Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Resources to tackle project-based learning Welcome to the PBL Highway, my new series aimed at helping you on the road to project-based learning! Setting up a student-driven, rigorous, community-focused project-based learning (PBL) unit can feel daunting, so the best way to tackle anything this huge (it’s yuge!) is to break it down into manageable steps. …
Getting started assessing proficiency School systems in Vermont and elsewhere are in the midst of a shift to proficiency-based learning. At the early stages, this transformation can feel overwhelming even for educators, even if they’re excited by the idea. Where to start? Start with scales for assessment.
8th grade scientists tackle carbon emissions at a busy traffic circle This past year, Shelburne Community School middle grades students took part in Idle-Free VT‘s ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions from idling cars near schools. The students’ outreach efforts led to a 79% measured reduction in carbon emissions at the school’s traffic circle, while …
On exploring flexible pathways to learning This past August, Vermont Secretary of Education Dr Rebecca Holcombe addressed the 2016 Amplifying Student Voice & Partnership Conference on the topic of equity in education. She was also kind enough to allow us to record and share her remarks. In the first of two installments, we hear from …
Continue reading “What work-based learning in Vermont can look like”
Structures & examples for student filmmakers Many students love working with video. Students can create videos for any subject to show specifically what they’re learning, how they spend their time and to demonstrate proficiency. But it’s not always obvious how you, as an educator, can help students see the connection to specific content areas. Let’s …
Continue reading “3 types of videos for showcasing content areas”
8 great ways to approach PBL in the primary grades Picture this: you have a class of primary-grade students. Say grades K-3. They are learning their letters, and how to tie their shoes, how to go to the bathroom independently and write their names. This list of what to learn is long! But we also …
Continue reading “Project-Based Learning in the primary grades”
Achieving escape velocity with students as partners Congratulations for making it through the first month of school! Whether it’s your first year as an educator or your thirty-first, the launch of the school year is a special — and especially challenging — time. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect and imagine how to build …
How 30 minutes can leave a lasting impact on the day. Advisory: the first 15 to 30 minutes of every middle school day, during which you’re trying to build relationships with your students and engage them in meaningful social interaction. You also might be fighting off the administrative minutiae of the morning: Attendance. Lunch money. …
There is no tired like teachers at the beginning (or end) of the school year are tired. Establishing routines, procedures, community and trust takes time and lots (and lots!) of energy. How can you create classroom routines and norms so the class feels safe, comfortable, happy and ready for learning? Here are eight ideas.
#vted weighs in again on twitter Is your school implementing proficiency-based learning? It’s an idea that’s taking hold all over, so some folks from Vermont’s education community wrestled with the opportunities and challenges presented by implementing proficiency-based learning.
A twitter showcase of amazing Vermont schools Wish you could see more of the innovative ways Vermont students and educators are changing learning? Have difficulty finding a full year to travel around the state? Let twitter help. With @ThisIsVTED.
How to get started with service learning Service learning can play a key role in middle level curriculum, yet it can seem daunting to many educators. But it’s so rewarding for students and valuable to the community, and most of all, easy to get started with. Let’s take a look.
What Vermont students really think about personal learning plans Put 47 middle-level students together, challenge them to think differently about ways to create effective, relevant and meaningful Personalized Learning Plans, and watch the magic happen. This past summer, we did exactly that.
Get ready for a new vision of innovative education With the advent of personalized learning, many schools and educators are finding the freedom to launch their teaching in a whole new direction. They’re getting #ready2launch into a vision of personalized learning with students as partners, students as leaders, and schools as places where learning is …
1% teacher inspiration & 99% student-led Genius Hour is a leap of faith in which educators set aside their most precious resource, time, for students to pursue their passions. It doesn’t get much more student-centered than that. But there are actually several aspects of Genius Hour where students can be involved as partners to amp up …
Continue reading “4 ways to partner with students around Genius Hour”
Whose makerspace is it, anyway? A makerspace can take many forms, but fundamentally it should be a locus of student engagement and creativity. So engage them from the start by turning over as much of the design and operation of your makerspace as possible.
Create open, flexible, engaging spaces for active student learning. The beginning of the school year! Desks, mailboxes, coat hooks labeled. Books organized, materials in bins. This task is often overlooked and underestimated in terms of time. How can you create a welcoming, flexible and inspired space? Here are some tips and ideas. Just get some …
Introduce a student-centered tech-rich year Looking for ways to explore digital identity with students? Here are 4 student-centered, tech-rich digital identity exercises for working with students. As a bonus, all the exercises produce media that students can add to their digital portfolios. Let’s watch!
