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Balance With Blended Learning

Partner With Your Students to Reimagine Learning and Reclaim Your Life

By: Catlin R. Tucker

Balance With Blended Learning provides teachers with practical strategies to actively engage students in setting goals, monitoring development, reflecting on growth, using feedback, assessing work quality, and communicating their progress with parents.

Full description

Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781544389523
Published By: Corwin
Series: Corwin Teaching Essentials
Year: 2020
Page Count: 192
Publication date: February 06, 2020

Price: $39.95

Description

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.

Author(s)

Catlin R. Tucker

Catlin Tucker is a Google Certified Innovator, bestselling author, international trainer, and frequent Edtech speaker, who teaches in Sonoma County where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2010. Catlin’s books Blended Learning in Grades 4-12 and Blended Learning in Action are both bestsellers. She has also written a book titled Creatively Teach the Common Core Literacy Standards with Technology to support teachers in thinking outside of the box as they shift to the Common Core. Catlin is working on her doctorate at Pepperdine University. She writes the “Techy Teacher” column for ASCD’s Educational Leadership. She is active on Twitter @Catlin_Tucker and writes an internationally ranked education blog at CatlinTucker.com.

Table of Contents

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

Reviews

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

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

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

Other Titles in: Student Assessment | Teaching Methods & Learning Styles | Classroom Applications of Technology

Select Format:

For Instructors

This book is not available as an inspection copy.

Tools

Ongoing Self Assessment [Checklist or assessment]
SMART Goal Setting [Lessons and strategies]
Student-Led Conference Form [Checklist or assessment]
The Balance Podcast [Other]
Tucker Companion Website [Site]