This week, I received a comment to my blog asking: What do you feel is the biggest difference between playlists and choice boards? Would you say a playlist is more data-driven and a choice board gives more variety in learning modalities? These are great questions! I have heard teachers use these terms interchangeably, yet there […]
Student agency, or a students’ ability to make key decisions about their learning experience, is an essential aspect of blended learning. Student agency requires that we design our lessons to offer students meaningful choices. These choices can help us universally design learning experiences that strive to remove barriers and invite students to decide how to […]
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On Saturday, I wrote a blog sharing an offline choice board teachers can use to blend offline activities into their online classes. On Twitter, Barbara McInnes suggested teachers add a wellness activity to their offline choice boards. I loved her suggestion and immediately started working on a choice board dedicated to health and wellness activities. […]
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Schools in California will not reopen this year. Teachers are scrambling to move their offline courses online to ensure that students continue learning for the remainder of the school year. Understandably, the focus is on online learning as that is a new and unfamiliar learning landscape for a lot of educators. I am fielding questions […]
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Choice boards are a fantastic tool for honoring learner variability and providing students with meaningful choices. Not every student enjoys the same task, so giving them options is critical to maximizing their motivation and focus in a lesson. Choice boards allow us to honor our students’ preferences, needs, and interests, making their learning experience more […]
My children love “would you rather” questions. Would you rather go to the beach or the snow? Would you rather eat a cookie or a brownie? Would you rather watch a movie or read a book? They enjoy being presented with two options and getting to choose one. In a workshop last week, I was […]
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This week I had the pleasure of training a group of elementary teachers on blended learning strategies. As a group, they wanted to focus on: Differentiation Student choice Assessment One of the strategies we discussed with the potential to weave these three areas of focus together is a choice board. There are several different approaches to designing a […]
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In my last post on differentiation, we explored practical strategies for differentiating content, process, product, and learning environment. In this post, we’ll look at how AI can make that work faster, more sustainable, and more personalized. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the idea of differentiating for every student, AI can help turn what feels impossible […]
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Many of the schools I work with have adopted curricula in response to updated state standards and growing pressure to improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. The decision to adopt and pay for a curriculum is driven by a range of considerations. Curriculum design is time-consuming, cognitively demanding work. Providing teachers with a high-quality, […]
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Related Podcast Episode In the first three blogs in this four-part series, we explored how the station rotation model can meet the diverse needs of our multilingual learners, how to design the teacher-led station to differentiate effectively, and how to support early language learners in navigating online and offline tasks independently. In this final post, […]
In my previous blogs on MTSS, I have provided an overview of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports as it relates to instruction. I’ve highlighted how differentiated small group instruction can improve the effectiveness of Tier 1 instruction, reducing the need for Tier 2 support and Tier 3 intervention. I have also presented strategies teachers can […]
Related Podcast Episode Every teacher has faced a similar challenge: delivering a whole-group lesson to the entire class and watching the mixed reactions on the students’ faces. Some grasp the concept immediately, while others struggle to comprehend it and clearly need additional support. Approximately 20% of students in a classroom will need more than Tier […]