day by day, depending on what we're doing, that we will just kind of, like, build it together. And it's been very freeing because how many times have you been in the middle of teaching, like, a great lesson, and then the bell goes and it's like, oh, okay, I guess we're flipping over to history now and then. It doesn't make sense. So by building it by blocks of time or building it together as a student, like, they can tell you like, “oh, I really struggled with that math homework. Can we get more time with the math?” So then we can go over that. It just gives them not only the voice and to be heard in the classroom to give them their input, but it also allows you to kind of, like, see what the needs are of each day, right? 


Zach: Yeah, because they tell you what they need. I just had this experience. So my school has a sort of a weird Friday schedule where different classes meet on different Fridays. And I had a critique coming up with one of my classes, and our last class before Friday was supposed to be the critique. And I just asked them, like, would you rather do the critique on Friday? And all the whole class was like, “yes!” And I was like, okay, I get it. They'll tell you very emphatically sometimes. Cool. So let's talk about a couple more types of self-pacing tools that I think are unique in our different classrooms. And I want to talk about grades. I wonder if you grade students on their self-pacing, if you use grades as a self-pacing tool. I do in my class at the end, like, the number of lessons that you have mastered becomes a percentage grade out of the total number of lessons in the unit. Because I consider that to be mastery-based learning. Right. If there are ten lessons to master and you master eight of them, that's 80% mastery on that unit. But that's me. And I'm curious if grades factor into your self-pacing or inversely, if self-pacing factors into your grades. 


Karla: All right, well, I'm going to start off and say I have gone gradeless this year in my classroom. So not only did I throw Modern Classroom at them, I throw the gradeless at them. I'm going to give a shout out here to the book Ungrading by Susan Bloom. Unbelievable book that blew my mind away. And it was something that I needed to, and I think all educators should definitely take a look at. So I've been dabbling in ungrading for a long time. And when I read this over the summer, I was like, okay, we're going all in now, for sure. And so basically, when students complete a task, it is they're approaching the task, they've met the task or they've exceeded the task. Now, some tasks are just a met/not met. And some tasks they can potentially exceed. And that's where if they do the may dos or the aspire-to-dos, they could potentially dabble from that to reach those particular areas. But that's where we are at in our classroom. So right now we are in the midst of report card writing. And so unfortunately, the Ontario Ministry has said that I have to put numbers on these report cards, and we sat together as one-on-one. And I'm currently doing this right now with my students. I'm close to being finished, and I asked them to self-assess and kind of do the reflection of where they think they are at. And they came up with a number, and then I sat with them and I would say that 97% of my students were like, bang-on and the other 3% were too hard on themselves. So they know where they are as learners. And I think having those clear, like met, not met, they know where they are going wrong. And I'm very feedback-driven. And so I get a lot of feedback. And even on my math test, it's all about comments that I've given about where they messed up or where they went wrong or “try this” or “try it next time.” But I've seen for students that, especially those that struggle with certain concepts, removing the grades for those students has been the biggest, like, deflation for them I have ever seen because they are pushing themselves harder because they really want to meet those expectations. They're not seeing, you know, a letter grade or they're not seeing a number and then labeling themselves as that. So I would say more than anything. That has been like, a huge win, and it's been amazing journey from my opinion. Some of my students may disagree with me, especially my high-flying students that love to see those marks and they want to see those 90s and they want to see all those level fours, and that's been a struggle for them. But it's definitely been a learning curve and we're still learning and still going through it. 


Zach: That's very cool. That's very awesome. Emily and Dave, how about you two? Do you use grades? Do you self-pace through grades? 


Dave: Yeah, I agree with you. I think progression shows mastery. But again, I keep going back to this, but because of how we are able to schedule our day in an elementary setting and through our catch-up time and through conversations with parents and letting them know where kids are at or if they need a little bit of extra work at home or anything, we haven't found this to be a problem so far with kids falling behind and having incomplete assignments or an incomplete unit. So at most, as we said, kids would omit maybe one or two activities from the checklist. They maybe don't do just like an extra game or something like that. But we're able to keep our kids on pace. So the progression isn't really an indicator for our marks. And I think we kind of find that typically our stronger students work through our units pretty quickly at this age, but they get strong marks because they did it independently, correctly. They can demonstrate that they understand it numerous times, not necessarily because they did it quickly, because every once in a while a kid will get like, bit in the butt by trying to do something too fast, and then they make a mistake or two on their mastery check and have to go back and retry some practice and do the mastery check all over again. So it wouldn't be based on the speed, I don't think. 


