Introduction

Our innovation plan, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, was created to provide students the opportunity to engage in a student-centered learning environment with increased personalization and teacher-facilitated support. Our shared vision is for students to have the opportunity to become self-directed learners while increasing motivation and student achievement. In order to accomplish this goal, my collaborative team and I developed an implementation outline to guide us in successfully moving towards Blended Learning on our campus, Victor Fields Elementary. We plan to initially share our plan with our administration team in May 2022 and then present it to our K-5 Reading teachers in August 2022. 

 

When developing our Professional Learning Plan, our objective was to create a significant learning environment for our Administration and K-5 Reading teachers, as we envision for our students. We understood that if we expected our teachers to invest their time in implementing a successful blended learning environment in their classrooms, our PL needed to replicate and model what it looks like and sounds like in order to engage their minds and capture their hearts. 

 Our PL Plan aims to deepen our teachers' knowledge of blended learning by fully submerging them in a differentiated learning environment, one that is tailored to their needs. Our learners, Administration, and K-5 Reading Teachers will actively participate in a blended learning environment that has been strategically planned by the Blended Learning Implementation Team (BLIT). The BLIT will implement 3 distinct station rotations in order to provide our learners with a personalized blended learning environment. Station One will be a BLIT-led differentiated lesson based on each learner’s level of understanding. Station Two will be a self-directed learning station where learners will harness the power of technology and have a choice of which articles, videos, and readings they engage in. Lastly, Station Three will be a collaborative station where our Administrators and K-5 reading teachers can engage in collaborative discussions about their new learning and will have a choice on how to present their learning. This student-centered model will not only provide our learners with choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities but will also increase their collaboration and critical thinking.

We wanted our K-5 Reading teachers to engage in this type of PL session so that they could understand that with blended learning they could “choose when, where, what, and/or how fast or slow they are learning and understand they have the power to pause, rewind, or fast-forward instruction based on their unique needs” (McLester, 2011).  Our goal is that by the end of our initial PL session, our learners will not only have a deeper knowledge of blended learning but also see the benefits of a blended learning environment because they were actively engaged in one.  

 

Creating our PL Plan

Although most PL sessions we attend are modeled using the traditional “Sit & Get” approach, our sessions are not. That traditional approach would not have provided our learners with movement and discourse or active engagement that is essential for effective PL. Instead, the BLIT Team decided to create a “Go & Show” PL, which encompasses the 5 Principles of Effective PD (Gulamhussein, 2013).

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Principle One: Duration

The duration of our Professional Learning Plan that implements our blended learning initiative with our Administrative Team and our K-5 Reading teachers will begin in May 2022 and will be ongoing as needed. The goal of our ongoing timeline is to ensure success, deepen knowledge of blended learning, alleviate any disconnect with our wildly important goal (WIG), and create a significant learning environment (CSLE) that fosters students' choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities (COVA). 

 

Principle Two: Support

We have formed a Blended Learning Implementation Team (BLIT) in order to provide ongoing support for our Administrative team and K-5 reading teachers during the implementation phase on our campus. The BLIT’s goal is to foster leadership, and encourage collaboration and trust while providing coaching and modeling for our learners (K-5 reading teachers). Within every phase, we have made sure to provide content-specific support with time for reflection and discussion. 

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Principle Three: Active Learning

According to Gulamhussein (2013), teachers’ initial exposure to a concept should not be passive, but rather should engage teachers through varied approaches so that they can participate in multiple activities to make sense of all the new information. Within every phase, we have made sure that teachers will be actively participating in a blended learning environment and will engage in activities they will be able to transfer to their classrooms.

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Principle Four: Modeling

Modeling and coaching have been found to be very effective in teachers’ understanding of a new level of practice (Gulamhussein, 2013).  Our ongoing support plan provides modeling and coaching every month, for our K-5 reading teachers. BLIT will schedule a lesson to be modeled every other month that will give teachers the opportunity to observe and acquire new knowledge. BLIT will then follow up with another layer of support in the classroom in the form of co-teaching. This method will allow teachers to gain confidence in their blended learning environment.

 

Principle Five: Content-Specific

The blended learning content presented to teachers will be tailored to their specific grade level and subject. This specific reading content will not be generic or vague, it will be personalized for each grade level, K-5. Coaching and modeling will be even more specific as the need arises.

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In order for the implementation of our innovation plan, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, to be successful and have sustainability, my colleagues and I must prepare our teachers with proper training, which includes active learning, collaboration, ongoing modeling, and coaching. We will use the duration of the 2022-2023 school year to actively model and support teachers with implementing blended learning to the best of our abilities. We will also foster self-directed learning for our teachers by making all of our resource materials available on our Blended Learning Google Classroom. This will allow our teachers to view our course material before, during, and after each session.

 

Implementing Change PL Sessions

• Session 1 – Intro to Blended Learning 8/22 

  • Agenda, Slide Deck Presentation, Prior Knowledge Google Form, Google Classroom Center Rotations, and   Feedback Google Form

• Session 2 – Sample Poetry Blended Learning Lesson

  • BHAG with 3 Column Table, UbD 

• Session 3 – Exploring Blended Learning Application (iReady)

• Session 4 – Learning How to Learn, Culture & Collaboration

• Session 5 – Blended Learning & COVA Intro

• Session 6 – Blended Learning & CSLE Intro

• Session 7 --- Blended Learning & Growth Mindset Intro

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Below you will find the agenda, slide deck, and forms, that we will use for our

First Session: Introduction to Blended Learning.

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