Stepping back and determining what is actually happening in a classroom before judging what should be happening, however, is a crucial step to changing instruction for the better.

It says let’s take the evidence before us, see where we are, and see what we think we need to do next to make progress, instead of people with formal authority who are supposed to have all of the answers.”

n order for rounds to work properly the focus must be on teaching–not teachers–with everyone in the room free to speak his or her mind and respect strict confidentiality for participants.

he “instructional core”–the essential interaction between teacher, student, and content that creates the basis of learning– is the first place that schools should look to improve student learning.

personal from the practice — something Elmore says medical professionals do well, but not educators. “Educators . . . tend to confound and confuse the practice with the person,” he writes. “Indeed, for most educators, their practice is who they are.”

he and the other facilitators spend a lot of time at the beginning helping rounds participants understand that everyone involved — not just teachers

stress the importance of collecting meaningful, raw evidence when observing a classroom, and to do it without judgment

“There’s tremendous value in slowing down. We go in and watch a reading lesson. Normally the observers want right away to say, Wasn’t her approach fabulous? or, Oh! We use that book, too, instead of, What went on in there? How did that student learn?” she says. “Rounds is stopping to really try to understand those interactions.

“As educators, we have such different ideas of what effective teaching and learning is.”

training model — one that includes a shared language and a common sense of what’s effective — work for educators?

Once the group forms, they identify a problem that the school or district is struggling with, observe classrooms, debrief, and then focus on what needs to be done next.

These networks can be formed in one school

Here, a basic question is asked: What is the next level of work?

ultimate goal, say the authors, is for the protocols and practices learned doing instructional rounds to become as much a part of the culture of education as they are a part of the culture in medicine.

roup-learning mentality — which centers on the idea that everyone involved is working on their practice

“School leaders started looking at each other as resources to learn and share ideas,”

great if we had a coherent, national model of what effective teaching is

It’s a practice, not a theory.

how do you prioritize and narrow down the content you want to teach so it fits within the limited framework of the course?

What will you accept as evidence that students are making progress toward the learning goals of the course?  How will you know if they are “getting it”?

Finally, after you have decided what results you want and how you will know you’ve achieved them, then you start planning how you’re going to teach.

there were many different ways to effectively flip a classroom.

For some teachers, that is pre-recording lectures and doing hands-on activities in class. For others, it is presenting information and then supplementing the more difficult aspects of the lesson with videos

is a panacea for educatio

“we’ve wanted students to take responsibility for their learning, and we want to use our time with them to work on the meatier stuff and deepen the learning.

Video itself will not help kids achieve more in your class. The flipped classroom is about making connections with learners and differentiating your instruction. If videos are a part of that multi-faceted plan, great

“Anyone who blindly adopts ‘The Flipped Classroom’ (or inquiry, or lecturing, or unschooling, or whatever) model and never modifies it to meet the needs of his or her students will blindly lead his or her students into educational ruin.”

Khan Academy is great for what it is — a supplemental resource; homework help — but we’ve turned it into something it’s not. Indeed, something it was never intended to be.

“Phase Three” of education reform: blended learning. Meaning, the digital form moves beyond simply augmenting face-to-face teaching into a peer role where online and offline interaction directly supports learning goals.

Technology is now entrenched in higher education. Its presence urges instructors to teach differently and think more deeply about what information can be delivered before class, during class, and after class. Students drive that change.

Switching from a traditional classroom to a flipped classroom can be daunting because there are a lack of effective models.

Discussions are led by the students where outside content is brought in and expanded

Students challenge one another during class on content

Students take ownership of the material and use their knowledge to lead one another without prompting from the teacher.

Students are transforming from passive listeners to active learners.

The flipped class is not for everyone, but it offers the best way we know of to maximize in-class learning opportunities.

If content is delivered outside of class time, it is up to the teacher to provide the students with opportunities in class to place the content they learned into context. 

These in-class "activities" (for lack of a better term) must: 1)  help support the student understanding of the stated learning objectives, 2)  be designed to help students process what they have learned and place the learning into the context of the world in which they live, 3)  be engaging to the students, yet flexible enough to allow students the ability to process and produce in a way that is meaningful to them.  Possible in-class work could include:student created contentindependent problem solvinginquiry-based activitiesProject Based Learning

Our response is that not all material is suitable to be taught through a video lesson. 

We should never use a tool (in this case a video) just for the sake of using the tool; we should use the tool because it is the right tool for a particular job.

But from our perspective, as successful flipped teachers, we believe it is so much more. 

With the growth of open education resources via Youtube and Creative Commons, it is important to note that excellent video lectures have been and are freely/easily available.

Sal Khan is not showing any examples about what students and teachers are doing beyond Khan Academy. The news stories are not showing the open-ended problems the kids should be engaging with after mastering the basics

he focus is on the wrong things. Khan Academy is just one tool in a teacher’s arsenal. (If it’s the only tool, that is a HUGE problem.)

It really is a cycle of learning model.)  It provides a sequence of learning activities based on the learning theories and instructional models of Experiential Learning Cycles

People learn experientially.  It is the teacher’s responsibility to structure and organize a series of experiences

This is where and when videos such as those archived by Khan Academy, Neo K-12, Teacher Tube,

n a user-generated learning environment, students could be asked to locate the videos, podcasts, and websites that support the content-focus of the lesson.  These media can then be shared with other students.

Part of this phase includes an online chat for asking and addressing questions about the content presented via the videos, podcasts, websites.  Through a “chat” area such as Etherpad or Google Docs, learners can ask questions with responses provided by co-learners and educators.  Videos could even be embedded into a Voicethread so students can post comments/reactions to the content.

They can view them in a learning setting that works for them (music, lighting, furniture, time of day) and can view/review information that they find particularly interesting or do not understand.

t is a phase of deep reflection on what was experienced during the first phase and what was learned via the experts during the second phase.

During this phase, learners get to demonstrate what they learned and apply the material in a way that makes sense to them

A summative assessment administered during the last 12 weeks of the school year. The summative assessment will consist of two parts: a computer adaptive test and performance tasks that will be taken on a computer, but will not be computer adaptive.

Optional interim assessments administered at locally determined intervals. These assessments will provide educators with actionable information about student progress throughout the year. Like the summative assessment, the interim assessments will be computer adaptive and includes performance tasks.

Once finalized, the content specifications will serve as the basis for the Smarter Balanced system of summative and interim assessments and formative assessment support for teachers.

Writing strategies Summarization

Writing for content learning

The optimal mix is not a specific prescription, but one that the school administrators and teachers need to discover based on student response and classroom culture.

1. Writing strategies involve "explicitly teaching adolescents strategies for planning, revising, and/or editing, which has a strong impact on the quality of their writing"

involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts" (p. 4), which may involve either a rule-governed or intuitive approach.

involves developing instructional arrangements whereby adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions"

g involves using writing as a tool for learning the subject matter. Although this approach has the least effect on writing quality and only a slight effect on learning content material, research shows it does have a consistent effect on both.

teaching writing can be a difficult task for many teachers and sufficient professional development may not be available to adequately bridge the gap between a desire to teach effective writing and successfully doing so