Ms. Adornato Demo's Blended Learning with Google Classroom

Ms. Adornato is one of Piedmont faculty's early adopters of Google Classroom.  

You may remember her  combined classroom Science Olympiad challenge activities in the gym, and her one-pager ideas from other blog posts.

Today Ms. Adornato's eighth grade science students used their sketches and notes, online resources, plus classmates and teacher to answer essential questions about elements.


Here are a few takeaways from her lesson that would work in any classroom:

• Use backwards planning- Ms. Adornato shared with students the goal and essential questions they were working towards before they began work. She also posted questions as individual announcements into her Google Classroom stream in advance so they were ready as soon as students were. 
  
• Have clear directions posted so students can see their task and objective even before logging in.
  

• Circulate, probe, and offer live feedback as students work. As students showed her their work, Ms. Adornato would ask follow-up questions to bring out higher-level thinking and to push basic understanding to the next level.

• Have a plan for distributing and collecting tech. Ms. Adornato allowed students to use the Chromebook only after they had completed a first step. She had already assigned each student a Chromebook , so when they were ready and she'd checked their work, all she had to say was "now go grab the Chromebook number listed next to your name on the roster on top of the cart" this also prevented them from inputting false information into the comments of each announcement)

• Use the best high-tech or low-tech tool at your disposal for each task in the lesson:
  
  • Sometimes paper is best- for sketching notes or quick work as needed.
  • Sometimes face-to-face is best- for questions, help and to be sure students are ready to move on.
  • Sometimes online is best- Make the most of each method- it wouldn't make sense for a community of students to work silently alone so make sure students can collaborate live. However it wouldn't make sense for the value of that collaboration to not be shared or available for later use, so by allowing students to enter their comments in the stream, each group can learn from the ideas of the others.  Moreover, each group can come back to the stream when it is time to do their project and take the best information for use in their final product!

Check out the photos of the lesson as it progressed below:

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Students could view the lesson workflow upon arrival to the room.

Students were able to work together on gathering information.

The collaborative atmosphere was happy and cooperative and the noise level was a soft busy hum.

Ms. Adornato used both real-time and projected questions to keep students on the right track and digging deeper toward the goal.

The image sketches in this students' notes are an example of a task that changes somewhat via tech so when paper is best (or wifi is worst) feel free to use it! For more on the role of visual notetaking, click the image.

Ms. Adornato created and posted separate "announcements" for each topic she wanted students to address in her Google Classroom stream. (these announements can easily be added to mulitple class sections)

A roster placed on the Cart showed the students which number chromebook to use as they were ready.

Students can read other comments as they post their own on the essential questions. The comments become a permanent record that can be used again when it is time to create a final product.

Using the best features of the tools available to suit the learning goal: Ms. Adornato's students work whole class, small group, individually, and with teacher guidance using both pen and paper and tech in one lesson.

Related:
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/category/gafe
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/category/blended

http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/student-introduction-to-google-classroom
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/how-to-use-google-classroom-teacher-instructions