Personalized Learning: Beyond the Buzz Words

For years the biggest buzz word in education has been differentiation, in reference to tailoring instruction to meeting individual academic needs. Recently with shifts in instruction to align with Common Core Standards/ 21st Century skills more buzz words have been popping up: personalized learning, individualized learning, blended learning... how are all of these terms related to differentiation and how do they REALLY look in action?

Let's start with some definitions that can help us demystify the buzz words. According to the National Education Technology Plan personalization is the big umbrella that individualization and differentiation fall under. While differentiation still means providing content access for varied levels of academic need, individualization is now being described as the pacing of a lesson supporting an individual student's needs. Beyond all of this, personalization also includes providing student choice in learning. As you can imagine, providing truly personalized instruction is no easy task. One of the best parts of my job is having the opportunity to brainstorm and then support teachers in the implementation of new strategies and tools that help to personalize instruction.

What does personalized math instruction look like in our district?
We serve a diverse student population with a wide range of learners, and therefore personalized instruction is crucial to ensuring success for all of our students.

Our math teachers have implemented a variety to tools and strategies that support this. We currently have district work groups looking at identifying essential standards, and then unpacking those standards to establish learning goals within units of study. The two main strategies that our teachers are using to personalize instruction in order to support all students in accessing the learning goals are blended learning and integration of high quality tasks. 

Strategy 1: Implementing High Quality Tasks
Task selection is crucial to reaching learning goals. Over the past two years our Math Cadre has worked with the Campbell High School District with an emphasis on how to select, design and implement high quality tasks. Strategically selected/developed tasks have embedded differentiation with a low floor (entry points for all) and high ceiling (deeper application of concepts). Experts like Dan Meyer and Peg Smith have guided us through this process and helped develop a wealth of expertise in this area. Please continue to pull on me and your cadre members as a resource for using the following task sites:

• Formative Assessment Lessons: Try to implement several of these tasks a year as aligned with your learning goals/major units of study.
• Mathalicious: Promotes critical thinking around real-world applications.
• Illustrative Mathematics: CCSS aligned instructional and assessment tasks.
• Inside Mathematics: Problems of the Month and Performance Assessments
• Robert Kaplinsky Lessons and Dan Meyer 3-Act Math: Students engage in inquiry based problem-solving with relevant topics
• Visualpatterns.org: Using geometric growth patterns to provide natural context for algebraic reasoning

In addition to working on task selection, our math cadre has also done a significant amount of work on questioning strategies. Choosing the right questions to either assess or advance student thinking while engaging in a task with students allows for differentiation; providing supports and extensions all within the conversations you have with students. Want a crash course in questioning strategies? Ask me or a cadre member... we even have a planning tool that will help you anticipate the different approaches and plan your questioning accordingly!

Strategy 2: Blended Learning 
Many CUSD teachers are implementing blended learning in order to personalize instruction for our students. Blended learning is defined as a mix of face-to-face and online instruction. Blended learning also allows for more targeted instruction, with teachers being able to pull small groups, strategically plan their grouping as heterogeneous or homogeneous, and incorporate intervention and enrichment into their lesson design.

Just a couple of tools/Strategies that support personalized learning in the blended station/rotation model:

At Campbell Middle School, Margaret Hulgrave has been using EdPuzzle in order to do an in-class flip of instruction, where students receive direct instruction online and she is able to use her time with students to pull small groups for intervention and/or going deeper with application of concepts. EdPuzzle allows you to take any video and embed questions (multiple choice or open-ended), include voiceover clips and more!

Recently Pedro Garcia (CMS) and I built a Hyperdoc on Integer Concepts to use with his 6th grade students. The Hyperdoc reviewed the concept, gave students an opportunity to apply their learning, and provided an extension activity that went deeper with the standards. Hyperdocs are more than just a Doc with links, they are a mechanism for transforming instruction through providing an engaging ways for students to access content at their own pace and with choice.
Jamie Strand (Sherman Oaks) created an awesome Hyperdoc to provide her students with choice while reviewing the concepts of GCF/LCM.

When implemented effectively, blended learning allows teachers to individualize content by allowing students to work at their own pace in a way that is not possible with stand and deliver instruction. Are you a CUSD teacher ready to start implementing blended learning stations? Come join our learning circles on Tuesday 11/15, 11/29, and 12/13- you can register at pd.campbellusd.org... there are 4 spots remaining!

