Self-Paced Lesson follow up: Lessons learned!

Back in January, I blogged about how we were planning a Self-Paced Lesson for our 8th graders, specifically for our unit on Volume. In that post, I talked about how excited we were to implement this unit as a self-paced one, and to see how our students responded. We planned the unit quickly, and anticipated the students would complete it quickly too (ha!). Today's post is a follow up,  which I'll try to keep short and sweet, to reflect and share feedback about using Self-Paced learning an inclusion classroom.

Quick overview of our process: 
~ The unit was schedule to be 6 "days" of lessons, and we planned 8 school days for the students to complete it. On the first day, we gave a detailed overview and took up a significant portion of class explaining what our expectations were, as well as the process from the student's side of things. We showed them where their paper copies were, we explained how we were grading it- basically we laid everything out up front. We did this on purpose because we a) wanted to be clear and b) wanted to ensure that students didn't finish "Day 1" on the first day- so that they would understand that the term "day" was fluid (thus, being self-paced instead of daily requirements).

~ We printed a blank attendance roster and labeled columns as the different assignments students were completing and turning in, so that we could easily keep track of who was where. When we required IXL practice, we could quickly lookup who had completed practice and who hadn't, and check it off. That way, when they did terribly on an exit slip, we knew if lack of practice was a factor (surprise, it typically was!). We also put in the grades of each assessment they turned in, so that we could see in one easy glance which students were improving, which were declining, and which were staying steady in terms of their proficiency (Only the post-test went in the gradebook).

 Most of our students looked
like this during our Self Paced unit!
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~ We turned them loose! They were excited to get started.

Positive Observations:  
~ So many students were PRODUCTIVE! They enjoyed the FREEDOM; some worked at home, even when they struggled, while others asked for help through the difficult spots while in class.
~ Our process was very EFFICIENT- students knew where to get materials, when/where to turn them in, and for the most part did a great job of keeping track of their progress.
~ For students who struggled, we were able to PARTNER them with a peer who was ahead of schedule, in order to foster some interaction, although to be honest it wasn't planned. For example, their TenMarks lesson on the subject was rather difficult, and several students worked together to problem solve or explain what they'd done (and how it was wrong) to try and persevere to get right answers.


Lessons Learned: 

This happened for a few students!
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~ In our inclusion classrooms, and I'm sure in yours as well, ATTENTION is a huge issue. The streamlined process helped several students stay on track- they knew where to get information (their Google Doc), where to get copies (the bin), and that they could easily ask their neighbor quietly if they got stuck. However, some of our students really had difficulty staying on task due to the lack of structured expectations.
~ TIME became a concern. We'd had a couple of snow days in the middle of the unit- no problem, we thought! They could work on it at home. But they didn't, really. A few did, but the concept of the self paced unit was pretty new and I think it didn't even cross their minds that they could work on it and get ahead. They're also very used to the idea that snow days = pushing back lessons to the next day, so they assumed we'd move our deadline for the unit test (we did, but not much).

A teacher's greatest foe.
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~ After a few days, and coming back from snow days, students struggled with MOTIVATION. They monotony of coming in and working off of directions from the same document daily was not motivating for some of our lower attention students. For example, some of our students with Autism (and some without!) realized they could give the appearance of working while they were actually off in their own world!

Going Forward: 

As my other co-teacher and I planned a self-paced unit for our 7th graders, we took away a few lessons from my experience with 8th graders in order to plan for our 7th graders more appropriately. Specifically, we wanted to address TIME, ATTENTION, and MOTIVATION. 

Strategies we used to adjust for time: 

• Having students stop practice short (i.e. if they'd been told to get a smart score of 80 on IXL, we had them move on after 60 if they were behind)
• Picking/choosing what was MOST important (Obviously anything you include in a unit is important, but one example of this was having students test without completing the unit review before the test, just because we'd run out of time and they didn't complete it at home)
• Modifying assignments for length
• Assigning parts as homework (with an email home to parents!)
• Requiring students to come work on the unit during their lunch intervention time
• Communication with parents regarding progress 

Strategies we used to adjust for attention: 
(in addition to the above)

• Preparing groups for various lessons in the unit (We knew some students would get behind or need re-teaching, so we prepared groups ahead of time and started a new class period off with having the students in that group complete a lesson with me or with my co-teacher. This added in a little structure to keep attention going.) 
• Greater variety of activities (We threw in some hands on activities with manipulatives, and Quizlet practice where we encouraged the students to try and get below a certain time- competition always helps with motivation!)
• Anticipating more individual instruction (We listed students ahead of time that we thought would need individual prompting, support, and explanation of new material and made sure to give them that support, either in class or during lunch intervention time.)
• Change seating! Or sit next to them while they worked. 

Strategies we used to adjust for motivation: 
(in addition to the above)

• Communication with parents regarding progress 
• Communication with students individually regarding progress (We gave some students a checklist to work off of on days where they'd been less productive the previous day; others we talked with about their individual progress and our expectations)
• Making sure grades were updated daily (so students could check to see their progress)
• Starting class with a mini-lesson to recap (We did this the last 3 days of the unit, so students could see a) the main take-aways of the lesson, b) where the concepts were going, and c) what they were expected to do, mathematically, as a preview for the day)

I think that self-paced learning has a huge place in the inclusion setting, but it has to be worked the right way in order to be productive for all students. Hopefully these lessons learned will help your inclusion classroom learn productively from a self-paced unit!