Tag Archives: Magda

Next time

Having a shadow provides avenues for reflection about the whole process and this can be valuable for “mentors”.

I realized that I love having a shadow – it actually got me to constantly think about every step of the way and I think this last ISW has done more to get me to reflect on my practices than the last few combined. I actually never knew how helpful it would be to set aside 5-10 minutes after/during every activity of an ISW and talk about what is happening, how that went compared to the plan, what was the ideal outcome, what were the alternative lesson plans/activities we considered before deciding on this, why this was picked over others, and even how we decide on the small group compositions. It was like having a one-on-one feedback after each part of the ISW.

Flexible Learning

We had some difficulty getting full participation in the online components. The partial participation presented problems in the classroom sessions. We could not build on work that was not done. We discussed many ways of encouraging participation and are interested to hear more from others.
Possibilities to encourage participation as a central part of the course and make it essential for course completion. Possible consideration of clarifying the expectation when they come in to drop off deposit. Also when registering on the site and on the phone call.

The idea of doing something to a short deadline (the Thursday before the first session) and then reinforced by responses and comments by others.
Possible follow-up email to anyone who has not done the short term task (all in the week ahead of the first session) telling them that they need to do it to proceed with the course.
Once we get input from particiapnts we need to use it and incorporate it. Again this becomes challenging when only some did the work.

New ideas!

In relation to a theme session on challenging classrooms, we asked our participants to go online and, for 5 minutes or so, mention 1 challenge they wish to see tackled during the session. This did not work enough to be of great value, only 5 people contributed and 2 more the morning of the session – far too late to be of any use in the lesson planning.

We have had to come up with a few quick ideas to make up for the absence of contribution like pair-share to gather hopes or expectations. We used four challenging classroom scenarios and only 2 came from the participants. We ended up using four stations with challenge definitions and then pass the problem to use the collective mind to come up with ideas to different aspects of the issues: ‘what is the problem,’ ‘what could you have done before, during, and after. We ended with a large group brainstorm. This ended up adding about 15 minutes on top of the planned lesson. The participants were very happy with the session but the idea we have learned is: we must have a backup plan for sessions that rely on online participation. Having to come up with ideas on the run – even when they work – messes with the time table.

New ideas!

We tried to run one session completely online – the flipped classrom – with an intention to have a 10-15 minute revisit summary on the day, going over the participants comments, discussing what needs revisiting, underlining what seems essential and so on. Once more, we found that not enough participants completed the activity to make this effective. Only 9 people went in and did the work – and 2 more the morning of the session, too late to be of a lot of use. We have had to revisit the session quickly, adding 10-15 more minutes to do the homework collectively in session. It worked our more or less but not as well as we initially planned.

After the day we came up with this idea: from now on we will time the online lesson completions. As in: the participants will receive the link to the website on, for ex, Monday. They will be told they must complete the 1st day’s task in 2 or 3 days. If a participant does not do so he/she will be contacted personally to remind him/her of the tasks. The same strategy will be used again for the 2nd and 3rd day tasks too. Hard deadlines for the online tasks and further reminders in case of non-compliance seem to be essential to the lesson plans that use flexible learning. There are ways to make sure the flexible learning site is fully incorporated to our sessions but we must ensure the site is used and currently this seems to be our best idea to that end.