Episode 94: From the Archive - Episode 9 (Planning and Teaching in a Modern Classroom


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. 


Participant #1:
Hello and welcome to episode nine of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Karim Farrah, and I am the founder and executive director of the Modern Classrooms Project. I'm joined by two wonderful guests today, nora Barnett and Lisa Dodi. And today we're going to be digging into this concept of how you actually plan a modern classroom. A lot of our listeners have asked to share a little bit more about the nitty gritty experience of what it's like to actually build your instructional videos, create those self pacing structures, grade how much time are people spending? Does it get easier over time? So today we're going to dig into those exact concepts and spend some time clarifying how modern classrooms educators do this and how modern classrooms coaches do this. But before we get started, I want to introduce my guests. So first I'm going to introduce Nora. I met Nora about a year and a half ago. She's currently a fabulous modern classroom educator and mentor. She was part of our fellowship. A year and a half ago. I've had the wonderful privilege of watching her classroom in action. Nora, can you share a little bit more about yourself, your experience in education and what brought you to the Modern Classrooms Project? Yeah, of course. Well, first, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here to talk about modern classrooms. Of course. Thank you for joining us. So I currently teach in Alexandria City Public Schools. This is my second year teaching there. This is my 8th year teaching total. And I teach 6th grade math. And I had the privilege of learning about modern classrooms right in its early stages. My brother is actually Rob Barnett, one of the co founders. So I heard about it before it started. It was really cool to hear conversations that Robbie was having before all this started about his frustration with classrooms and all that, and to see how modern classrooms has just blossomed so much. And then for me to actually be using it and to see how wonderful it is has been really awesome, amazing. And I always say you're our toughest customer, and I always love chatting with you because you call Rob Robbie. I don't think I'll ever have the privilege to be able to do that. And I love it every time I hear it. And our other guest, Lisa Dodi. I met Lisa not that long ago, actually. It was like the height of covid 19. Lisa reached out. She's an instructional coach, and she was like, hey, I think you all have some tools and resources that could help me and my educators transform our practices. I don't want to share too much about how Lisa found out about us. So, Lisa, can you tell us a little bit more about your experience in education, what it is that you do now, how you found us, and what you're doing now with our model in your district? Absolutely. So first, thank you so much for having me. When you invited me, I was just so excited to be part of this podcast. I have to be honest, one of my colleagues introduced me to podcast only a few years ago. I wasn't sure what they were, and now I listen to lots of them. So thank you for having me on a super cool podcast. Of course. Thank you. So how I came to find you this is my 13th year as an educator. I teach in the Shiny High School District in to come to Kansas. And so if you know where Kansas City is, we are about an hour west of Kansas City, and this is only my second year as a coach. So as a first year coach, in the height of cobid, our school went completely remote, and teachers were asking lots of great questions, lots of questions filled with what ifs and what would the fall look like? And we didn't know what it would look like. We knew that there was a possibility that remote would be something we would encounter again. And we have a colleague who wrote a book, Game Changing Moves. His name is Coach Chad Parks, and he talks about controlling your controllables. Well, we can control teaching and learning. We can't control copied. So I started digging around for great ways to do teaching and learning the best way that we know how and came across the podcast. I like Jennifer Gonzalez's podcast, Cult of Pedagogy, but I found an episode about building a great screencast video, and in that podcast, you guys were mentioned, and I clicked the link, and the rest is history. And so that's how I found you. Fantastic. And Lisa, your story is such a great example of sort of like the ground level movement of this organization, and we love to hear it. You reached out to us. You shared about the fact that you all wanted to innovate shortly after we partnered with your entire school district. We've now trained over 45 educators across Shawnee Heights, and it's just been a fantastic partnership. It's been so cool to see how you pave the way to really transform teaching and learning there. And we're excited to hear your thoughts on what it's like been like supporting teachers who are planning this model. Part of the reason I picked Nora and Lisa to join us today is because it's a nice, broad array of perspectives. Nora is in the classroom. She's both a mentor, but she's teaching. This is her second year executing, seeing her planning and action, it's about as good as it gets. And then Lisa, who built a beautiful unit in our mentorship program that is truly exemplary, is now supporting educators across our district as they implement our model as well. So, again, the focus of today is really thinking about this element of planning. We're going to get pretty technical with it and try to kind of create some comfort and some clarity for educators who are kind of looking at the Modern Classrooms model and saying, how do I do this? How do I execute it? How do I sustain it? So let's go ahead and get started and digging into this discussion. And the first thing is, naturally the most intimidating aspect of the Modern Classrooms project model for a lot of folks is the planning element. It can intimidate folks from even accessing our materials. The thought of building their own instructional video is extremely scary and confusing. The notion that they aren't at the lecturing can be intimidating, and then it stops folks from kind of diving into the innovation. So I want to talk a little bit about what it was like when you all planned your first unit. And Nora, you can go ahead and start and just explain a little bit about what the feeling was like when you kind of sat, I know you in a classroom and our fellowship saying, okay, I got to take this math unit and transform it into a totally different approach