Top 10 Chrome Extensions for Teachers

Chrome extensions increase the functionality of your Chrome browser, allowing for an enhanced browsing experience. So what does that mean exactly? Let's break it down: Chrome extensions (accessed from the Chrome Web Store) allow you to do really cool stuff that you didn't know was even possible. They can make you more efficient, organized, and creative. However, you should beware as there are good extensions and there are bad extensions.

Good extensions/bad extensions photo from @EdTechAri and the RUSD team's presentation at #CUE16

Let's explore some of the good extensions! Here are 10 favorite extensions for classroom teachers!


1. Move it

Never forget to get the kids up for a stretch again! This extension allows you to set certain time intervals in which you would like movement breaks. According to the time interval you set (i.e., every 10 minutes) a new tab will open prompting you and the students to get up and do a quick stretch. Stretches include jumping jacks, wall push-ups, climbing invisible ladders and more!

2. Share to Classroom

Use this extension to instantly push websites out to your students. You can also create assignments, announcements, or questions directly from a webpage (without the extra steps of copying the URL, going into Classroom, and creating the assignment). This extension is a must for teachers and students who regularly use Google Classroom.






3/4. Tab Scissors/Tab Glue

Ever have the need to have two tabs open next to each other? Maybe you want to have a spreadsheet with your grades open next to your gradebook or research open next to a research paper you are typing. With tab scissors, you can cut two tabs apart into two separate windows so they appear side-by-side and with tab glue you can glue them right back together!

5. Cite This For Me: Web Citer

Feeling lost now that the research tool in Google Docs and Google Slides has changed to explore (and lost the fancy citation features)? This is the extension for you! With this extension you can build a bibliography, choosing between APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA citation formats. You can even attach the quotes to the citation. This is the extension we all wish we had in grad school!







6. Goo.gl URL Shortener

Long URLs driving you and your students crazy? This extension allows you to instantly create a shortened URL of any website. Bonus: It also automatically generates a QR Code (QR code scavenger hunts? Yes please!). Plus, you can view analytics for how often your URL has been visited using the Details feature.




7. Awesome Screenshot

As teachers, how often do we need to take screenshots of web pages and insert arrows, text, etc.? This awesome extension allows you to take screenshots and then takes you to a new tab where you can instantly annotate the screenshots. Even cooler feature- you can capture an entire page in a screenshot (even parts that aren't visible!).



8. Eyedropper

Bored of the same old colors for your fonts, backgrounds, slides, etc.? Want an option to use the colors from the most beautiful beach you've ever visited? This extension will make you instantly feel like a graphic designer! Use it to grab a color from any webpage or photo and instantly generate the hex code for that color.

9. Screencastify

This fabulous extension allows you to access all of the screencasting features of Screencastify with just one click on your extensions bar. Record tabs, your entire desktop, or from your camera. OR choose my favorite option, which is Embed Webcam (this means you can have video of you talking in the corner while capturing the content of your screen). Ready for the real zinger? You can set it up to upload your screencasts directly into your Google Drive!



10. Extensity

But wait a second, you told us to add all of these extensions and now we can barely see our omnibox (yup, that's the fancy word for your URL bar). Not a worry my friends! Just add the extension Extensity and with the simple flip of a switch, you can collapse or expand all of your extensions, opening just the ones you want to use.

CUSD teachers, let me know if I can support you in adding/using any of these extensions!

What are your favorite extensions? Share them on this Padlet!

Starting a Math Revolution

We hear that the days of forward facing rows are over, that the teacher is no longer the disseminator of all information and the students are no longer passive consumers of knowledge. Teachers in CUSD are working hard to make this a reality; to make their classrooms interactive places where students take an active role in their own learning. Last year many of our middle school math teachers started using blended learning to individualize instruction. They used digital tools to administer formative assessment so they could get an instant snapshot of their students needs. This year, they are taking it to the next level with a low-tech tool that is quickly proving to be transformational: whiteboards.

What's with all the whiteboards? 
After attending Ed Campos' session on 360 Degree Math at CUE Rockstar Math, several of our teachers came back motivated to implement it in their own classrooms. What is 360 Degree math? The idea is brilliant in its simplicity: whiteboards are placed all around the classroom and each student has a spot on the whiteboards to complete their work. The teacher's primary location is in the center of the room, with the ability to float to individuals needing assistance.

The benefits include: 

• increased movement
• opportunities for peer support
• an instant snapshot of what each student in the class is doing
• Huge benefit: the teacher is able to quickly identify common misconceptions and address them in a timely and relevant manner

But where do the get all those whiteboards?!