Zach: Yeah, no, I don't do that either. I wouldn't give a kid a higher grade because they finish the unit faster. But I just meant like, if the pace is considered at the end, sort of like if you don't work fast enough to finish the unit in all of the allotted time, it doesn't have to be a great end of itself. But it does mean that they learned less, right? There's lessons that they objectively didn't master because they didn't get to them. So I was just curious how that sort of played out in the grades, but that makes sense. 


Dave: And at our age level, we don't really have an end of unit date. We kind of start our unit and see how the students are progressing. And then when they're getting towards the end, then it's like, okay, this is when we're going to finish off the unit. And then for our students to make sure we want all of our students to master each concept before they're moving on. So for us, this is something we didn't mention in our checklist, we do have like a “needs more practice” section of it. So if a student is struggling to understand the concept and they're not ready to move on, they have a little bit more time or we give them more activities that they can work on to make sure that they master the concept or if they don't do well on the first mastery check. Well, here, let's make sure we understand before you move on. And that way the students are always kind of mastering each concept and we're making sure that they're completing each column in our checklist. 


Karla: Yeah. I was going to say one of the things that we noticed is that when we created a unit, we would have all the different lessons, like, for example, let's say math and algebra, and there's six different individual lessons that they have to eventually work through. And then there is some kind of a summative assessment that we do at the end. So regardless if its English or math or geography, there's always some kind of a summative task that they have to do. And we'll set a hard deadline for that particular task. So it's like, okay, let's say if it is hypothetically, like a math test. Okay, here's your math test. Your math test date is next Thursday. And so that really helps them with that pacing piece of knowing. Ok. I need to make sure I keep on track because in the very beginning, when we first rolled this out, we didn't set any kind of dates. And we found that the kids just were like kind of willy nilly with it and not hitting goals and were falling very behind pace. We found that especially with the grade eight students, that having those soft deadlines, that this is where you kind of should be to be on pace, but also setting those hard deadlines and say, okay, this is the unit test and you need to know lessons one through six by Thursday of next week. So you need to make sure you're hitting that pace because at the end of the day, we are trying to build in those because there is those hard deadlines in school, in life. So in having that regulation piece built in to work with them and some kids, I found that the kids are more successful with that than not having those deadlines in place, if that helps as well. 


Zach: Yeah, definitely. I often talk about that in the sort of the context of Modern Classrooms, like having soft deadlines and also hard deadlines, but breaking up the self-pacing sort of scope into smaller pieces that you can self-pace on, as opposed to saying, here's 20 lessons. I'll see you in November. 


Karla: Yes. So kind of like if I was to look at the big picture so that whatever that summative task is essentially like, they should be able to master that because all the mini stuff that they've gone, all the lessons that they've done along the way is basically this summative task is like a big showcase, right, is that showcase of knowledge. That is the big piece that essentially that's what I mark. What I assess and give the feedback on and all of the guided notes and the stuff along the way is the stuff that just helps them build towards that end journey. 


Zach: Yeah. That resonates with me as well. 


Karla: I have them build up towards a summative. Like each lesson is one step of the summative at the end, and so there's ten steps. Right. And if they do eight of the ten, then their summative will be missing two things. 


Zach: Yeah, exactly. 


Karla: So it does sort of come out in their grades for the summative as well. 


Zach: That makes sense. That makes sense. Cool. Very cool. Well, man, we're running long. Let's close out with a question that I think a lot of teachers who are apprehensive about trying a self-paced class have, which is how we deal with students who fall behind in a self-paced class. And so we're talking about the tools that we use for self-pacing, like what tools and maybe what strategies do you use when you have kids who fall behind in your classes? 


