Craft Category: Artifacts

Roots Executive Director Discussing the Benefit of Defaulting to Playlists

Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses the benefit of a norm of defaulting to their independent learning tasks if not scheduled directly with a teacher during a learning block.

Jon-Hanover.jpg#asset:774

Transcript: Jon Hanover: some of the early pioneers in personalized learning struggled with the, just like, how do you just like, reconcile everybody’s schedule on a nightly basis, right? So this basically just says if there’s something on my calendar, show me that, ’cause a teacher has scheduled me for a lesson, and I need to go to it. If there’s nothing on my calendar, show me whatever’s next up on my playlist of self-directed work and I’ll engage in that.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Roots Executive Director Discussing How Much Time Students Spend on Online Programs

Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses how the school thinks about time spent online for learning (currently roughly 25% of the day).

Jon-Hanover.jpg#asset:774

Transcript: Jon Hanover: the 25-percent is by no means a magic number; it’s kind of a – that’s really driven by where we see the quality of digital content out there and kind of what mix makes sense for an individual. And it varies by scholar, right? There’s some kinds who, just like ST math is their jam and like they’re just cruising through it and really deeply retaining the information, and so they might spend, you know, as much as 35 or 40-percent of their time on digital learning. There’s other kids who like physical manipulatives really make a big difference, they want to be able to like physically write in a portfolio, and get more out of that experience, and they might be spending 10 to 15-percent of their time on digital apps – on digital learning. So it varies by scholar, and I think as I would expect over the coming years, as the market for digital curriculum improves, that number will probably go up as there’s more kind of high-quality instructional experiences available online.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Teacher Discusses Priorities for Monitoring Independent Learning Time at Roots

Roots teacher, Mackenzie Wagner, discusses the “ladder of priorities” for monitoring and supporting students during independent learning time.

Mackenzie-Wagner.jpg#asset:776

Transcript: Mackenzie Wagner: every flex center has a monitor for that center, and they have pretty much a ladder of priorities. First and foremost, making sure that everybody’s where they need to be, because our kids are doing everything based off technology; they get confused, they go to the wrong station. After that, they’re circulating to make sure everybody’s on task. And then third, they are actually checking in with scholars, making sure that they’re engaging in the work the way they’re supposed to be. In the writing center, that looks like checking in, looking at a scholar’s work quickly to see if they have extra capitals in their sentences, for example. In the flex center, that might look like making sure a scholar is actively engaged with the game they’re doing, and that they understand how to play it. Because, as I’m sure you’d understand, like, if a scholar doesn’t understand what they are doing at that point in time, then that time becomes useless. So, it’s pretty important not to make sure they’re just like, in their spot, but that they understand what they’re supposed to be doing in there, because the self-directed work time can be used so valuably. Or, it could fall apart if it’s not being monitored appropriately. So, it’s something we’ve been working on a lot, is making sure that we’ve got the right process there for making sure students are on-task.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Content Teacher Discusses Benefits of Habits of Success Teachers at Roots

Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, is a content-area teacher. She explains the value of having Habits of Success teaching peers to support the content-area work.

Samantha-Gambino.jpg#asset:778

Transcript: Samantha Gambino: they’re having one-on-one conversations about like, behaviors, or maybe conversations with kids about their academics based on like, what their needs are. So we have a lot of scholars who will ask for a coach, and the habits of success team is there to like say, okay, what do you need my time for? Is it – do you need me to have a conversation because you’re not focused, or you want to get more focused? Or like, you’re having a feeling that your teacher can’t address at that moment? So they’re there to kinda like, help us with the social emotional part of it so that we can continue to just focus on content.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Teacher Discusses How She Modifies Her Time to Meet Students’ Needs at Roots

Roots teacher, Lecksy Wolk, shares how she prioritizes small-group instruction time given competing needs and demands within a personalized learning environment.