Build a community to support project-based learning I bet you have big dreams of creative, innovative projects and engaged students in your classroom. Students who are busy researching, collaborating, creating, and solving authentic problems they are interested in. But this doesn’t happen without a strong community of learners.
Student Leadership: The time is now August is usually a time crammed with planning logistics for the start of the school year. It’s a time when educators’ coffee intake increases exponentially and that ever-popular 4AM anxiety dream makes you jump out of bed in a sweat. Yet somehow it all falls into place and school …
Continue reading “Finding ways to encourage student leadership”
Katy’s 2016 Summer Reading Something about this book title and summer reading fits perfectly. The open ocean, pirates, and fierce independence. I’m hoping you have a bit of time to settle into some reading for fun and some that inspires you in the classroom to have students take on more leadership and develop their own …
An experiment in student-directed, open-ended project-based learning What if an entire school set out to maximize student engagement? What if there were a school-wide commitment to loosening control and trusting students to do great things? What if students were told that they could work for an hour a week on whatever they want with one …
Building a democratic classroom at The Edge Part of the power of implementing a negotiated curriculum is that it doesn’t just center student voice, it actually moves the learning space towards a democratic classroom, a place where students can advocate for themselves and their learning interests, goals and styles. It’s an important piece of the …
Continue reading “Negotiated curriculum and project-based learning”
Set boundaries, then let students drive the conversation Negotiated curriculum is the idea that you can assemble a curriculum for your class by entering into negotiations with your students: you, as the teacher, have certain non-negotiables or standards you need students to meet, and students tell you what or how they want to learn. That’s …
The Six Question Framework for reflection As the end of June nears and students take their final exams, clear out their lockers, and begin sleeping in until noon, teachers are gathering their remaining energy, and administrators are giving them space, to take stock of the year, celebrate the successes and challenges, and together learn from …
Scaffolding year-end reflections At The Compass School in Westminster, Vermont, students advance through grades by producing evidence of their accomplishments from the year, using the previous year’s reflection to inform the current one. We had the chance to sit down with a student just finishing 11th grade at Compass, and hear not just about his …
Check out these dynamic educators Are you heading to sunny Burlington, VT this Monday and Tuesday (no really, it will be sunny and warm) for Vita-Learn’s Dynamic Landscapes? It’s a perfect opportunity to mix business with pleasure. If so, check out our Tarrant Institute partner educators who are presenting! Feel free to store some of …
Continue reading “Will we see you at Dynamic Landscapes 2016?”
A visualization exercise for changing classrooms It’s not your imagination. It really is the time of year when everyone gets a little wiggly. (Or a little more wiggly than usual.) But how does your classroom layout respond to that energy? Does it honor it or stifle it? Can your students fling their arms wide to …
What is curiosity? Is curiosity important? What does it mean to be a curious learner? What am I curious about? These are some of the questions Cornwall, VT students considered this winter as they embarked on inquiry-based, personalized, research projects. For six weeks, we turned learning over to our students for the (first annual!) Curiosity …
Continue reading “Curiosity Projects: A stepping-stone to Personalized Learning”
Motivating students around goals by connecting schools Many Vermont students have worked hard this year establishing personal and academic goals as an important part of developing Personal Learning Plans (PLPs). But when we speak with some of them or listen to teachers reflect on the process and progress, many share the need for additional motivation …
Revisiting the possibilities of student-created geographies The rate at which technology changes has reached a dizzying speed, with new tools and platforms emerging constantly. But what hasn’t changed is students’ curiosity about the world and their need to explore their own place in it. Young adolescents in particular, burn with the urge to make and …
Continue reading “Interactive map tools for creating deeper place-based learning”
Ubiquitous learning at the Sycamore School (Ed Note: Susan Hennessey recently traveled to Malibu, California to check out some innovative schools there and attend Deeper Learning 2016.) While waiting at the Sycamore School in Malibu, California for our tour guide, my colleagues and I were entertained by a tree full of very talkative wild parrots. …
Continue reading “How ubiquitous learning spaces can spur reflection”
Lessons learned from passion-based research Passion-based research goes by many different names; 20% Time and Genius Hour are just two different terms that describe school projects that center upon personal inquiry and innovation to spark motivation in students. For the past several years, students in my 7th grade social studies classes have engaged in 20 …