Many of our CUSD teachers got creative as wall whiteboards are expensive and not readily available. Anna Lawrence from Monroe recommended going to Home Depot and grabbing some shower board, which proved to be a $65 solution for CMS teachers James Peng, Pedro Garcia, and Maria Cammisa (have them cut an 8 X 4 piece of shower board into four 2 x 2 pieces).

Let's see it in action!

Students in James Peng's eight grade classroom solve a problem from Jo Boeler's week of inspirational math.

Other Tips & Tricks

• Don't plan on having students standing for the entire class period! Even standing doesn't count as "movement" if you are just stationary. Alternate between table work, 360 problem-solving, and rotating around.
• Incorporate music cues into the 360 math routine.
• Have students rotate to respond to each others' solutions (awesome for my favorite math practice: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others)
• Build in "My Favorite No" as a warm-up to help establish the mindset that we learn/grow from mistakes.

Additional Management Tips

• James Peng and Pedro Garcia use strategic student placement with playing cards. The students have a playing card on their desk with an associated card on one of the whiteboards. This allows you to shake up pairing throughout the period.
• Velcro markers, erasers (pieces of cloth work) and needed materials in pouches where the students will be working.

Sold! Ready to join the 360 Math Revolution?

• CUSD teachers, simply reach out to me! I am happy to support you in getting started and continued implementation of 360 degree math.
• Ed Campos and I will be presenting 360 Math as a CUE Rockstar Jam Session at Fall CUE. More info here!

Math/Tech Coaching Menu

Hello #CUSDrockstar math teachers! I am so excited to start a brand new year with you and to continue building on all of the innovative instructional practice already in place.  Since the role of a Math/Tech coach is a new and ever-evolving role, this first blog post of the year focuses on what I can do for you. Please take a moment to review the list of opportunities for support and please do not hesitate to reach out!


As our district's focus is on going beyond the textbook to support the unique needs of learners in our classrooms, I offer support in lesson design with a focus on how technology can help achieve this. Effective integration of technology can help your students reach their learning goals through promoting differentiation, engagement, communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.

Support in lesson design includes but is not limited to:


Use of digital tools for formative assessment: Looking for ways to gather instant data on what your students know and what they need more support on? I can recommend and support the use of a variety of digital tools to assess students and receive instant data to drive instruction. Several of these tools include: Google Forms, Kahoot, Quizizz, Go Formative, Socrative, and more!

Digital tools for mathematical modeling: Want to support deeper understanding of mathematical concepts through the use of digital modeling tools such as Desmos? Gamify learning with Desmos Marbleslides and Polygraph tools and so much more. What's that you say... a graphing calculator is FUN?! Let me know- I'm happy to show you the many uses of Desmos in making graphing concepts engaging!

Blended Learning Strategies: Ready to try blended learning to individualize and differentiate instruction? Wonder how to manage the classroom in order to pull a student (or group of students)? I can support with different flipped and blended models of instruction, as well as with the creation and implementation of digital lessons that support this using tools such as Hyperdocs, EdPuzzle and Blendspace.

Incorporation of Google Apps for Education: Campbell Union School District is a Google Apps for Education district. Are you ready to get Googley? Use of Google tools can support the 4 Cs and digital lesson design. I can support you with anything from Google Drive Basics (Docs, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Sheets) and Google Classroom, to Advanced Google Drive (apps, add-ons, extensions), Google Sites, Google Hangouts and anything else Googley!

Math 360: How can your learning environment impact your lesson design? Many CUSD teachers are now using 360 degree math, which starts with the basic idea of having whiteboard walls around your classroom. Students are able to get out of their seats while they work (you can even incorporate Music Cues!), problem-solving becomes transparent, and the teacher is able to instantly identify and address common misconceptions. Let me know if you would like support and are ready to join the 360 degree math revolution!

I support many of our math teams in regular planning meetings, where we use Professional Learning Community (PLC) work to guide our conversations and our work around innovative lesson design. Determining what we want our students to know, we can share best practices around extending learning, assessing learning, and supporting all students in accessing instruction.

Please reach out to let me know how I can support you! We will also be offering a variety of district professional developments to support innovative instruction and lesson design so stay tuned.

New Quiz Feature in Google Forms!

Yesterday Google dropped some big news releasing a quiz feature that will revolutionize the use of Google Forms as a formative assessment tool. Many teachers have used Flubaroo in years past to auto-grade assessments administered through Google Forms. Flubaroo is a fantastic tool, but it is not automatic, involves an extra step (as is the nature of an add-on), and is more teacher grading focused than student feedback focused. To see a comparison between Flubaroo and the new Quiz feature in forms click here.