to teaching and learning. What was that journey like initially? It's a great question. Well, it was definitely scary and overwhelming. Those are the two words that come to mind right away. I remember, as you said, sitting in the classroom feeling like, how am I going to do this? But I think it very much mirrors modern Classrooms and that I was able to break it down into, like, bite size pieces, which was really, really helpful. I think the first day, I just spent a long time just going through an example unit, which was really helpful, too, to see. Yeah, it sounds really overwhelming and there's so many different parts to it, but actually, you can do it. You just have to break it down into bite sized steps and think about each part separately. So that was really great to see. And I think anything is overwhelming when you're first starting, and if you just don't let that get in the way and then really focus on each piece and putting it together in the end, I think that makes it a lot more manageable. Love it. And I'm glad you brought up the exemplar units. We stress the fact that it's sort of hard to do in the virtual space to control for this, but we have spent a lot of time building exemplar units. Teachers have built beautiful ones. They're all built and have been implemented, and now we have even done more on our website. We'll make sure those are in the show notes. Seeing those first to really kind of relieve some of the stress because it makes it digestible, makes it real, and makes it accessible doesn't mean it makes it easy. But to your point, if it was easy, it probably wouldn't be all that transformative. So I'm glad that you kind of had that perspective and shared that you were overwhelmed initially. Lisa, can you share a little bit about what it was like when you planned your first unit through our virtual mentorship program? Absolutely. I would agree with Nora, too, that exemplary content was so helpful. So when I first got into the movement, I did so through the Essentials, the free course, and took that to my curriculum directors and the principal of our building and said, hey, I think I'm onto something that sounds really cool while you pay for me to go. And I was not sure that all of us would go, or even myself. So then once I was enrolled and just diving through all of those exemplars, it made it so much easier. I knew in the end what I needed to convey to the teachers was how to set their classrooms up in a way that students can access it no matter whether we're in the building or not. And so that helped me kind of wrap my head around the process and know that it was possible to get my thoughts out in a way that teachers could do it, too. Yeah. And ultimately, looking at those exemplar units is not that different than planning with the end in mind. It's like the kind of highest form of doing that right. It's like taking a look at someone else's end in mind and saying, okay, so what is it that I can do from this? What is going to look different for me? And how does it vary across grade levels and content areas? So I love that you both expressed that that's how you started. When we let in person PDS, we always said every teacher has to pretend to be a student for the first 2 hours of the day. And it was really impactful and really framed educators, and it also allowed educators to know what they didn't want to do. So I'm glad to hear that. And I also think it made me really excited, like, that much more excited to see how cool these units can be. And it really gets you ready to start making your own because you see great material and you want to put your own spin on it. I think it was just all around an awesome way to dive in. And it's interesting because my story is the same as that. I was teaching at Eastern High School. I wasn't happy teaching traditionally. I wasn't meeting my students needs. And I showed up in Rob's room, and I was like, what are you doing in here? Because he was using instructional videos and in very many ways, I got to see the most end in mind because I got to see unit happening in a classroom in action and that's what inspired me to create the change as well. So important to make that happen. And we used to also have educators visit classrooms and actually see them going on in a nearby school or district to them. So that's another way as well, to get exposed to what this model looks like. Certainly difficult during COVID-19, but when things do open up, being able to see what this looks like in action is critical. I also think that Edge Utopia video helps with that as well. They did such a good job like bringing it to life. So I'm glad you brought that up. So I'm glad that you mentioned the covid 19 part because I know that I've referenced that and in the beginning that was honestly kind of why I was on the hunt. But the more I got into it, the more just the AHA moments were coming up and I used to teach Ela 8th Grade English Language Arts and I just immediately thought, oh my goodness, this is not just a covet, a solution for Covet school. This is an all time solution for really fantastic teaching and learning and I can multiply myself and I immediately started thinking, holy cow, I want to use this a lot. So definitely cool and I'm glad you brought that up. It's so interesting because so many people have jumped into our free course during Kova 19 and literally 18,000 educators have dove head first into our course during Kova 19. It's just so important for listeners to know that we're not a Kova 19 model, we're not a distance learning model. We are a model that people can certainly make use of during this time and it undoubtedly helps, but ultimately it's at its best in person and it's a long game investment. So when folks think about the planning over arching, there's no hiding away from the difficulty. It's going to be challenging. It is time intensive, but you're creating a new way of teaching and learning that's going to happen in perpetuity. Like it's not going away and that's so important. So let's actually talk about planning a literal unit. What is the first thing you all do? Because of course, if you go through our course, it may start with an instructional video because that's the first technical thing folks learn. You may be mapping out what actual topics are going to cover, but when you actually attack a unit I'm planning unit three for my modern classroom. Where do you actually start? What's the first thing you do? Nora, can you speak a little bit to that now that you're in your second year of implementation? The first place I look is actually at the assessment, kind of like a backward planning approach. I like to look at what kinds of questions my