Balance With Blended Learning: Partner With Your Students to Reimagine Learning and Reclaim Your Life(Corwin Teaching Essentials)

Rethink the roles, responsibilities, and workflow in your blended learning classroom and enjoy balance in your life. Blended learning offers educators the opportunity to reimagine teaching and learning. It allows teachers to partner with their students to assess, track, and reflect on learning. This partnership gives teachers more time and energy to innovate and personalize learning while providing students the opportunity to be active agents driving their own growth. If one thing is certain after the 2019-2020 school year, blended learning is here to stay. Learning must be a shared endeavor between the teacher and the learner. This book provides teachers with strategies to rethink traditional workflows to make teaching practices sustainable. Written by blended learning expert, Catlin Tucker, this resource provides teachers with concrete strategies and resources they can use to partner with their students to actively engage them in setting goals, monitoring their development, reflecting on their growth, using feedback to improve work, assessing the quality of their work, and communicating their progress with parents. Balance With Blended Learning includes Practical strategies for teachers overwhelmed by their workloads Routines and protocols designed to move feedback and assessment into the classroom to eliminate much of the work teachers take home Ready-to-use templates and resources designed to help students take an active role in tracking, monitoring, and reflecting on their progress Vignettes written by teachers across disciplines Stories from the author′s extensive experience both as a teacher and blended -learning coach Redefining roles in a blended learning classroom encourages students to take ownership over their learning journeys and helps teachers feel more effective, efficient, and energized.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments About the Author Chapter 1: The Problem With Traditional Grading Practices Problems With Traditional Grades My WHY Grades Are Hotly Debated in Education If We Cannot Throw Out Grades Completely, What Can We Do? Blended Learning to the Rescue Chapter 2: Embracing a Partnership Model With Blended Learning From Hierarchy to Partnership Partnership Principles for Teachers and Students How Can Blended Learning Support a Teacher–Learner Partnership? Chapter 3: Who Is Doing the Work in Your Classroom? Lack of Time and Exhaustion Are Barriers to Innovation Who Is Doing the Work? Reframe the Way You Think About Your Work Flip the Workflow in Your Classroom Chapter 4: Encouraging Metacognition in Your Classroom The Power of Metacognition Five Strategies Designed to Develop Metacognition in the Classroom Building a Metacognitive Practice Into the Classroom With Blended Learning Chapter 5: Flip Learning With Videos The Benefits of Using Videos With Students Video Is Versatile Addressing Concerns About Using Video in School Creating Your Own Video Content Curating Video Content Online Chapter 6: Goal Setting Motivating Unmotivated Students Goal-Setting Strategies Chapter 7: Real-Time Feedback Using the Station Rotation Model Troubleshooting Challenges With Traditional Approaches to Feedback Spotlight Blended Learning Model: Station Rotation Model Tucker Time Feedback Station Real-Time Feedback Tips Tech Can Make Giving Feedback Easier Deciding on the Feedback Format That Fits Chapter 8: Rubrics for Learning Rubrics as Roadmaps Rubric Design: Avoiding Common Mistakes Using Rubrics to Further Student Learning You Don’t Need to Assess Every Aspect of Every Assignment Single Skill Rubric: Less Is More Chapter 9: Side-by-Side Assessments Ask Yourself, Why Am I Grading This? Select a Blended Learning Model and Design Your Lesson Select Specific Grading Criteria for Your Side-by-Side Assessments Prior to Side-by-Side Assessments, Ask Students to Complete a Self-Assessment Preparing for Side-by-Side Assessments Conducting Side-by-Side Assessments Chapter 10: Students Communicate Directly With Parents About Their Progress It’s Unrealistic for Teachers to Communicate With All Parents Regularly Email Updates Publishing Student Work Student-Led Conferences Preparing for Student-Led Conferences Virtual Student-Led Conferences Chapter 11: Grade Interviews Students Become Active Agents in the Grading Process Apply for a Grade Interview Preparing for Grade Interviews Conducting Grade Interviews The Possibilities of a Partnership Model The Goal: Achieving Balance References Index

About the Author :
Catlin Tucker is a Google Certified Innovator, bestselling author, international trainer, and frequent Edtech speaker, who teaches in Sonoma County where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2010. Catlin’s books Blended Learning in Grades 4-12 and Blended Learning in Action are both bestsellers. She has also written a book titled Creatively Teach the Common Core Literacy Standards with Technology to support teachers in thinking outside of the box as they shift to the Common Core. Catlin is working on her doctorate at Pepperdine University. She writes the “Techy Teacher” column for ASCD’s Educational Leadership. She is active on Twitter @Catlin_Tucker and writes an internationally ranked education blog at CatlinTucker.com.

Review :
This book provides the fundamentals needed to transform your classroom from teacher centered to student centered. Catlin Tucker has thoroughly outlined the steps needed to create a blended learning environment with the necessary student–teacher partnership. After reading Balance With Blended Learning, I was hooked! This new focus in the series, on helping coach students to understand their own learning, is exactly what educators need right now as we move from the front of the classroom to sitting shoulder to shoulder with our students to make sense of learning goals and assessing them! Catlin Tucker has created a resource to help teachers better assess their students’ work and more importantly, help students become more engaged in the process. Balance With Blended Learning: Partner With Your Students to Reimagine Learning and Reclaim Your Life will undoubtedly help secondary teachers promote more student-friendly grading experiences that aid them in demonstrating their own progress and growth. It will help any teacher make changes to their assessment practices that will benefit student learning. As teachers, we strive to foster and nurture lifelong learners—learners that sustain their purpose and passion for learning regardless of their path in life. What Catlin shares with us in this book takes us one giant step forward toward that goal by focusing on grades and student ownership of their learning progression. Using her personal and very transparent experiences as a teacher, she unlocks a pathway for us to truly partner with our learners and thus move them closer to lifelong learning by actively involving them in monitoring their own learning progress. As a parent, teacher, and teacher educator, the ideas in this book will change the way I "do business" inside and outside of my classroom.