LLI Southwest

Are you striving to create student-centered, innovative, relevant learning experiences for students of all ages? What if you could do all that AND help students synthesize information while making connections between class experiences and the real-world?

Come learn how to modify and redefine current lessons into more authentic learning experiences for your students.

We will discuss how 2 teachers took a basic 7th grade novel lesson plan unit and turned it into a multi-grade collaboration and also connected life experiences outside the classroom.

The REALM is a new school of choice in Burleson, Texas, in which I am honored to serve as Dean.  In this personalized learning environment, we have incorporated a 4 house system of government that includes various roles such as president, tribunal council, and more.  Along with the government, we have developed unique management tools for a school that allows students to experience freedom of movement and ownership of learning.  

Three years ago, Tampa Prep completely renovated their lower school classrooms into Active Learning Environments or ALEs. Mr. Lewis hand-picked the technology for the ALE based on his dreams of building a highly collaborative, technology-rich classroom to better foster student-centered learning and 21st century skills. That year, Mr. Lewis oversaw the installation of ALEs in all 10 of the lower school’s classrooms. After two school years of successful use of the ALEs in the lower school, Tampa Prep replicated the ALE model in all of the upper school’s classrooms – making Tampa Prep a complete active learning school. 
All classrooms are now equipped with two interactive projectors on opposite walls, dry-erase wall coverings, Steelcase mobile desks for students and Ergotron mobile desks for teachers, a voice-amplification system, glass walls, and LED lighting. Each student is also required to bring an iPad to school. When used together, every student has a “front row” seat and can collaborate with peers almost instantly. Teachers are no longer tethered to the front of the classroom lecturing and can instead roam the room with their device while helping students in small groups or one-on-one.
Although the ALEs are almost identical at the lower and upper schools, teachers utilize the technology in different ways to best meet students’ academic goals and needs. Mr. Lewis will discuss how teachers have harnessed the ALE to use techniques such as flipped instruction in math and foreign language classes, a discussion-based learning model called the Harkness Method, and more.

Maker-based education inspires deeper learning through hands-on creative experiences. Students learn to think with their hands to achieve cognitive and affective learning objectives. Maker-based experiences invite curiosity, inspire wonder, encourage play, and honor uniqueness. Maker-based lessons also promote productive failure in learning. They are are opportunities to explore ideas and to develop unique perspectives. High-tech and low-tech tools are used to accomplish valuable learning goals. Those goals can come from any and all curriculum areas.


The GSES team will share a 3rd grade maker-based lesson designed by teachers to engage their students in writing excellent sentences. Teachers will share the experience of designing this unit with the Maker Unit Design Tools, and will define positive outcomes and unforeseen errors in their first prototype of the lesson.


The GSES team will also facilitate the same maker-based learning experience for participants. SMU faculty members will share definitions and pedagogical approaches for maker-based learning and will facilitate the beginning of a design process using several of these tools.

The main focus of this workshop is to demonstrate the power of close observation.  It is through close observation that students can begin to describe, compare and analyze what they see. The workshop leaders will also demonstrate how to use questioning strategies to guide students to deeper thinking.  This thinking can then be used to create analogies, write stories and poetry, and make mathematical connections. 

Session Description

Office 365 is a powerful tool for schools to take advantage of.  However, where do you start as a school to take advantage of these tools and what are the essential tools that you can show your faculty, students and administration?  Cary Academy has been using Office 365 for over three years and we are constantly learning all the new things Office 365 offers.  In this session we will show you the blueprint we used to train and transition faculty, staff and students on Office 365, from OneDrive, to SharePoint sites, to groups and of course OneNote and Class Notebook.

OneDrive  

Where can we store and share files for the school community, from students, staff and faculty?    Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage is a great tool for this.  How many of us have had that student come to us with the hard drive that just crashed?  The big question, was any of the student data backed up?  With Microsoft OneDrive that data will be stored in the cloud and the backup is done for them.  We will show you the synch process and how your community will rely on this as the main source for the storage of their files.  What about a project students are collaborating on and they want to share a file?  OneDrive allows them to share the file with each other and their teacher, through the cloud and not email attachments or a shared network folder.  One of the best features, you do not need the server storage on site or maintenance that goes with backing up student data.   Microsoft takes care of this for you at their data centers.    

Office Groups 

Office groups, a space in the cloud to organize teams. Anyone in the school can create an Office group. Each group has its own e-mail address, calendar, document storage and dedicated OneNote notebook. Imagine a school club having the power to collaborate at this level or a school committee sharing information through files and OneNote notebook.  What about the person that misses a meeting?  They can catch up by looking at the group notes or files that were worked on and seeing what they missed.  Groups is a powerful way for committees and club advisors to keep up to date information in one area for people to follow. 

Class Notebook/Staff Notebook 

How can you get your students and faculty to collaborate on a daily basis or not have textbooks?  Learn the powerful tool of OneNote and Class Notebook.  Faculty can create online textbooks with OneNote and then use Class Notebook to share this material with students.  They can check homework and reviews and use the collaboration space to work on problems or material for the whole class to see.  

SharePoint Sites 

SharePoint sites are powerful tool to take advantage of with Office 365.  Imagine a department sharing files, calendars and OneNote notebooks.  This is all possible with SharePoint Sites in Office 365.  Our leadership team, business office, admission and various other departments take advantage of tool and the various options offered within sites.  What about students and faculty?  Our Yearbook teacher has a site that she uses to share photos and page layouts with the yearbook students throughout the year, so they are constantly collaborating.   

These are only some of the tools Office 365 uses, but learning these essential tools will help your school see the advantage of Office 365 and the collaboration that it can bring for your school community.   

As part of the history curriculum at St. John's Episcopal School in Dallas, seventh grade students produce a 5-minute oral history documentary film as an art and film integration.  Over the course of a year, students learn about oral histories as primary sources, complete a pre-interview questionnaire and conduct preliminary research in order to create thoughtful interview questions. Students are coached on how to set up and film the actual interview.  Students conduct further research on their topic and develop a story board, image bank and documentary narrative.  Students learn how to edit their film to produce a polished product that will serve as a family memento for generations. This project has not only changed the lives of our students but has been a gift to their families and to our school. Students complete the journey to no longer see the world around them in one perspective but rather as individuals who are shaped by the experiences around them.  As the personal stories of individual perspectives are interwoven into the collective history of the community, students learn from each other about the common and uncommon experiences that have shaped themselves and their peers.

We are all familiar with the traditional classroom approach in which students receive whole group instruction and all learn the material at the exact same pace.  This method of instruction fails to fully meet the needs of all students.  In the reimagined classroom, students receive personalized pathways tailored to their individual level.  They are then allowed to move through strategically designed activities at their own pace.  A classroom structured with this style of teaching consists of many different components.  In this session, we will introduce the essential components of a personalized classroom and offer practical and simple methods of implementation. 

We will discuss the theory of what it means to give students a syllabus vs. giving them a Learning Journey path.  Then we'll look at different platforms to build out a visual/digital path with options for students (Venngage and Piktochart, etc.).  Finally we'll discuss how this will impact learning in your classroom- it changes everything from lexicon to how you report out on learning.