Adapting big science for a middle school classroom One of the keys of the Project-Based Learning approach is to engage students in solving real-world problems. Ideally, students are involved in exploring relevant and authentic challenges in their community, state, nation, or world. Sometimes teachers and students have to search hard for a need or an …
Continue reading “Real-world problems and project-based learning”
A case study in Shelburne Arts and citizenship is for 8th graders at Shelburne Community School. This past session, they had a digital media focus, looking at photography and Photoshop and digital manipulation. Most recently they just had a Community Celebration, where the artwork was posted around the school and families and the community came …
Measuring how students approach goal-setting in the 5th and 6th grades Educators at Wallingford Elementary School and Shrewsbury Mountain School, in central Vermont, undertook an action research project measuring how their use of digital tools — specifically Google Docs, Forms and Sites — changed how middle grades students approached setting goals and reflecting on their …
Continue reading “Using digital tools to change student goal-setting and reflection”
More than just math? Let’s be honest, there’s not many days dedicated to the celebration of math or its concepts. This is why math folks get a little energized every March 14th. Picking up where last year’s Pi Day post left off, this is an opportunity to plan for activities or celebrations in the classroom, but more …
A teacher-authored case study Today we hear from a grade 5-6 team venturing into the world of personal learning plans (PLPs) using Google Tools. Jared Bailey, math teacher, and Joy Peterson, English Language Arts teacher, provide concrete details on how they rolled out PLPs this year, including links to such resources as graphic organizers that they used for …
Continue reading “Google Tools for personal learning plans (PLPs)”
Curating lists of online resources for deep dives into content research We have been spending much of our time here at the Tarrant Institute exploring the idea of what engagement looks like in a learning environment where access to resources is ubiquitous, where learning can and does take place anytime, anywhere. That is why when Lisa …
7th graders learn video as reflection tool When I sat down to work with my students on digital citizenship and literacy, I wanted to do something different. These are 7th graders coming from lots of different schools, different levels of understanding, different exposure to the concepts of digital citizenship and I was trying to think of …
Continue reading “Exploring digital citizenship as a form of literacy”
Science app-smashing in a 1:1 environment Brendan Nerney, a middle grades educator at Mill River Union High School in Clarendon, Vermont, explains some of the edtech tools his students use to study hurricanes with their iPads. The students used a variety of edtech tools to produce a mock newscast documenting a hurricane and its aftermath. Let’s …
Continue reading “What are some good tools for studying hurricanes?”
Flexible classroom spaces encourage flexible learning My principal in Baltimore came into my classroom one day and saw one of my students, Bree, standing next to a bookshelf in the back of my room with her laptop open and her things strewn about the surface. He approached her and asked, “Why aren’t you in your seat?” …
Continue reading “Creating flexible classrooms for personalized learning”
Since 2009, the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education has supported technology integration in middle schools as a means of increasing student engagement and decreasing drop-out rates here in Vermont. We support partner schools with tech-rich, on-site professional development and provide funding for technology innovations. Who are our partner schools? Current partners: Bethel Elementary School (Bethel …
Reaching beyond the walls I’m always looking for ways for educators and students at different schools to use technology to connect in far-flung locations. One middle-level educator was kind enough to share how he used Google Hangouts, a Google+ Community, back-channeling and plain old email to enable his students to connect with students a couple of …
Continue reading “Using Google tools to connect with other schools”
3 strategies shared by local educators At Manchester Elementary Middle School, sixth grade students speak fluently about their Personal Learning Plans (PLPs). They’ve been working on setting goals in a PLP for years; some students in this school have been doing so since third grade. Manchester educators Seth Bonnett and Melissa Rice, share what they’ve learned about …
Continue reading “Providing support for goal-setting in a PLP”
Keep students centered in the conversation When it becomes time to talk about scheduling you can often feel the tension rise as everyone’s values and beliefs are put on the table in the attempt to make everyone happy. In many cases the term “everyone” often refers to adults and omits what works best for students.
What do we mean when we talk about innovation in Vermont education? Recently, the #vted Twitter chat focused on innovation, and the conversation brought a mix of practical tips, brilliant insight, and positive sentiment. The take-home message for me was that innovation thrives in an environment with a balance of risk-taking, moral support, and professional learning.