students might be asked or what kind of skills they'll need to do to complete a test or a quiz or something. And I like to not just use one test, but a couple of different ones to get to a wide range of questions that my students might be seen to really set them up for success. As I'm creating my whole unit, after I look at the assessments, I then look at the standards that my district is requiring and that might just be something as simple as comparing fractions, decimals and percents. This is actually the unit I just finished teaching, so it's fresh in my mind. But just the standards, what specific skills will students need to do? And when I have those broader skills actually there, then I can break down those broader skills into more specific skills. Like, what will students actually need to do to meet those broader skills? What will they actually need to do to compare fractions, decimals and percents? Love it. This is a step in the planning process that I think a lot of educators actually get hung up on. And it makes the whole thing feel like this gray, confusing space. And it's this fundamental idea of starting with the end in mind isolating the skills that kids are learning. You cannot build an instructional video without knowing the skill. So if you just like, look at a textbook or you look at a unit and you're like, I'm just going to build a video for every single lesson that's in this textbook. But there might be two skills that a kid needs to learn within one lesson. And that exercise is so important. I've coached a lot of teachers to that process of saying, let's just take a look at this unit and actually decide where the skills are so we can figure out what your modern classrooms lessons are. Where are their instructional videos and where they're not very, very important. I'm glad you brought that up. Lisa, can you talk a little bit about your experience? Did you also start with the End in mind? Are your teachers starting with the end in mind? Like, how are they attacking units? Yeah, that's a great question. So yes, like any other unit, I planned my big PD unit based off of feedback that I got from the spring. And with the End in mind is that ultimately if teachers needed to go fully remote and right now we're in a hybrid mode, but if they did, how could they teach? And students learn just in a seamless way. So that was my end goal. Also what I kept in mind with all the feedback from the parents, from students, from my colleagues about what their needs and their wants were from the spring. And so I pushed those together. And I'm not a classroom teacher using classroom standards, but I did use standards from the Universal Design for Learning on what best practices were for digital platforms. So I referred to those standards to get everything on the same page, make sure that we had a universal look to what we were creating for students and the families who support them. Yeah, that's fantastic. And just to contextualize to everyone, the unit that Lisa completed was actually a teacher facing unit. She revolutionized teacher PD around our model and it uses the same principles. Starting with that end in mind, figuring out where to chunk and what I always said was planning in a modern classroom format forced me to think about the storyline, like what's the actual story of this unit? And I don't mean the story like I'm walking down this little Red Riding Hood or something. I mean, how do I get a kid from not understanding anything about mathematics in this particular unit all the way to this end journey? And it forced me to think about like, what are the checkpoints? Those are the mastery checks, what are the points in time where I have to actually explain something to them? Those are the instructional videos. And really forcing you to think about that is really powerful. And like you said, Lisa, you really have to make it seamless. That's the goal. To make it so that there's a few bumps as possible and access and follow through so that the real bumps arise when kids don't actually understand stuff and that's when you intervene. So I love the way that was described. Now let's dig into instructional video creation because obviously folks get intimidated by this and they oftentimes get frozen at the beginning. Like, what do I do next? How do I plan this video? I know I want a video on adding fractions. I know I want a video on how World War I starts, but how do I actually go from an idea to something that a kid is watching? So Nora, can you talk a little bit about once you've isolated those skills, you know exactly what skills you want to create? How do you go about creating the instructional video? So yes, I started making videos first and actually found that wasn't as helpful. So I started to look at the and create the assignments first and to think about what practice kids would need so that I could then create a video that would explain that specific skill. And I like to always start my slides with an objective slide. I want all my slides to be really consistent. I think that's really helpful for kids to have that same start to every single lesson. I always like to put a header on each slide after that introductory slide just so kids know what each slide is going to be about. So just that basic formatting I think has been really helpful for kids to be really consistent in. So after I have that objective slide, what will students be learning? What specific individual skill will they be learning? I really like to have just three or four slides after that so they keep my video really short. And I like to use a lot of graphic organizers and tables so that I can organize my instructions so that when I'm actually recording, I'm not thinking, what do I have to add here? What do I have to say? It's kind of already planned out for me in those slides. And I really love I'm a math teacher, but I love to have a lot of visuals to really engage the students. So I don't want to have a lot of text. And if I do have text, I usually am putting a fill in the blank or some kind of interactive thing that students can watch me write in and then do on their own as they're taking their guided notes. And then one of the biggest things I like to focus on when I'm making my videos is just using a lot of color and pictures as well. I'm so big on color coding, thinking about what numbers can I highlight in red to highlight distinguish that from another number? How can I use color to keep kids engaged and also to highlight a different concept or a strategy that I'm explaining? So I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but I think once you start with just a few slides and set yourself up for success and have the