Artifacts from our Journey
In the beginning
At the beginning of the year we had planned on teaching digital citizenship within our grade levels and within our buildings. We ambitiously decided to share our plan and our vision with a group that signed up for "digital citizenship" at Red Lion's 2nd Annual Tech Summit in August before school started back up. One of the people who attended our session was Abby Gold, principal of North Hopewell Winterstown, and the person in charge of PLC's for the elementary schools in our district.
After hearing our vision she requested that we run PLC's district wide, instead of just doing it in our individual schools in a specific grade level. This was when our project completely shifted and took on a whole new life of its own.
This year in early October, Abby put that plan into action quickly. We would be teaching the staff district-wide about digital citizenship, and instructing them on how, when, and why to teach the information. This email was the first step in starting that mission. Sent from Abby Gold to the entire district, the email explained who would be leading each grade level.
Our next job was to invite all the teachers to our individual PLC's. This screenshot shows a brief picture of what was sent to every teacher in the Red Lion School District in both 5th and 6th grade. There were in actuality two emails, but they were identical to each other, because I was presenting the same information to two different groups. The only difference in the emails were the dates that were shared out.
Planning plc #1...
The next step was planning out what our group would be sharing. We wanted to make sure that we kept the information consistent and had a flow from Kindergarten up through sixth grade. Below is the planning document that was used by our group to plan our very first PLC. We laid out what needed to be taught, why it needed to be taught and how to teach it. We also laid out the jobs each of us would take in order to get all of the follow up information ready.
Presenting plc #1
And finally came the time to run our PLC's. In presenting twice to two different groups I was able to watch my first presentation and make changes. I really appreciated the opportunity to watch my own presentation, reflect, and then make adjustments with what was presented. Below you can see both, my 5th grade presentation, and my 6th grade presentation to the staff.
PLC #1 Follow up
Immediately following the PLC, our team sent out emails to each grade level, thanking them for their participation, reminding them of the time frame to complete each task, and providing them with a checklist of what needed accomplished.
Below is the checklist along with a link to the quiz for the students, a link to the flipgrid for the teachers, and a screencast embedded showing them how to create an account in Common Sense Education. The document highlights everything teachers needed to accomplish prior to the next PLC.
Student quiz
teacher reflections
Above are the teacher reflections that were submitted from our fifth and sixth grade teachers. They shared their thoughts on the lesson and provided us with important feedback that will be used to improve the lessons as we move forward. You may view any of the responses by scrolling through the FlipGrid Websites above.
Teaching the Lesson
I also thought it was important for me to teach the lesson. If I am asking the teachers to present this information then I also need to be very familiar with each lesson and the way the lesson was received by the students. This really helped me to evaluate the teachers' feedback and understand what their concerns were when we followed up on lesson 1. I also enjoyed the opportunity to work with the students more than any other part of this project!
Prep for PLC #2
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About a week prior to our Thanksgiving Break we still needed a lot of responses and quiz results. At this point I thought it was important to send a reminder email, pointing out that our next PLC, and the deadline to complete the work necessary from the first PLC was coming up quickly. I made sure to include a link so the teachers would be able to click and easily access everything they needed to do.
However, with three days until our second PLC I still had not received as many FlipGrid responses as I would have liked. So I sent out an early invitation to our second PLC and within the email I included direct links to the FlipGrids. This reminder email was extremely successful as I had almost 40% of my responses come in within the last week of the specified time frame. The student quiz response was fantastic. We had every single classroom provide responses. There were 377 responses in fifth grade, and 384 responses in sixth grade across our district.
Running the second PLC
One of the biggest changes that I made before running the second PLC was making sure to have an agenda ready to reference during the meeting. I printed off the agenda took notes on what was brought up during the meeting. Below you can see the digital version of the agenda, before I took notes on the hard copy. It included things I wanted to bring up from listening to the FlipGrids, and from what I experienced in teaching the lesson.
PLC #2
The biggest change I made in running the second PLC was that I had teachers leave their cameras on. We ran into some issues with the sound and resolved them in the midst of the meeting, but overall I was extremely pleased with the change to leave the camera on and have teachers participate throughout the meeting. I was thrilled with the level of participation that we received from teachers and we were able to review the first lesson, make comments and suggestions, preview the second lesson, and finally look at the end of year timeline for the remaining 4 lessons.
PLC #2 follow up
The last part of the internship was to send out our follow up email to PLC 2. This email was send to each grade level individually, because they have their own separate links, but the email other than that was identical. The email included a link to a google doc which again provided teachers with a checklist, a link to the quiz, and a link to the FlipGrid. This document also included the timeline for the remainder of the year.
Although we have reached the end of our internship, Red Lion's digital citizenship journey will continue throughout the end of the 2018 - 2019 school year. Our lessons will run through the month of May, and we will be using the FlipGrids, and the results from the quizzes, like the one on the right to inform us whether or not the students retained the information that was taught to them. I look forward to seeing this project out through the very end of the year.
Google Team Drive
The very last thing I want to share is the Google Team Drive that I created for our team. Our team drive stores everything we have created including emails, agendas, quizzes, results from quizzes, and the actual PLC videos themselves. This drive has allowed us to organize all of our data by grade level for easy reference by any team member at any time.
