Carousel Learning

Excellence in Education: Carousel Learning

Here’s how carousel learning works. The teacher prepares for the lesson by placing students in groups and shares these groups and the learning intention with the student. This is a great opportunity to share both the academic and behavioral/social learning objective students. For example, When you are working in groups today, I want you to share ideas and respect the ideas of others. Students are placed into groups (I’ve always found it beneficial to use flexible grouping but for students to have home groups in which they are familiar with their peers; this lessens the anxiety and feeling out process). Each group is assigned a font color (Google Doc/Slide) or sticky (Jamboard). Students are to add as much as possible to the Google Doc or Jamboard as possible before the teacher calls time. You may elect to have students do this individually or have one person serve as the notetaker.

Groups then rotate to the next station where they add, comment, question, or revise the previous group’s work. Remember: each group should continue to use their assigned color. This continues until all groups have visited all stations and have returned to their starting spot. When they return to their starting spot, they should review what other groups have added to their original document. Finally, have each group share “their” document with the class. This may be a good time for student to take notes, discuss further, etc.

As always, it is important to debrief with students and have them reflect on the learning intentions.

Why carousel:

1. It gets every student engaged in learning.
2. Learning is a social activity.
3. It’s quick paced.
4. It enables students and you to gain and assess knowledge.
5. It can be used to generate ideas, discover, inquire, deepen understanding, and review.

Tips:

1. Create a document showing each group’s order and necessary hyperlinks (see below).
2. Observe from a distance (watching the google doc/slide or jamboard); when you see a group struggling, jump into that breakout room.
3. If you elect to have one student be the scribe for the group, you can easily change the scribe for each round. This way everyone gets a turn.

Round 1
Group 1	What does the prism do to the incoming light? Why?	docs.google.com/document/d/1234
Group 2	What causes shadows? How do shadows change?	docs.google.com/document4567
Group 3	How does water change light?	docs.google.com/document9876
Group 4	Colors and light.	docs.google.com/document5432
Round 2
Group 2	What does the prism do to the incoming light? Why?	docs.google.com/document/d/1234
Group 3	What causes shadows? How do shadows change?	docs.google.com/document4567
Group 4	How does water change light?	docs.google.com/document9876
Group 1	Colors and light.	docs.google.com/document5432

Here’s a protocol for using Carousel Learning in a traditional classroom.

Important Information/Tasks

Let’s give a big welcome to Billy Wilson who has joined our staff as our middle school math teacher. We threw Bill right into things on Wednesday (he completed his HR paperwork on Tuesday). Bill and I worked together in Fauquier County for several years. Bill is never afraid to ask why or challenge the status quo. I know him to be a dedicated educator who does whatever it takes.

I also need to thank Jeff Prillaman for coming out of leave for us. For those of you who don’t know Jeff, he was a longtime teacher at AHS and then moved into various coaching positions in math, overseeing academies and more.

Faculty meetings Our faculty meeting model will be quite different and will start in earnest next week. Our current plan is to have 40 minute weekly meetings. These will serve as our PLCs. We will be split into 2 groups (elementary and secondary). Prior to each meeting, I will share an instructional practice that we will explore. We will then spend 30 minutes PLCing around that. Then we will focus on specific students or students with similar challenges.

Schoolwide faculty meetings will be on half days.

For our new teachers and anyone else who is interested, we’ll also be starting our Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain book study.

An Outlook calendar will be shared with all of these dates.

Rachel Fruin and Madeline Black from ELP

Rachel and Madeline presented on our first Teacher Work Day. Rachel sent the following to our secondary teachers: Once during week of September 7th and again during the week of September 27th. Please click the link to sign up for your first round of coaching. If the times in the schedule do not work for you, reach out to me directly and we will find a date and time that work. Rachel Fruin Rachel@advancedpartnerships.com 

Madeline also has a very extensive plan but I wasn’t ready to share it yet.

Attendance

We’ve created avsattendance@k12albemarle.org for our families to use. Feel free to forward emails that you receive directly to that and we’ll follow up with families as necessary. To the students' credit last week, all 3 students that emailed about vacations were 100% legitimate.

We will also be adding a CKE code (check out early) if you would like to use that. If a secondary student misses more than 15 minutes of class, please use the UNV.

Weekly Check

I hope to do a better job of being visible in your classrooms and checking in with each of you. But I will also be including this form every week for you to complete.  It's much like what you are probably doing with your students. Please take a second to check in with me by completing this form.

I also encourage you to reach out to Mark Green and Dama Schneider for instructional coach support and Lucy Spencer and John Mitchem or tech help.  

Finally, every Wednesday at 7:45am, I'll have open office hours to meet individually or in groups with you.