My students have a high-stakes oral defense of their senior research towards the end of the spring semester, and we prepare for that all year. The Video Diagnostic is a recording of each student’s starting point in the oral presentation process and an opportunity for students to see a snippet of their presentation "selves," what their peers see as their current strengths, and what their teacher sees as their current challenges. Each Video Diagnostic includes these three parts -- the oral presentation, peer feedback, and teacher feedback. These are then packaged into one short Video Diagnostic, uploaded, and shared to the student. The student watches it all and gets a clearer sense of how they appear to an audience in terms of their tone, inflection, pacing, and eye contact. I also have them watch these diagnostics a few weeks before the high-stakes presentation as a confidence booster because all of them will have made tremendous gains in their oral presentation skills from that first diagnostic to months later when they are finalizing their presentations at the end of the year.
Planning is an essential part of a blended teacher’s practice. In blended environments, where students can be at different points in a course on various modalities, blended teachers need to be very intentional about how they plan. Check out the video below to see how Johanna plans for instruction in her blended classroom.
Although I can not predict when great insights will come up during a Socratic seminar, I can be assured that they will happen. I film the seminar because I then play back the footage to help me create accurate scripted notes that students can use as an additional resource to support their analysis writing. I have also found that using clips from the seminar to build a Gooru collection or to share during a moment of direct instruction is a very engaging way to teach. It also acknowledges what my students know and it allows them to, in essence, help me teach the class.