Filming a Socratic Seminar

Communicating and collaborating with both colleagues and students' families is crucial in a blended environment. This is especially true if a teacher is doing something that looks very different from other teachers at her school. Check out how Johanna ommunicates and collaborates with both her colleagues at school and her students' families and how her methods of communication and collaboration have evolved over time.

A Gooru Collection is a strategy I utilize frequently in my blended classroom to personalize learning for my students. Students log into our class on the Gooru site to access a curated "digital playlist" of engaging resources that I have found online or created myself. These different "texts" can be videos, images, articles, websites--basically anything that can be accessed online. Students interact with the resources in the Collection at their own pace, and I make time in each class period to check in with each student while they are engaged in the Collection (this is facilitated by my students' use of headphones). Students can review an uploaded resource multiple times if necessary to gain understanding. I include questions after every resource to prompt my students' thinking and/or to assess what they are learning from the resource. Given the media-driven world in which we live, it is important for my students to have this opportunity to synthesize their understanding of concepts and literary elements through multiple text formats. 

Film Framing uses animated films students often remember from childhood as a jumping-off point for approaching the serious and often emotionally tough conversations that we will be having later in the class period about the novel we are studying. Given their visual appeal and simple storylines, these films are one way to support my students as they grapple with complex questions and apply literary theories and devices. Part of the analysis process for my students is tracking their observations throughout each clip and using those notes during the class discussion that follows the viewing. The understanding they gain through the film discussion on how to answer these complex questions and apply multiple lenses is then applied to our class novel. An additional benefit of Film Framing is that my students become more critical consumers of media in general.