In this stepping stone, we will look at what facilitation will mean for Eagle Academy.
Facilitation is the process, not the form we fill out. I need to be able to facilitate groups of students. I need to be able to change back and forth between modalities to make my time most effective for student learning.
Planning in the blended classroom is dependent on the monitoring and ongoing assessment of each student’s progress through both the evidence pieces aligned to skills of a studio, as well as the picture of competency development and longer term goals of students. In planning daily or weekly facilitation, the first step is to look at [Slate] to determine where your individual students are in relation to the relevant studios and their big picture competency goals.
Next, teachers must decide what students need in order to move forward in their work.
Specific students may need:
task-specific support
content reviewed
goal-setting/reflection
individual or small group instruction on a related skill that ties to a broader focus competency they are working on
support connecting the work to other broader learning focus areas of their individual plan
Having loads of students in your studios can be overwhelming to say the least. Having a way to organize your students helps a ton! So, how will you organize and structure your time as a teacher?
by studio (all students in studio____ will meet at this time)
by portfolio (all Portfolio 1 students will meet at this time)
by competency (all students working on Competency 1 will meet at this time)
a blend of all of the above (I have groups of all 3 types)
Using your organization system from above, what groups form naturally? What do they need?
"These 3 students need to work on the skill of..." --> Create lesson for these students on that skill
"These 8 students need feedback!" --> Create feedback session for these students
"This one student in not making any progress" --> Create motivating chat for this student
"Discussion needs to be happening in this group of 12" --> Create whole group discussion for these students
Once you know the who and the what, share that information! This is the facilitation plan piece. We often just jump to this spot without having a procedure in place. When we run short on time, we tend to just copy and paste the same names or not put anyone. The result is less than efficient uses of our time and less learning and growing for students.