structure already down on the slides, it just makes the video that much easier. Yeah, no, I love it. And it's so interesting. You started when you first planned building the video first, and then you realize, like, Hold on a second. If I do that, ultimately, then I need to build the Assignment and Mastery Check to match the video. But that's actually not the way we approach planning. You have assignments, you have tasks you want kids to accomplish, then figure out what goes in the video to make sure they have the tools necessary to execute it, but you're actually not also holding too much and giving them too much information. I actually did the same thing when I first started building videos. I started with the video, but then I realized, let's start with the assessments and the assignments first and go back from there. I also like what you said about being quite standardized with it. I was the same way. I would create a slide deck, and it was one slide deck for the whole unit. And I try to keep almost the same exact number of slides per lesson, per skill. So I'd have my first intro slide, like you said, with that objective and whatever logo you might use or whatever structure you might use, and then try to have one slide, introducing new information in two to three slides on examples. And I try to stay as consistent as possible. I wasn't married to it, but it made it so that all I was doing was finding visuals and finding content and finding vocab and finding examples and it became a lot easier the more I did it. So I think we used a very similar structure. Lisa, can you talk about your experience building those first videos? How did you approach it? What was your first step? I have a video to build. Where did you go? What did you do? How did you get to the end? Excellent question. So, like, Nora, and like, you actually I really liked using the slides and my guided notes to help me plan my video. And so I would get those materials ready to go and then I would have a better picture of how my video needed to go. I didn't use color, though. I did use a standard template. I liked the template in the exemplar content, so I used that one and adjusted it slightly so the teachers would know there's an intro slide, there's a question objective that we're trying to answer for that video, that I would revisit that question at the end of my video. The challenge for me was paring it down and trying to get from my previous way too long down to that six minute mark. And it actually helps me to be more efficient with my thoughts and really put myself in the learner's shoes that I can convey the information in a better, more efficient way. So I planned better notes and got quickly to the point. So that was what I did personally. Just yesterday, I was in a classroom where a teacher color codes her lessons so that as she's walking around and students are working, she can add a glance, tell who's on what, and that helps make her time a little bit more efficient, too. I love that. And it's so interesting when you talk about this idea of keeping the video short. I mean, it's arguably the most challenging part. Nora, was that part really challenging for you? I know it kind of depends on container in a grade level. Did you find it difficult to keep your videos short? Definitely. But I think the biggest thing that helped me with that was realizing that maybe I was trying to do too much in a video. And if I could kind of split it up even more into like, two shorter videos, I think that was even better. And I think also just spending time planning beforehand, as I said before, is really powerful if you have your slides set up. I know. Queen, you said you only had a few slides for every video. If you only have a few, you can't have your video go on forever. Really thinking about minimizing the number of examples, making sure your examples are really they're different, they're distinguishable. Like, you're not doing three of the same type of questions. You're providing kids with different types of questions they might encounter in a really purposeful and meaningful way. Yeah, absolutely. And like, ultimately, the research is indicative of how you engage students. So as difficult as it is to follow, it forces you with a really structured way. When I went in front of a room and I was teaching traditionally, nothing was going to stop me theoretically from talking for 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 35 minutes, right. I could talk like for hours and no one was going to tell me anything. And there was no evidence unless that particular day I was being observed that I was using time poorly or I was taking up too much of my students times electric. But what the video does is it has a timestamp for you. I mean it's like screaming at you when you hit twelve minutes and you're like, oh my goodness, my video is too long. But ultimately it really forces you to think about delivering content in a lean way. And that's critical because if we don't, then kids are spending too much time in the compliant components of lessons and not enough time in the really engaging parts. So I love that teachers actually do struggle with it. It's one of the things that I always tell folks that I coach, I'm glad you're struggling with this because that means you're actually growing not just in your capacity to deliver content in a new way, but also to truncate your content and think leanly about it. Because ultimately the bulk of learning happens when kids are doing and it doesn't really matter if you're watching an inperson lecture or an instructional video, that's still the least engaging part of the learning. So we still want those videos to be short. It may be better than a live lecture, but it's still not the best part of the experience. We want those kids off those computers and working with each other if they can, or digging into the content. So I love that. I want to dig in now then, to mastery checks. And Lisa, for you. I want to just hear a little bit about the kind of diversity of experiences you're seeing amongst your teachers in particular. So I know you're coaching educators. How are they using mastery checks? Are most of them building one multiple versions? Does it depend on content areas? Are they using digital tools for mastery checks? Are they paperbased? What are you currently seeing? I'm seeing both digital and paper based. The math, I'm seeing a little bit more paper based and they have a turn entry. And when they've demonstrated mastery, I think most of them are using about an 80% mark in their daily work assignments and practice. Then they're ready for that mastery check. And that's how the math is using it. I've seen in an English room, they are demonstrating like a writing prompt and actually crafting a response to a question in a paragraph form in a Google doc. And so the teachers will walk through and look and talk about the different points in their document. So I've seen both. I've also heard of some teachers using a one on one where they're pulling them back and having conversations with them and the student articulates that they have mastery of the concept and then are ready to move on to the next lesson. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I'm glad you brought that up. A lot of folks will ask about the mastery checks because they worry about building multiple versions and then they worry about how to do it effectively in a timely fashion. And I think one of the most important things to remember for listeners out there is, first of all, it's very content specific. A lot of times those English classrooms, as history classrooms, will do one mastery check per lesson, but it's revisable. It's often a written piece. Lots of folks will use oral delivery, one on one conversations, and then in some cases it's just cut and dry, like a few questions. You get it wrong, you take a different one, same skill, different questions. Now, I know, Nora, that's actually more aligned to how your mastery checks usually work, right? You usually do same skill, but three or four versions, is that right? Yes, absolutely. I'm teaching virtually right now, but in person I usually have a half piece of paper and I have version one on the front and then version two on the back. So it's really easy for kids, if they do make a mistake, they have a second version readily available to them. But what I actually have started doing with mastery checks, again, this is in the classroom, is having kids correct their mistakes, even on their incorrect mastery check before they even try the second version, just to really I talk a lot about growth mindset in my classroom and focusing on celebrating mistakes and how even those mistakes on the mastery checks can be a learning experience and how they can use that to then help them do that much better on the second version that they take. I love that because you want to be careful of kids getting used to just like, oh, I can just take a Master cheque, bomb it, take another one, bomb it, take another one, bomb it, and eventually I get one right. So I love that you actually tell kids, even if they have to be reassessed on a new mastery check, they have to correct that first one because they realize that that's an exercise and growth and that's critical. Hey there, listeners, it's Zach here, just dropping in to let you know that Tony Rose's in person meetup at ISTI is officially on. If you're attending the ISTI conference in New Orleans from June 26 through the 29th, she'd love to get to know you. So I'm putting a link in the show notes to a form that you can fill out if you'll be attending the conference so she can schedule that meet up. Of course, if you've got questions or comments about the meet up or anything else podcast related, you can always reach us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org. And as always, thank you for listening. We do appreciate that. And now let's get back into this old episode from the archive. Do you find, Nora, that planning multiple mastery checks is really challenging? Like how do you find the time and how do you make that an efficient exercise? At first it was really time consuming, but it's gotten a lot easier. It's just kind of the more you do something, the better you get, which I think is true in so many different realms in life. To start out, I was spending a lot of time creating different versions. But again, once you do it a few times, you get better. You can change numbers, change the way questions are. Worded just getting more used to the resources that I had. I could more readily create multiple versions and then after two or three versions, I actually usually don't make another one. I'll just ask kids, can you explain what you did wrong? Or I'll create a question on the spot, really getting out what their confusion was so I can see if they've fully mastered their misconception. And that speaks to what you were saying, Lisa, about those kind of one on one oral experiences. So often in my classroom, especially if a kid was struggling in a unique way about a skill, it had to come down to me and that student having a one on one conversation about the concept and at times that was the way they were going to deliver mastery. I'm glad you bring that up. It's like at a certain point, just come up with a problem on the fly or come up with an idea on the fly and decide on your own whether you think that indicates a student actually having mastery. Sometimes we get a little too detailoriented with it and gets us kind of lost in the sauce. And I think that also gives a good message to kids too, that there's many different ways of showing mastery and showing your learning. And it's not a rigid, you have to get this right, but can you somehow express to me or show to me, demonstrate to me that you've understood something that's so powerful for kids? Absolutely. Love that. Something that I've seen be particularly effective is that same teacher who likes the color coding. She uses the mastery checks as an opportunity for conversations when maybe it doesn't go so well. And she asked to see their notes, the guided notes, and talk about their experience with the videos and gives them an opportunity to say, hey, maybe I wasn't as thorough on these as I could have been, should have been. And they have those conversations about natural consequences and opportunities to learn from that. So it's not always terrible if they aren't hitting that mastery. It opens up a dialogue about maybe things we didn't notice before that we notice now. I love that it's so true. Like my favorite discussion for when kids didn't show mastery, like almost always, right? It was always a great talk because it either led to me discussing why the way they approached that lesson wasn't all that effective. Maybe they went through the video too fast, maybe they leaned on a peer too much to the point where they weren't actually learning the skill, or maybe they didn't actually review the content before they went to the mastery check and they were just kind of going in there blind. Those discussions lead to those transformative changes that happen across content areas, across grade levels when they leave the classroom. So thanks for bringing that up. That's so critical. Let's talk a little bit before I dig into some of the overarching themes of planning. So we've talked about like how do you