Emily: I think we touched a little bit about what we do. We have that catch up time to allow students to catch up when they are falling behind. If they're falling quite behind, I usually just have a conversation with them and try and talk to the students and see why they're falling behind. Maybe they are really struggling on a concept and they need more one-on-one time with me. Maybe they're in the class very distracted and need a quiet place to go work. And we're very lucky in our school to have different areas that students can work at. So maybe we just need to work on that. I had a conversation the other day with a student who gets very distracted very easily by things around them, and it was just “I need to block out the noise.” Well, okay, let's maybe try listening to music. And I contacted the parents and they were willing to send a device to school with a playlist, and that's what the student needed to get them focused while they're working. So I like to have that conversation before I communicate with the parents. And if the student is falling behind, I also communicate with parents to see how I can be supportive with them at school, but also how parents can support us as well. So sometimes it might just be sending something home so the student can get caught up. 


Zach: Yeah. I love that the strategy is a conversation, but it results in sort of like one-off and very sort of bespoke solution for each individual student based on their needs. 


Emily: It holds a student accountable, too, right? For their own learning. 


Zach: Yeah. 


Emily: They know what they need best. 


Zach: Definitely. Karla, how about you? 


Karla: I think that you are naturally going to have students in your class that are going to fall behind pace. And I think it's a matter just like Emily said, is having a conversation with them, like what's going on? What's causing it? Are they overwhelmed? Do they understand what they need to do? What is causing this need? And so what modifications or accommodations do you need to put into place to better support that student? And it could be a matter of just sitting down with them and just maybe explaining the task one-on-one in person versus having them watch a video. Like maybe that's not their best way of learning. Maybe it's a matter of just like going through and like I previously said, like just going into their Google Classroom, going into the dock and cutting certain things out and say, “okay, we're not going to worry about this task” and just kind of like removing some of those workload pieces that maybe it's just too much for them, right? But I think it's that chunking too, of like making sure you're really clearly chunking the tasks. And like I said previously, as well, that I made the mistake of dumping too much into Google Classroom too fast, too much at one time. And so being really aware of how much are you posting each week, what is like a reasonable amount versus what is too much? Because I think if you have let's say it's a six part math lesson that you have. If you dump all six lessons, sure. There's going to be like a couple of kids that will do all six of them in probably one night if they can. However, you're going to have people that look at six lessons and be like, “oh my gosh, I don't even know where to start.” And it's too much for them. So it's just being very mindful of like, kind of keeping track of who's where in terms of mastery, in terms of releasing the next lesson, just to make sure that it doesn't become so overwhelming for them. 


Zach: Yeah, this is really interesting. As I listen to both of you sort of respond to this question, it's occurring to me that the answer to this is the same as all the previous answers. It's just Modern Classrooms. It's the stuff that we do. And when a kid does happen to fall really far behind, we can sort of kick into gear and use our teacher tricks, like reaching out to parents and things like that. But the structure is there for them to catch up. 


Karla: Absolutely. 


Zach: The structure is there for us to tell parents what they need to do and guardians to catch up. Also, the structure makes it really obvious what has to be done, what they're behind on specifically, and they can do it. I was thinking about sending progress reports, which is something that I've talked about and that I do. I use my progress tracker for that. But as you answer this question, it's occurring to me that Modern Classrooms is not the silver bullet that solves all of our problems. We do have students fall behind and we have the tricks. We have the tools. Teachers are good at this and I really appreciate hearing that. It's a cool, different way to think about it that has sort of changed my mindset on that. So that was awesome. As I said, we kind of ran long. It was a really packed and awesome conversation. I really appreciate the three of you taking the time the extra time to join me tonight to talk about this stuff. Emily, Dave and Karla, thank you all so much for joining me. 


Emily: Thank you. 


Dave: Yeah. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. 


Zach: And listeners, remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org if you have feedback or want to ask questions about what we talked about here. You can find the show notes for this episode which, like I said, are completely packed at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/75 thank you all so much for listening and have a great week. We will be back next Sunday.


Voiceover: Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org, and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn.Modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj, that's P-R-O-J. We are so appreciative of all you do for students and schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast.






[a]check
[b]to check