Challenge Directions

Read the Current Educational Challenge statement and complete the Zombie Survival Guide Notebook Reflections to document your beginning thoughts and feelings.  

Current Educational Challenge and Perspective

Disengaged students turn into zombies in the classroom.  Engaging students in the learning process is one of the biggest issues many teachers across the world are dealing with in schools.  It is hard for the classroom teacher to compete with video games, YouTube, Snap Chat, Facetime, and other sources of on-demand entertainment that students have quick and easy access to every minute of the day.  

State EOC Data Reports show that students in South Carolina are having issues with multiple English and Language Arts standards.  These students are not using the skills and strategies that they need to be able to answer questions at a higher level of rigor.  Mastery of these concepts becomes an issue as classroom teachers must prepare lessons and activities to support the growth of their students.  

This problem has quickly become a classroom teacher issue.  Teachers are forced to create classroom policies and procedures to deal with these electronic issues and support students with standards-based learning.  The problems can be daunting for teachers to have to create solutions for students misusing school-issued electronic devices, students sleeping in class due to high electronic device usage at home, or students that just do not want to engage without having that fast video game-type feedback.  Standards-based lessons must be designed to be rigorous and engaging to students.  Classroom zombies can destroy the classroom environment, affect other students in the room, and drain the energy from the teacher.  The zombie problem quickly can spread throughout a classroom at record speed.  Once it begins to infect a classroom, it is very hard to stop and reverse.  

By completing this Professional Learning Module, teachers will develop skills and strategies to help them combat the spread of classroom zombies.  In this PLM, zombies are defined as students who have become disengaged in the classroom. It is better to have a clear plan of action to prevent the spread than to try to recover and survive a zombie apocalypse.  Student engagement is an event that has to be planned for and strategies implemented in every lesson a teacher plans.  By planning ahead, zombies will not stand a fighting chance in the classroom.   

Visible Learning: The Sequel

A Synthesis of Over 2,100 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement

Throughout the PLM, you will notice research from John Hattie.  Hattie's research shows the effectiveness of different instructional mind frames, strategies, procedures, and educational practices.  If the research shows a 0.4 positive score on the chart, it will have a positive impact on student achievement equal to 1 year of growth (Hattie, 2023).