attack a video? Talk about how you attack the entire unit. You start with the end in mind. Same thing with the instructional video. Think about those assessments and assignments. Talked about creating mastery checks. Some folks create multiple, some folks create individual ones. Remember the level of flexibility you have in delivering them. You can do it in person, you can do it digitally, you can do it orally and oftentimes pivot. Let's talk a little bit about the self pacing element because ultimately a lot of folks get flustered with the idea of self pacing. And I'm not as concerned about the trackers because people build their trackers, sometimes they adjust them over time, sometimes they stick with the same ones. But I'm more than talking about is the lesson classifications because people use these quite differently. So I want to hear, do you create clear lesson classifications for your lessons going into a unit and how do you approach it? Like when do you pivot, when do you stick with them? Do your kids know about them? How do you use lesson classifications in your class? That's a great question. First of all, I create all of my lessons. So I have a list of the lessons, all the skills I want to cover. And once I have that kind of general broad picture, then I can go through and think about what are the most necessary, what are the must do skills that I want every single one of my students to cover. Seeing that holistic picture has been really helpful for me to pick out which ones are kind of allow kids to do a little more creative work and should do and aspire to do more challenging problems. So I definitely create those afterwards and I do make them public to my students, but I tell students individually when I want them to skip a lesson or not. Got it. I have found that later on in lessons, later on in unit, excuse me, that's when I might have to change a classification if I think, oh, we're a little bit farther behind or that skill might actually be adding a little something else that students don't fundamentally need, and then I will change that. So I'm definitely changing those throughout a unit. I think in so much of modern classrooms, adjusting is so powerful, and if one thing works in one unit, it might not work in another. And just being flexible with that, I think, is a really good mindset. To have quarter our work is something we believe in so deeply, is ensuring that educators know they are the masters in the room and they need to pivot in the way that they think it's going to work most effectively. So adjusting in that way is powerful. And I'll talk a little bit about my class as well, because it kind of is quite different from the way you did it, but some parallels. Lisa, what are you seeing in your building in school district? How are folks using lesson classifications? Are they sharing them with students? And how often is it kind of impacting the way that students are doing their work? I am seeing them be rather transparent with students that they exist and having good conversations about how to extend their learning for a particular concept through the should do and aspire to do. And it's also been great for me working with teachers on conversations with teachers about, is this really a must do? Is this a better fit as it should do? And like you're saying, teachers do have the ultimate control of what they want to make a must you should do or aspire to do, and they have the flexibility, and it's okay to change a little bit of the way through. And then even better is when you notice a student might not be on the pace that you want them to be on having conversations in the moment. As an individual student, you do have the ability to say, hey, you know what this must do. Maybe let's chuck this away and move on to the next one. So there's just so much flexibility that I don't think we realized was there before. That's so true in speaking to my classroom. It's quite different from the ones that you are describing because you all were very transparent with the students. It depended on the class period I was teaching, but I taught a couple of class periods where the variance in learning levels going in was so wide and I was teaching valedictorians in the same room as students who were seven or eight grade levels behind in math that I found it useful to keep it to myself because otherwise there would be such a diversity of kind of pathways that kids have and they would keep talking about it with each other. So I would actually keep a secret. I knew that lessons three, seven and nine respire to do. So when I felt like a kid needed to be excused because they were falling behind, I would go up to them and say, your excuse for that lesson keep that between you and I because I think that's the best way to move. But teachers use it in any way, shape or form that they choose. And it's really interesting to see it, I'd say about 50 50 split from the folks that I talked to about whether or not they share it publicly with their students or keep it internal. I love that it's both. So very cool. So it's so interesting. From there, you think about lesson classifications. I mean, ultimately that kind of gets you to the point where in a pretty good shape, we've now talk through sort of how you start the planning process, how you build your instructional videos, how you create your mastery checks, and then how you approach lesson classifications. From there you have a progress tracker. And then the last phase that I always hear folks ask about is managing grading. That is the question I almost always get. And it's connected to planning, obviously, because it's about thinking about your time usefully, when are you going to have time to execute all these tasks. So, Nora, can you speak a little bit to when you grade and how much of your planning time is devoted to grading? I try to grade a lot, actually, in the class, whenever possible. I think that's really powerful to get that immediate feedback to kids, obviously, that it's not always possible because if I'm talking to a kid, I can't be grading. So I try to balance that. Whatever grading I can't do in the actual classroom with students, I will grade right after class, and then I can update the progress tracker as soon as possible. That's become a lot more important as I'm teaching virtually so that kids can be accessing that progress tracker whenever to catch up on work that they're missing or behind on or just need to finish a lesson for. And do you grade every assignment in every master check? I mean, I know I made sure to always grade master checks. That was a non negotiable for me. But with assignments, I would oftentimes spot check them. I wouldn't