You can now turn any Google Form into a quiz and students can receive immediate feedback on their performance. The slides below walk through some of the "how to's" and highlights:

How can this impact your math instruction? Students respond best to immediate, specific, and constructive feedback. The new features in forms allow you to provide that feedback and also to provide resources that immediately support students in accessing extra support or enrichment material. There is so much potential in using these new features to support blended learning and differentiation in instruction. I look forward to seeing this in action with students!

Barbie Zipline

How do you measure engagement in the classroom? 

Perhaps through students watching the lesson unfold intently (but then again, how can we decipher between a blank stare and an engaged gaze?). Or maybe you measure engagement through class/team/individual contributions to a lesson (but then again, perhaps some students are only participating because they are "supposed to" and is that true engagement?). In my experience, the sure fire way to measure engagement in the classroom is when students ask questions (rather than just giving answers) and when not a single student asks to leave to use the restroom. This is the type of actively engaged learning you see during a Barbie Zipline lesson.

For the past month many of our CUSD math teachers have been participating in a Voxer book club on The Classroom Chef, which the book's authors Matt Vaudrey and John Stevens have been gracious enough to join in on. In essence, the book is a guide to creating meaningful and engaging instruction in math. While all of the lessons and ideas shared in the book are awesome and worth trying, 8th grade teachers Pedro Garcia and James Peng were especially intrigued by Chapter 6 "Barbie Zipline". Of course I jumped at the opportunity to support this fabulous lesson!

We used the lesson plan from John's blog post as a starting point, and pulled all that we needed to launch the adventure (oops, I mean lesson) into a Google Slides presentation.

 The objectives were: 

• Determine the length of line required to complete a right triangle using the Pythagorean Theorem
• Calculate average speed to determine the safest, yet most fun, parameters for a Barbie Zipline given the data compiled during the activity

Prior to the lesson, students figured out the length of string needed for their trials. During the lesson, they actively engaged in recording Barbie's (or Woody's) time in order to use this with his distance to figure out his speed. Below are a couple of the trials!

Woody's safe & fun journey:

The (last) ride of Woody's life:

Want some more zipline fun? Check out this Desmos model created by our very own James Peng!

#CUErockstar Math Edition

Last weekend I had the privilege of joining a group of truly innovative thinkers in mathematics at the first ever #CUErockstar Math Edition.

In my first year as a math/tech coach, it was a surreal experience to take the stage and shred alongside some of the most prominent figures in the movement to transform math instruction. John Stevens, Ed Campos, Fawn Nguyen, Michael Fenton, and Matt Vaudrey all spread a message that math can be highly engaging (even intriguing and exciting) and that all students can develop a positive identity as a learner of mathematics. This is a message that drives me in my daily work, and it was a true privilege to get to share the vision with innovative teachers from all over California.

At the event, several teachers approached me feeling torn on which sessions to attend since they were intrigued by my content, but also that of the other presenters. Since I would never steer anyone from the opportunity to see my math gurus in action, I made a promise to do some screencasting and share my resources after the event, so here you go!

Session 1: Google Classroom in Math

In this session, we addressed the reasons that many teachers are hesitant to use Google Classroom in math, and then looked at math specific lessons within Google Classroom.

Here is a screencast overview of the ideas shared in the session. Participants were able to experience Google Classroom as students and then brainstorm how this might look in their own classrooms. The slides for this session can be found at bit.ly/rockstarclassroom. These slides contain links to the lessons/resources that we accessed while taking our journey through Google Classroom.

Session 2: Blended Learning in Math
My session on the second day focused on how to incorporate tools that support different types of blended learning into mathematics instruction in a way that supports choice and individualized instruction. Here are the slides with a few ideas for blending it up! During the session, we experienced several different tools that support blended learning together, then participants visited choice stations where they could go deeper with the tools they wanted to learn more about. These slides can also be found at bit.ly/rockstarblended .

Highlight of the Blended Learning session: Seeing my participants so actively engaged in applying the tools in ways that were meaningful to them that at one point they pretty much forgot I was in the room. So naturally, I walked around taking selfies.




Some other highlights:
1. Having 7 teachers from my district in attendance and ready to rock the new tools strategies!

2. Seeing the tools I shared at my sessions be put into action in the classroom immediately!

3. Getting to present alongside "#MTBOS royalty".

How Spreadsheets and Whiteboards Are Revolutionizing Math

Today wraps up Spring Break, traditionally a time for sunscreen and road trips. Thanks to the torrential downpour (humor me- I'm from California) the sunscreen wasn't necessary, but I was able to take an amazing road trip down and up the coast of California, pausing on the way back up to attend an amazing CUE Rockstar STEAM event. Before we dive back into work I wanted to share my major take-aways from this inspiring gathering.

