Zach Diamond 0:03 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. Calla Miller 0:28 Hello, and welcome to episode 73 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon, she/her pronouns, a program manager at MCP. And I am joined by two mentors, Calla and Sarah. So our listeners shared that we needed more elementary voices. And I couldn't agree more welcome, Calla and Sarah. Calla Miller 0:48 Thank you. Sarah Krasowski 0:48 Hi, thanks for having us. Calla Miller 0:53 One thing that really stuck out to me is that you both had a community of teachers who are really interested in implementing this model, which is really exciting, right? This is something that I tell teachers who are interested in this model all the time is that hey, find yourself a teacher bestie to do this model with because I think it'll be a lot more attainable. If you have someone that you're doing this model with as well. Calla Miller 1:18 Yeah, so initially, my goal for self paced learning in my class was just that I could keep students moving forward in their learning, and then also provide support. So all my students can keep moving forward, they can all make progress, right. So right now, like I said, earlier, my math and writing are self paced. From a student experience, I guess, when we're starting either one of those subjects throughout the day, I do spread them out. So it's not back to back. We do other instruction forms throughout the day. But when we start writing, or we start math, we gather together, we take a look at our Progress Tracker. So My Progress Tracker has just the assignments that any students happen to be on. So if there are certain assignments that we've all passed, or that none of us are having made it to get, I don't put those on our tracker, just to kind of limit what they see. Because again, they're six and seven. Sometimes they're five when they come to me, so they're young, and they too much visual information would be hard to navigate. Something that I've been really working on this year is working out helping ourselves giving ourselves some resources. So throughout the day, I'm doing many different things. But it looks much different than what I've seen in the past might see myself doing the past. And, um, at first it was a little bit scary, because I wasn't sure like, Am I doing this right. But I've noticed now I'm able to catch those big gaps before they become big gaps, because I have a quick time that I can check in with somebody fix any misconceptions, and then they can move on. Calla Miller 2:47 Yeah, and something that I heard from one of our kindergarten mentors, actually was that there's a lot of hand holding in the beginning, right? Because these are such young learners, they really need a lot of hand holding and explicit directions and how to do certain things. Calla Miller 3:02 Definitely very clear. And as a teacher, you have to really know where you're going with things before they even have access to any of that. Calla Miller 3:11 Yeah, and I really like what you said as well. I'm just having like one to two new things that students are looking at every day. And just the fact that you said like, it's still like, I still control it, right, like, so for teachers get to know us teachers, we have a hard time relinquishing control, never. And so it's really interesting to hear you say like, you could still have that control, it's still self pacing. And you still have a little bit of control, because then students aren't all over the place, right. Sarah Krasowski 3:44 For my class, I have three progress trackers that really set the whole stage for self pacing, I have a student facing tracker, that each of my units has some sort of a theme. So this unit right now we're working on volume, it's called stacking up volume, and our theme is Legos. So the game board, it has all of the lessons the entire unit, they're laid out for them. And it's all in the LMS. So they have a Lego piece that they move around the game board. And so that way they're able to keep track of their own pace. I only implement currently in math, and each of my math units are between four to seven, maybe eight lessons long. Each of my lessons should take about a class period, and it's video activity and then mastery check. So everything is there for them color coded in the LMS and then also same color coding in their, their map their game board. And then I have a classroom facing tracker that has three different sections on it catching up, right on track and ahead of schedule. And each of my students underneath one of those sections is their first name and their lesson number. That way if someone needs a little extra help They've already gone back, they've watched the video again, I have a three before me rule in my class. So they find someone who is a lesson or a few ahead of them. And they can ask that person because that person's already mastered the lesson, they've done all the work so they shouldn't be able to help. And this year, it's actually really cute. I have a bunch of students who are the AOS, crew, they ahead of schedule crew. And their goal they've told me is to remain ahead of schedule the entire time, and to try to get other students to be ahead of schedule too. So that's really cute. And then I have my teacher tracker, my teacher tracker is more just a checklist that I keep that I just check off each individual piece of the lesson that the students have completed, it's where I keep grades for the activities if I choose to grade them, or the mastery checks. And that way, if students because again, they're fifth graders, they're 10, or 11 years old, if they don't keep track of their game board and where they are with their peace, one day they forget to move their Progress Tracker, then I'm able to tell them exactly what they're on. And I feel like some teachers will shy away from a classroom facing from a classroom facing Progress Tracker, just because they think it's going to be a tool of real ridicule, or students will make fun of each other depending on where they are. But I feel like phrasing it as catching up, students will be catching up for many different reasons whether again, they were out