necessarily dig too deep into them, and I would usually think about the students that I knew were struggling with the content and watch their assignments more closely. But if I knew a kid was comfortably moving through the material, getting mastery checks right, I would oftentimes just spot check to make that time move by faster. Is that how you approach it, or are you very detail oriented and hit everything? I actually hit everything, and I want my students to get 100% accuracy on the assignments and the mastery checks. So I will have students revise assignments and mastery checks to make sure everything is correct. That being said, if a student has mismatched or misadded and I can see their work, I won't have them go back and correct that. But I really do grade everything. So it definitely is time consuming. But I think it's the source of a lot of really meaningful conversations with kids. Yeah. And ultimately, it is cool to grade live during class. It's a difficult shift for educators to make sometimes because they'll ask us, wait, so what am I supposed to be doing in class? I always tell them, grade and give feedback. Great, and give feedback. Great. And give feedback. Not only are you saving time for yourself, but you're also getting the most important information to students and using it to drive what you tell them. It's so incredibly important. Lisa, what are you seeing from a grading perspective when you walk into classrooms? Are folks doing the grading live and then delivering feedback? Do they feel like they're having a lot of grading to do on their planning times? What is the experience they're sharing with you, and what do you see? Sure, I've seen a healthy mix of some who grade everything, some who spot check, kind of like what you described. And I think everybody's learning from how to be efficient and what from the assignments ought to be graded and how to make it all work with the in class time. So as updates come out each week or every other week that modern classroom sends out of how to make best use of that in class time, there was one recently talking about that grading in class, and that was a light bulb moment where I shared that with everyone. And so I've seen a little bit of both. I think they're getting more comfortable using some of that in class time. It's almost like you're saying, I can use in class time to grade these things. Yes, because it involves the students and feedback. So that's not the same thing as sitting in the corner, not acknowledging your kiddos, but you actually are acknowledging them. You're moving around, giving feedback, and that counts as grading to just figuring out what they want to take grades on and how to be efficient. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I had one spot where I would sit in my classroom. It was the center of the room, and it's where the two turn in bins were. There's assignments and mastery checks and nor. I remember watching your class, and your seat was also sort of central in the room, but a little bit in the back. And it's like I sat there and I just kid turned something in. I take it out of the bin, I grade, I calm over. I say, Tim, come over here. We got to talk about this. And then we just kept moving like that. And ultimately, what I found was 75% of the grading that I need to get done was happening live in class, and the remaining 25%, I'd turn around by the next day. So when folks always ask me about the grading process, I think ultimately the big problem that they are dealing with and Lisa, it's that light bulb moment that you just described. They're realizing suddenly that grading live in class is not just allowed, it's the way you become a data driven educator. We always say, like, how do you become data driven? I sat through a thousand data driven meetings or data meetings when I taught traditionally. We didn't use any of that data because it was too removed from the actual classroom experience. This is the way you make it so deeply tied and then your kids actually expect that feedback back, which is super cool as well. They're like, wait, what happened with my mastery check? What's going on with my assignment? Can you give me an update? They're really, actually anxious to know how they perform, which is something I don't think we often see when we teach traditionally. Yeah, I'm so happy you mentioned that, Kim. I was going to say that too. I think kids really love it. They get excited to see what they got right and wrong. And that is what a great mindset for them to have, to want to know how they did, to want to see their mistakes, so that real time feedback is so powerful in so many different ways. Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic and it speaks to just how important it is to change the culture in classrooms around religion and mastery. Right. I will never forget the first time I had, I guess, an argument with a student. But it was our first unit, is my first unit with those students. And this student was, I think, used to just kind of being pushed through a math class and not necessarily showing mastery. And I graded her mastery check live and said, you need to do a new one and I'm going to give you a repeat. And they were like, no. And I was like, well, yes. And that moment was eye opening for her. And I it opened my eyes to the fact that kids were conditioned to not think they had to achieve mastery. And for her, for the first time, she was like, wait a minute, you're actually holding me to understanding the skill. I have no choice. And changing that culture was so exciting and it's what makes me feel inspired when I hear about what you all are seeing in your classrooms, about what's going on, because you can hear the conversation around mastery growing and that's what we want to deliver to our students. So very exciting. Before we close out today, I want to talk a little bit about sort of the long game. So first specific to you, Nora, because you've been doing this now for some time, can you talk about what it's been like to go from year one to year two? Where have you seen like a ton of gains in your ability to plan what still is just part of the process? And I think that's an exciting piece that I always tell folks about is like, you get faster, you get better, and you put most of your content. So can you share a little bit about what that shift was like from year one to year two? Yes, absolutely. I will just say that my workload, my second year, is sizably smaller. It is much smaller in terms of planning. I'm definitely doing a lot of grading, but I already have videos and slides and assignments already created. So a lot of that planning work for me right now is just tweaking