See Part 1 here.
Let’s keep it going… and remember these links will only work if you’re already logged into Renzulli in another tab or window…
11. Find a great pre-written virtual assignment. Click Assignments, then “Create a New Assignment Using a Template“. You’ll have access to a library of templates for assignments covering a wide range of topics – authored by Renzulli Learning, or in some cases, your very own colleagues. Make any edits you want, and send the assignment instantly to your students’ inboxes.
12. Go Green. Use Renzulli’s online resources, journal, assignment maker, and inboxes to have students do their research, receive your assignments, and complete their work in a totally paperless environment. You’ll never lose an important paper again, you’ll have total visibility into all student progress, and you’ll save some trees (and money) to boot.
13. Renzulli Buddies. Here’s one for the teachers in the earlier grades: if you’re finding it a challenge to manage a roomfull of students completing their profiles, or navigating through unique web resources, try bringing in some “Renzulli Buddies” – students from down the hall that have a year or two up on your students. Creating these mini-mentoring sessions in your class will help both the older and younger students learn valuable peer-tutoring and technology skills.
14. Take advantage of the Renzulli Calendar. In the last year, Renzulli quietly slipped in a fully-functional online calendar that kids can use to record meetings, assignments, and notes. It’s fully integrated with the Wizard Project Maker, Assignment Maker, and Personal Success Plan as well, so it’s a wonderful tool for teachers to track student work – and for students to keep a “portable” day planner that they can access any time they’re on the web.
15. Group students heterogeneously by interests. Assign a project to groups where students each have a different academic interest. Pick an interdisciplinary topic – i.e. “Change”, “Interdependence”, “Community” -and have each student contribute with how their top interest (math, science, fine arts…) informs their understanding of the topic. To create heterogeneous groups by interest, go to My Students, then “Create Reports” and run an alphabetized list of students top three interest areas. Pair that with Custom Groups to build your groups.
16. Tailor whole-group instruction to the preferences of the whole class. How does your class, taken as a whole, prefer to learn? You can run a quick report to find out. Go to My Students, then Create Reports, and run a report of Totals by Learning Style, to see how many students have identified each instructional strategies as a preference. Learn well your class’s overall preferred learning styles, and you’ll have a ready-made arsenal of winning strategies to use with the whole class.
17. Network with other like-minded teachers via Facebook. The Renzulli Enthusiasts Group on Facebook allows you to find and interact with other Renzulli teachers. Join our group today!
18. Create a Planning Forum for Teachers. You can use Renzulli’s collaborative learning groups to set up an online forum for teachers. This one involves a little trickery – you need to register a “fake” student ahead of time, and select yourself as the teacher. Then, just go to Manage Groups and launch a new group, consisting of just that fake student – and invite as many of your colleague to join the group as teachers as you like.
19. Utilize Renzulli Profiler data in Child Study Meetings. The Renzulli Profiler acts like a blue print for how each student learns. You can use this data to guide decisionmaking in your teams during child study meetings, IEP development, transition planning and parental conferences. The Profile gives rich information about each student’s interests and preferences, and the will suggest new avenues for reaching, challenging, and enriching each student.
20. Rewrite Your Seating Chart. Look at the names of the students who share a preference for peer tutoring – do they even sit near each other? Who learns best by listening to a lecture? Do they sit in the back of the room? Pull out the kids who learn best independently, and send them to a separate corner to get to it. Start creating centers in your classroom tailored to different learning styles – provide more opportunities for the technophiles to get their hands on computers, allow the kids who prefer programmed instruction to work through packets of worksheets, work out a venue for the kids who prefer simulation to do some role playing. You and your students will be surprised at how Renzulli data might divide up your class, but you won’t regret it.
More soon…