Lecksy-Wolk.jpg#asset:775

Transcript: Lecksy Wolk: I divide based on what I think kids need the most. So, obviously, I try to meet with my kids that are the most behind the most to remediate them. And so, my groups that are the most behind, I meet with every day, whereas kids that I just need to check in with, or like, give them enough – something else to work on, I meet with probably once or twice a week. And another thing that – but I do meet with every child once a week at least. And, another thing that I think about it also just their ability to do independent work. So, five is a very interesting age where you have some kids that are super independent. Or even if they’re a little bit older, you know, so we have K and 1. So we have kids that are six, pushing seven. And so, they may tend to be more independent. And so I may be able to show them an activity once and have them go do it in the flex center by themselves. So, I don’t need them to come to my small group every day to do the same activity if they can do it by themselves. And so, I can be very strategic about, this group of kids is someone that I need to meet with more often, even if they’re working on the same thing, because I can show this group once or twice and have them go practice it by themselves – whereas this group needs to be monitored the whole time.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Teacher Discusses Schedule Coordination at Roots

Roots teacher, Mackenzie Wagner, discusses the structure of her school day

Mackenzie-Wagner.jpg#asset:776

Transcript: Mackenzie Wagner: Our day is broken up into a lot of different parts, and so it’s basically a matter of organizing those different parts of the day in your head. So, in the morning, it starts with morning circle and breakfast. And then after that, basically, the day is broken up into grove stations – so, flex time is what we call it, and then content rotations. So as a teacher, I know I always start with 45 minutes of flex rotations. And during that time, I’m always conferencing with kids. So that’s the first chunk of my day. The next chunk is content. So, when you have the more – what you guys saw in there, the more typical like, about 25 kids, whole-group instruction, which then goes into another flex, and then another content. And the same thing repeats itself in the afternoon. So, it’s basically just a matter of like, organizing the different types of instruction between like, small group one-on-one and whole-group throughout the day.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Teacher Use of Master Calendars at Roots

Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, talks about how teachers use Google Calendar to schedule time with students.

Samantha-Gambino.jpg#asset:778

Transcript: Samantha Gambino: all of us are able to just like, in Google Calendar – once every scholar has an e-mail address, like you would have that’s connected to your calendar as a grown-up. And so, we can pull up just their calendar to see where they are for the entire day. So, if I particularly want to schedule a child for a reading small group, I can say okay, here’s your master calendar where you should be for your small groups. Are you free during this time? And I can pull them there. There’s also a teacher master calendar where we can pull up everywhere teachers are at all times. So if we need to conference quickly with Ms. Wagner or something about a literacy skill, I can go and find her calendar and find her, and see where she is.

Read More »
August 9, 2016

Roots Executive Director Discusses Structure for Scheduling

Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses the norms and routines used for scheduling student and teacher activities.

Jon-Hanover.jpg#asset:774

Transcript: Jon Hanover:basically what we did is we split our content team as – for growth, there’s four different content teachers, two that are kind of – that we talk about as the humanities team, and one that we talk about as the STEAM team, which is STEM plus arts. And basically, we structure it, we split the day into two halves, and the humanities has dibs on scheduling the first half of the day, the STEAM team has dibs on scheduling the second half of the day for scholars. And then every Wednesday night, dibs is up for the next week, which means then anybody can go wherever and schedule kids. And the reason to do that, and it’s been working well for us is, all of our content teachers have a handful of lessons that they are going to be planning pretty far out in advance that might be recurring. You know, you do one round of competency-based data assessments and say okay, for the next six weeks or so, I’m gonna – I want to do guided reading with these six kids, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 8:30 to 8:45 with these eight kids from 9:45 to – you know, et cetera. And, within your dibs time, you can just schedule those recurring lessons out indefinitely. And then, once dibs is up for the next week, you can then do the more kind of – okay, you know what? I want to get a double-dip with these guys, and I want to meet with this scholar and we can kind of see who’s free to plan that.

Read More »
August 9, 2016
Scroll to Top