things. And I'm always kind of amazed at how well I can remember which problems tripped kids up or which little things I had to re explain from a year ago. But I somehow remember those things. So there are a few videos that I've rerecorded or added a few to break up skills. So I'm definitely still making videos, but it is a much smaller amount of planning I'm doing in that kind of front end. So it's been really nice to have that already done. Really nice. Yes. And it only gets better. By the way, I always tell folks I founded the Modern Classrooms Project while teaching, because I was a Modern Classrooms teacher in year three of teaching the same content areas. And I truly had everything built like you. Year one, I built everything from scratch. That was a journey, to say the least. And I did three preps that year, so I was doing IBM's One, IB Two, and Prop Status. And thanks to your brother, I was just so inspired that I was like, I got to do this for all my classes. Year two, a lot of tinkering, right? So much less planning than year one, but still making adjustments. And like you said, I knew the videos. I was like, Oh, video three and unit two. I remember. None of my kids actually understood that I basically had to teach that traditionally because I totally blew it on the video. So making those adjustments by year three, I was on cruise control. From a planning perspective, it was just all grading. And at that point, I was figuring out a way to train other teachers on the model. So absolutely, I'm glad that that's the journey. And Lisa, I know this is your first year both supporting teachers and the first year you plan it. So you have a lot to look forward to because it's going to get a lot easier over time. So know that that's coming around the corner. Yeah, absolutely. Go big or go home is what I thought about this whole year. I mean, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it. And so I do look forward to getting growing and learning from the things that we didn't know. That we didn't know. And I am really excited for hopefully resuming a normal five day a week and seeing how it looks when we're all back together. Absolutely. Now, the last thing I want to ask both of you is sort of how planning a Modern Classrooms unit in sort of a thematic overarching way, like, how did it change your perspective on planning in general? If you can try to step outside of the box of almost the details and think about sort of yourself pre learning the model and post and what are you better at and what has changed about the way you approach building instructional materials for kids? And in Lisa, in your case, love to hear about sort of what you're seeing different about your educators and how they're approaching teaching and learning. Sure. The great feedback I've gotten is, oh, my, I wish I would have had this earlier. Not only just able to multiply themselves as educators, but have the self paced structure and having students have that autonomy, but also that responsibility that we so crave that middle level students, and students in general have and put structures in place, a safe structure where they can kind of learn to pace themselves and be successful. Amazing. And Nora, what are your thoughts? I think it's really helped me to see connections both within units and across units. I think just the way that I plan now for Modern Classrooms has really allowed me to see what skills translate from unit one to unit three to unit seven. And that's been really powerful. I also think it's just allowed me to see what student skills should look like and what mindsets and what habits I really want to help my students develop, not only for my math classroom, but for the other classes and then just for life outside school. And I think the way that I planned has allowed me to think about those things in a new space. Love it. That's fantastic. And I always said when I was implementing the Modern Classrooms project model, at first, everything that was hard about it was good challenges. If I was frustrated because my video kept being 14 minutes, I was like, this is a good thing to be attacking because 15 minutes is too long. Or if I was frustrated because I was trying to figure out how to grade less, I was like, this is also a good problem. I'm delivering so much feedback, and I'm a little bit overwhelmed by it. How can I be leaner with it? And ultimately, our goal with the model is to create a world where teachers are pushing themselves. They're doing something challenging. It's innovative, but it pays off. And I think so often in education, it doesn't, right? It's like, I go to a PD, I try something new. I try it. It doesn't really work. I feel like I wasted a lot of time. What we continuously hear and what we're hearing from both of you is that it's an investment. It's not a small one, but it will pay off. You will see the gains, and you'll get better at it. So great to hear that from both of you. Thank you both for joining. It's been a joy chatting with you about this. I know the listeners are going to find incredibly useful to hear about the nitty gritty details. So thank you both, Nora and Lisa for joining us today. Thank you so much. It's been so fun. Thanks so much for having. And everyone, remember, you can access our content at www.modernclassrooms.org. You can learn from our free course. I strongly encourage everyone to make sure you've gone through there and share it with your teachers. It's at learn modernclassrooms.org. If you're a free user, you're actually going to be getting a survey shortly from the Modern Classrooms team. We please ask that you take that survey. It's going to take you ten minutes. You can actually win a bunch of cool things like iPads subscriptions to our Virtual Mentorship program, Ed Tech Tools, but it's a really great way for us to learn from you so we can continue to cater to support. It's how we can craft podcast ideas that meet your needs. It's how we can add new content and new guides that meet your needs. So please take that survey. It's super helpful. And as always, you can always join our Virtual Mentorship Program. Nora is a wonderful mentor in that program. Lisa has been through it and absolutely rocked it and was able to change the landscape of instruction or district. So please do that as well. And we look forward to talking to you all again next week and sharing more. The next episode is actually going to be about collaboration, which I know is a topic that everyone is sort of anxious and excited to hear about. So be on the lookout for episode ten will be on collaboration. And until next time, enjoy. Bye everyone.


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.