The Great Shelburne Pencil Drive In which we discover a direct link between Shelburne, Vermont and …Ghana? Last week I had a chance to visit Shelburne Community School to see some underwater robotics. It’s one of several stories I walked away with that day that touched my heart and I feel compelled to share. As we …
Continue reading “Middle schoolers helping locally and globally”
Using Vialogues for social learning Vialogues: visual dialogues. Video dialogues. (Visible violet dogs? Risible eyelet hogs? Dirigible side-slit frogs?) Vialogues are an online tool that encourages viewers to answer one specific question about a video, and the tool creates a comment thread based on the answers. When applied in an educational capacity, this creates a …
How school change began with just one person, and just one podcast We talk with Richmond Elementary School principal Mike Berry about how he’s using podcasts and other digital storytelling to help his students find their voices and prepare them to tell their stories as they move to middle school. You can listen to our …
Using the Young Writers Project to teach writing There are so many reasons to appreciate how we teach adolescents to write in Vermont. One of these gifts is the resource of the Young Writer’s Project. Let’s look at what makes this online resource so powerful for educators to present as an option for students looking to …
How does edtech affect extra credit? Is extra credit still a valid notion as we move towards ubiquitous learning, and grapple with questions of equity in education? If the goal is anytime, anywhere learning, how can we quantify certain activities as eXtraneous to that learning space?
What does “quality” mean in assessing statewide digital efforts? The Foundation for Excellence in Education recently released its 2014 Digital Learning Report Card. According to this report, Vermont does not support digital learning. In fact, all of New England is a digital wasteland. But what does the data really say? How are these researchers quantifying “digital learning”? And how …
Continue reading “What goes into measuring the success of edtech?”
Ubiquitous learning is not the same as ubiquitous computing We hear a lot of hype about e-learning, blended learning, MOOCS, and mobile learning. But even a quick investigation of these trends reveals that effective teaching and learning are as elusive as ever. Yet ubiquitous computing — that is, anytime, anywhere access — is only a stepping …
Timeline tools for transformative learning Timeline tools can serve two important purposes: concrete help with project planning (for PLPs, 1:1 rollouts, PBL) and for displaying evidence of learning in an easily digestible format. But the online, anytime/anywhere, collaborative nature of such tools can unlock meta-learning for students, providing them with a platform for bolstering collaboration and …
Steps to a student-led conference Some of my most poignant moments as a teacher occurred around the table of a Student Led Conference. Truly. My eyes have welled with tears at the sheer emotion shared. I’m a believer in giving students the voice and the power to be at this table. It requires a strong …
Online collaboration extends student learning networks Online collaboration takes on new significance as students extend their learning network in conjunction with more personalized and meaningful learning: they can use online networks to learn with mentors, with community partners, remote collaborators and with asynchronous and synchronous group work.
How these educators used Nearpod for professional development Educators instinctively understand the engagement power of a tool that allows learners to actively participate in the learning. For those of you new to Nearpod, this multi-platform app allows teachers to shoot out presentations — think Powerpoints or Google Slides made interactive — directly to their students’ devices. Content …
How to use Minecraft with students Minecraft is an example of welcoming in student-driven modes of learning, exploration and demonstration of learning. Students find the platform deeply engaging because they can use it to build entire worlds, and many prefer to do their building collaboratively, or outside of school hours. But Minecraft also requires reading, …
Extend learning communities beyond the classroom For a review game “killer app” recommendation, Kahoot is by far at the top of my list. Kahoot, if you have not yet had the pleasure of being acquainted, quite frankly, is a riot no matter what your age.
Just-in-time learning in its best form is “Just for me” learning. When you learn something because you yearn to understand it, precisely when you need to apply it, you will learn it deeply and joyfully. Your brain will soak it up because your heart is in it. Now, how does that translate to providing just-in-time-teaching?
Collaborative blogging puts students’ voices out front Hazen Union School 8th grade student Elijah Lew-Smith shared the first student post of the school year on the school’s shared Middle Level Blog. Check out his post to see this year’s new initiatives: 1:1 with iPads, a new House structure, and the focus on Project Based Learning, from a …
Continue reading “Multiple platforms, multiple voices: scenes from a 1:1 rollout”
What can educators do with Google Hangout? Much like being friends on social media, physical proximity has little to do connecting people with other people. Google Hangouts has successfully made communication between individuals or groups and accessing information a bit easier and some may save they even have shrunk the world.
4 edtech tools for family communication How can technology help make communicating with your students’ families easier? These 4 edtech tools for family communication offer different ways to open the door to your classroom and welcome families inside.