classroom management
The Check-In: A Classroom Routine For Focus, Accountability, and Progress
What If… Overview These are some benefits of “The Check-In Routine,” the third Self-Directed Learning Routine in the Learning Sprint. It makes progress toward the learning goals visible. The visibility evokes conversations and grows students’ capacity to self-monitor, adapt, and seek support. The Check-In Routine is short and frequent. It is typically scheduled at the…
Read MoreDesigning the Learning Alliance 2: Activities
In the last post, we shared the importance of putting Culture before Content. Agile Classrooms sets the stage to grow a positive classroom culture through a set of activities performed the first days of school called Designing the Learning Alliance. This post will outline the activities and tools we use to do so. My World…
Read MoreDesign the Learning Alliance: The Why
When we see students not behaving in the way we desire, we naturally focus more on classroom management practices. Careful. This paradoxically increases the poor behavior we do not want. By managing student behavior more, we reduce students’ ability to self-regulate and self-correct. Increasing classroom management and behavioral interventions, although sometimes needed, treats the symptoms…
Read MoreElement 1: The Visible Classroom
The Visible Classroom is the first element, and often the first step, in implementing an Agile Classroom. The Visible Classroom designs the learning environment for clarity, transparency, accountability, feedback, and adaptability. It gives a classroom a set of highly visible and dynamic artifacts called Learning Radiators that support and mediate learning. Once learning and expectations…
Read MoreRhythm of Self-Organized Learning
This is what self-organized learning looks like… an extreme 21st Century classroom.
Read MoreValues Discovery
Learning Alliance Designing The Learning AlliancePreviously, we introduced you to Designing the Learning Alliance to set the stage for a culture of empowerment, collaboration, and achievement. Designing Classroom Values Let’s start Designing the Alliance with creating a classroom culture based on shared values. Designing a values based classroom culture has 2 parts, Values DIscovery and…
Read MoreDesigning The Learning Alliance
Where to Start? I am often asked, where do you start in growing a self-organizing classroom? More than likely, you are already doing it. Many teachers post positive expectations in the classroom or door and you go over classroom and school rules with your students during the first week or two of school. You are…
Read MoreEmpowerment Anxiety
We have all seen when a young child cries when his mother leaves. This is called separation anxiety. In a baby, this is actually a positive sign of their development. He has learned that his mother still “exists”, even when he cannot see her. He has learned what Paiget called object permanence. He thinks his…
Read MoreAgile at King Chavez School
2 Teachers and a Big Idea Room 14 King Chavez Community High School Meet Alicia and Megan, teachers at King Chavez Community High School in San Diego. Alicia teaches Algebra 2 and Megan teaches English Language Arts. They had a bold idea. What if they shared a classroom together with students choosing which subject to…
Read MoreLearning Rhythm Infographic
Agile Classrooms set and achieve their learning goals within a repeatable series of feedback loops called the Learning Rhythm, an enabling structure for empowerment. Once learners complete a cycle it repeats again. The regular rhythm simplifies the self-directed learning process so students can take the steering wheel of their own learning. The Learning Rhythm is inspired…
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