sick, whether it be COVID, or something else, or they were down with the social worker for a period or they had instrumental lessons or they were at chorus. So they can be catching up for many different reasons. It's not always about not understanding the material. And I think right off the bat on unit one, they all understood that there were so many different reasons for students to be on catching up that it was never anything negative. If I do have a student that doesn't do great on the mastery check the first time, I'm able to write that down two out of six, four out of six, whatever it is. And then that way, when I work with the student and give them either that same mastery check to try again, or I give them a different one. Focusing on the same skill, I'm able to see their growth and I can show them their growth right there too. Because even if they don't get 100 on the second mastery check, I can show them my checklist and say, like, well, this first time you only got one right. Now, maybe you didn't get all six, but now you got four. And so that right there is just a way, like we always talked about with this model that you have the data right there. It's that's kind of what it is for me is to keep that data right there. It's right at my fingertips, I can show it to them live. And so that's the greatest part of the my teacher tracker for me. Calla Miller 7:55 Yeah, I would say the biggest challenge for me is definitely been related to planning and feeling like I could stay ahead of the game. So thinking about, you know, when I first launched, I had a lot more content because I had been working on it through the summer. But trying to stay ahead as I continue through the school year was pretty difficult. And I decided to finally you know, give myself that grace of, I'm only going to be rolling out that one new assignment or a couple of new assignments every day. So my goal for myself has been to be about a week ahead of where my students are. Now I have my content plan. Is it ready for students? No. So that's why I'm looking for that five day window that I have student facing work ready. Sarah Krasowski 8:37 If there's any student that wants to retake the test, they can. But I staple the Second Chance paper to any test that's below a 70. And what they have to do is they have to fill in the unit that it was on, and then two ways that they could work to enhance their score if and when they take it again. And then I usually give them a few days, they're able to come in either early in the morning or after school one day and retake that test. And I have seen it worked really well that I have students who I one student particularly was so proud of himself. He went from a 29 the first time to a 100 A week later. And I truly think he just needed a bit more time to process all of that information. But he went in, he finished the unit he went back study those videos, gave himself more example problems, took some extra activities came back and he did such a great job. But then I have students who don't finish the unit and they don't take their time and go back. And I mean they're, they're young kids. And so that's to be understood. And the way that I've been kind of dealing with it is when I was teaching in the more conventional way. I would still have students who weren't mastering all of the skills I was teaching them. But now, even if they don't go back and retake that test, I have my check list, I know exactly where they ended in that unit, I know exactly what's in the lessons that they didn't complete. And so I know what they can and currently can't do. So even if they don't go back and take their own time to come back and finish that unit, I'm able to work on those skills with them throughout the rest of the year. So maybe they didn't have them for that test grades, don't motivate everybody. But they will have them by the time they get to sixth grade. Calla Miller 10:29 But it made me realize that no matter what great lesson I had taught that day, that having so many students not being able to access just was creating these any inequities amongst my students, that I could solve that problem with the help of 100 classroom projects, but I had a strategy to solve that. So I knew that even if I just started slowly with one subject, and then kind of reflected on how it was going, that I could begin to address that. And for me, I decided to start the place that I kind of dreaded teaching during the day, and I love teaching, but I really dreaded teaching writing. Because for 13 years, there was always somebody who wasn't there for my lesson that day. And they, it was so hard to move on writing in elementary school, it takes a lot of hand holding, and gradual release. So if I am gradually releasing my students, and I have a section of students who haven't heard any of my instruction, they don't know what to go and work on. And so it was very hard to have a successful workshop model where I could work with students and keep them moving when I was doing a lot of reteaching. So I decided to start with writing because I thought I could make a biggest my biggest impact there and be most manageable for me. So my tip is think about what's an area that you would want to have the biggest impact for you or your students, or even what can be the most manageable for you. Sarah Krasowski 11:54 If it's your first or even your second unit, you need to give your students and yourself much more time than you think that you would need to adjust. I know when I was planning my first unit and even this year, not my first unit, but it was my students first unit I had allotted for a lot less time than what we needed. And so now I try to give myself and my students a bit more grace. So if you're just starting off, congrats, that's awesome. You'll love it. However, give yourself and your students time to get used to it time to adjust time to work out the kinks of this model. However it may look. Calla Miller 12:37 Thank you all for listening. Have a great week and we'll be back next week. Zach Diamond 12:46 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 @modernclassproj. That's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.