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Balance With Blended Learning
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Balance With Blended Learning
Partner With Your Students to Reimagine Learning and Reclaim Your Life



February 2020 | 192 pages | Corwin
Rethink the roles, responsibilities, and workflow in your blended learning classroom and enjoy balance in your life.

Blended learning offers educators the opportunity to reimagine teaching and learning. It allows teachers to partner with their students to assess, track, and reflect on learning. This partnership gives teachers more time and energy to innovate and personalize learning while providing students the opportunity to be active agents driving their own growth.

If one thing is certain after the 2019-2020 school year, blended learning is here to stay. Learning must be a shared endeavor between the teacher and the learner. This book provides teachers with strategies to rethink traditional workflows to make teaching practices sustainable.

Written by blended learning expert, Catlin Tucker, this resource provides teachers with concrete strategies and resources they can use to partner with their students to actively engage them in setting goals, monitoring their development, reflecting on their growth, using feedback to improve work, assessing the quality of their work, and communicating their progress with parents.

Balance With Blended Learning includes
  • Practical strategies for teachers overwhelmed by their workloads
  • Routines and protocols designed to move feedback and assessment into the classroom to eliminate much of the work teachers take home
  • Ready-to-use templates and resources designed to help students take an active role in tracking, monitoring, and reflecting on their progress
  • Vignettes written by teachers across disciplines
  • Stories from the author's extensive experience both as a teacher and blended -learning coach

    Redefining roles in a blended learning classroom encourages students to take ownership over their learning journeys and helps teachers feel more effective, efficient, and energized.

  •  
    Preface
     
    Acknowledgments
     
    About the Author
     
    Chapter 1: The Problem With Traditional Grading Practices
    Problems With Traditional Grades

     
    My WHY

     
    Grades Are Hotly Debated in Education

     
    If We Cannot Throw Out Grades Completely, What Can We Do?

     
    Blended Learning to the Rescue

     
     
    Chapter 2: Embracing a Partnership Model With Blended Learning
    From Hierarchy to Partnership

     
    Partnership Principles for Teachers and Students

     
    How Can Blended Learning Support a Teacher–Learner Partnership?

     
     
    Chapter 3: Who Is Doing the Work in Your Classroom?
    Lack of Time and Exhaustion Are Barriers to Innovation

     
    Who Is Doing the Work?

     
    Reframe the Way You Think About Your Work

     
    Flip the Workflow in Your Classroom

     
     
    Chapter 4: Encouraging Metacognition in Your Classroom
    The Power of Metacognition

     
    Five Strategies Designed to Develop Metacognition in the Classroom

     
    Building a Metacognitive Practice Into the Classroom With Blended Learning

     
     
    Chapter 5: Flip Learning With Videos
    The Benefits of Using Videos With Students

     
    Video Is Versatile

     
    Addressing Concerns About Using Video in School

     
    Creating Your Own Video Content

     
    Curating Video Content Online

     
     
    Chapter 6: Goal Setting
    Motivating Unmotivated Students

     
    Goal-Setting Strategies

     
     
    Chapter 7: Real-Time Feedback Using the Station Rotation Model
    Troubleshooting Challenges With Traditional Approaches to Feedback

     
    Spotlight Blended Learning Model: Station Rotation Model

     
    Tucker Time Feedback Station

     
    Real-Time Feedback Tips

     
    Tech Can Make Giving Feedback Easier

     
    Deciding on the Feedback Format That Fits

     
     
    Chapter 8: Rubrics for Learning
    Rubrics as Roadmaps

     
    Rubric Design: Avoiding Common Mistakes

     
    Using Rubrics to Further Student Learning

     
    You Don’t Need to Assess Every Aspect of Every Assignment

     
    Single Skill Rubric: Less Is More

     
     
    Chapter 9: Side-by-Side Assessments
    Ask Yourself, Why Am I Grading This?

     
    Select a Blended Learning Model and Design Your Lesson

     
    Select Specific Grading Criteria for Your Side-by-Side Assessments

     
    Prior to Side-by-Side Assessments, Ask Students to Complete a Self-Assessment

     
    Preparing for Side-by-Side Assessments

     
    Conducting Side-by-Side Assessments

     
     
    Chapter 10: Students Communicate Directly With Parents About Their Progress
    It’s Unrealistic for Teachers to Communicate With All Parents Regularly

     
    Email Updates

     
    Publishing Student Work

     
    Student-Led Conferences

     
    Preparing for Student-Led Conferences

     
    Virtual Student-Led Conferences

     
     
    Chapter 11: Grade Interviews
    Students Become Active Agents in the Grading Process

     
    Apply for a Grade Interview

     
    Preparing for Grade Interviews

     
    Conducting Grade Interviews

     
    The Possibilities of a Partnership Model

     
    The Goal: Achieving Balance

     
     
    References
     
    Index

    This book provides the fundamentals needed to transform your classroom from teacher centered to student centered. Catlin Tucker has thoroughly outlined the steps needed to create a blended learning environment with the necessary student–teacher partnership.

    Kelly Fitzgerald
    Instructional Coach, Rouse High School
    Leander, TX

    After reading Balance With Blended Learning, I was hooked! This new focus in the series, on helping coach students to understand their own learning, is exactly what educators need right now as we move from the front of the classroom to sitting shoulder to shoulder with our students to make sense of learning goals and assessing them!

    Melissa Wood-Glusac
    English Teacher, Thousand Oaks High School
    Thousand Oaks, CA

    Catlin Tucker has created a resource to help teachers better assess their students’ work and more importantly, help students become more engaged in the process. Balance With Blended Learning: Partner With Your Students to Reimagine Learning and Reclaim Your Life will undoubtedly help secondary teachers promote more student-friendly grading experiences that aid them in demonstrating their own progress and growth. It will help any teacher make changes to their assessment practices that will benefit student learning.

    Starr Sackstein
    Author, Hacking Assessment, Educational Consultant

    As teachers, we strive to foster and nurture lifelong learners—learners that sustain their purpose and passion for learning regardless of their path in
    life. What Catlin shares with us in this book takes us one giant step forward toward that goal by focusing on grades and student ownership of their
    learning progression. Using her personal and very transparent experiences as a teacher, she unlocks a pathway for us to truly partner with our learners and thus move them closer to lifelong learning by actively involving them in monitoring their own learning progress. As a parent, teacher, and teacher educator, the ideas in this book will change the way I “do business” inside and outside of my classroom.

    John Almarode
    Associate Professor of Education, College of Education, James Madison University

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