What's With All Those Whiteboards?!

Lately there has been a lot of buzz about 360 degree math. This morning I attended Ed Campos' session to learn more about it. I mean, it is just throwing whiteboards up on the walls and having students do their work there instead of on paper, right? I was SO wrong. It is more than a shift in instruction, and even more than a new instructional strategy, it is a true transformation of what the math class looks and feels like. 

Pics from Ed's Presentation found at bit.ly/360DegreeMath

With 360 Math, learning becomes collaborative, transparent, and most importantly a process where students are able to make quick revisions based on instant feedback. The teacher can stand in the middle of the room (hopefully you just had a big "aha" that this reduces the need for a "front" of the room) and provide instant feedback to students, identifying trends in misconceptions and truly teaching in the moment.

Students also benefit from incorporating movement into instruction. Ed kicked this up a step further in his presentation by incorporating Music Cues (a strategy shared by Matt Vaudrey where music is used during instruction to signal what the students should be doing at any given moment, including work time, countdowns, and transitions.

So where's the tech? In the nature of truly effective tech integration, it's there only when it's needed. You can further reduce the need for a "front of the room" by using a single iPad to project the problems you are assigning, and also project student's work. Take a pic of common misconceptions and load them into a shared Drive folder for further class evaluation. Use Doceri or iPevo Whiteboard to annotate on the images.

CUSD teachers- want to try this out in your classroom? Let me know! As you can see in the pics above, you can try it out simply by taping up small whiteboards or using poster paper! We can then talk about how I can help you pester the right people to get more whiteboards and transform your math class!

"The Answer is Always a Spreadsheet"
The above title is a quote from the great Alice Keeler, which I come to believe more with every math training I attend. At #CUERockstar STEAM, the amazing, hilarious, and always entertaining Fawn Nguyen presented how to use Google Sheets to support algebraic reasoning with word problems. You might know Fawn already from her sites visualpatterns.org and mathtalks.net.

In the session she provided us with this list of word problems, and we were tasked with solving at least 3 using a spreadsheet. Through this process we were addressing several skills:

• Locating information needed to solve a problem
• Identifying relationships between quantities
• Writing formulas to represent the relationships between quantities
• Evaluating the validity of formulas
• So much more!!

For example, let's look at the problem below:

In an isosceles triangle the unequal side measures half the length of one of the two equal sides. Calculate the perimeter if the length of the unequal side is 5 cm. Calculate the length of the sides when the perimeter is 80 cm.

Quick Tip: I like to either paste the word problem into a cell on the Google Sheet or insert a screenshot so that I don't have to bounce tabs to go back for information.

In order to solve this problem, I had to identify all quantities involved (part and whole) and use the relationship between these quantities to solve the two questions asked:

• What is the perimeter if the unequal side length is 5cm?
• What is the length of the sides when the perimeter is 80cm?

The answers are highlighted on the spreadsheet. While this is a question that could have been solved by writing and solving an equation, the Google Sheet allows you to really break down the relationship between all quantities involved. 

Below is a quick screencast walking through how I creating the Sheet to the right. What benefits do you see to using Google Sheets? CUSD teachers- want to try it out? Let me know and let's do this!

Are You Ready for Pi Day?!

Cute story alert: During my first year of teaching one of my students showed up on March 14 with a pie for the class. He insisted that it was pie day. I went with it, since I honestly can't recall a time in my life that I've ever said no to pie. It wasn't until I was in conversation with a veteran colleague that I realized that it was not Pie Day, it was actually Pi Day!

Every year math fanatics around the world celebrate Pi Day. While the day has been nationally recognized since 2009 (thank you, Wikipedia), it not only serves as a celebration of the constant Pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter), it serves as a celebration of the beautiful world of mathematics.

At Monroe Middle School the celebration of Pi day goes beyond March 14. We've all heard of a Spelling Bee, but at Monroe they have a Pi Bee! All 7th and 8th grade math students are eligible to compete. Each teacher has five finalists (one from each class) who are invited to the final rounds. Yesterday at lunch I walked into a packed room of students quizzing each other on rehearsing the digits of pi. The two top contenders will face off in a final competition next week on the actual Pi Day, March 14 (3.14). Enjoy this video of our two finalists and join me in wishing them luck as they face off next week!







Happy Pi Day!!! How will you celebrate?