Visible Learning Meets BTC - Ch. 3: I Collaborate with my Peers and Students

With being the only classroom in the school, well, the district really, that follows the BTC strategies, I can see where this could open up a great avenue for getting collaboration started over our impact in the learning process.  With student thinking literally on the board for all to see, assessing our impact that all students can grow is so much easier I believe.  It takes a focus though for truly "seeing" (listening) to each and every student to more precisely account for our impact.  

We have to believe that "we cause learning".  This is greatest joy of teaching, I believe, that I have the power, the magic, the impact, the ability, to cause learning.  To see that light bulb of understanding...to hear a summary of their learning in their own words...to watch the successful completion of a problem is possibly the best feeling in the world as far as teaching goes.  

Sharing expectations...in the BTC classroom, I feel like this is ever so important.  Especially because when students come to my 8th grade classroom, the learning environment looks so different.  So clearly stated high expectations is a must for a focused lesson.

I love the change in thinking of "less about how to teach" and "more about the impact of teaching."  While BTC is a way of how to teach, there is a clear pathway to dig deeper into the impact of teaching.

Collaborating with Peers

I love the idea of the micro-teaching and viewing teaching videos under the lens of what is the impact of the teacher on learning.  By allowing the teacher to voice their decisions for how they conducted the lesson, is a lot like what I do with my student teachers.  Every decision I make, I feel like I must explain why I chose that one over the others I was mulling around.  This seems easier with a student teacher, as we are both focused on the exact same lesson.  With other teachers, either the same grade level or same teaching content/different grade levels, the dialogue will look differently than it does with a student teacher, but I think there is a benefit to having these conversations.  

I also liked the idea for collaborating on the impact we have with specific parts of the lesson.

• Importance of motivation for the lesson introduction - create a list of motivation strategies and then reflect and discuss each with colleagues
• Assess the effectiveness of the factors of Visible Learning (table on page 36) based on our own teaching and discuss with cohorts
• Scrutinize one's own thinking and action while teaching, asking the questions, "What is effective?" "What is not effective?" "Why?" and "Why not?"

All the Exercises on page 38 are good ones to use when collaborating with others to get the focus on the impact of our teaching and that we are the ones that "cause learning".

Since starting BTC, I have always gone back to the students to find out which strategies have the most impact on their learning.  Having students reflect on the use of these strategies gives me feedback on how they feel they learn the best.  I do this in various ways:

1. Reflection Question on a quiz
2. Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down if the activity met their learning needs
3. Rating various activities as to their effectiveness for helping them learn: VWBs, note taking, consolidation, CYU, quiz rubrics, etc

Collaborating with students using the BTC model is also good when addressing expectations.  For example, we have had whole group discussions on what it should look like when groups are struggling and actions they can take and then what it doesn't look like. This allows us all to be on the same page and when we post these discussions in the classroom, a focal point to look back on when things start to go astray again.