IN Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall Winter 2018 | Page 72

At Baldwin-Whitehall, the teachers and administrators in each of our schools love finding new ways to make education more
interesting, engaging, and effective for students at every grade level. Here are just a few of the innovative learning techniques
that our faculty and students will be using this year to maximize their time both in and out of class, while also improving
communication, creativity, and collaboration!
Asus Chromebooks Power Harrison Middle School’s
1:1 Program
Harrison’s Chromebook program was introduced this year. The
program provides a personal computer to each participating
student who signs the program’s pledge to use their PC
responsibly in class and at home.
The 1:1 Chromebook program introduces Harrison
students to new online learning and collaboration activities
with a laptop of a different breed. Instead of Windows 10 or
macOS, Chromebooks run Google’s Chrome OS. Our students
Flipped Instruction Is Making Lessons
More Personal
What if learning felt more like a video
game with multiple possibilities, instead
of a one-size-fits-all approach? That’s what
Baldwin English teacher Daniel Harrold
wondered after attending a presentation
on “flipped instruction” several years ago at
a teaching conference in Hershey.
Harrold’s answer to that question has
made him our District’s leading champion
of the flipped instruction method, in
which students do their homework in
class and learn their lessons at home. By
reversing the order, Harrold spends less
time lecturing in class and more time 1-on-
1 with each student, as they devise their
own ways to prove that they understand
the lessons they’ve just learned. And if a
student is falling behind, Harrold has the
FLIPPED
INSTRUCTION
freedom to spend more time with that
student in class, rather than feeling stuck in
a lecture-driven workflow.
“Flipped instruction really creates more
flexibility for students and teachers,” says
Andrea Huffman, Director of Curriculum at
Baldwin-Whitehall, who cites the program
as proof of the District’s successful 1-to-1
learning initiative. “It allows students to
work and collaborate at their own pace,
and it encourages them to develop their
own projects and demonstrate the results
Paynter Elementary Gets Creative with Genius Hour
When Principal Patricia Fusco saw that Paynter Elementary’s
two 30-minute intervention periods for math and reading
weren’t having a big enough impact, she decided to make a
change. “I created a brand new master schedule for the 2018-
2019 school year,” explains Fusco, “where ‘Genius Hour’ in some
grade levels (schedule permitting) is now a stand-alone hour.”
Fusco says Genius Hour is “like 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins:
there is quite the variety of things happening during this
time.” Genius Hour is all about being innovative, creating and
designing projects, and doing tasks that students AND teachers
are passionate about. “Some of our teachers even call what they
do during this time their Passion Projects,” says Fusco. “I want
students to identify a problem and think of a way to solve it,
while exploring in ways they never have before. As a result, they
learn in ways they never learned before.”
Genius Hour doesn’t replace any current instruction; it is
aligned with existing academic standards, but presented in
more innovative ways. For example, one 3rd grade class, all of
4th grade and all of 5th grade participated in a contest at the
Pittsburgh Children’s Museum called Matt’s Maker Challenge,
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BRENTWOOD-BALDWIN-WHITEHALL
are working with technology designed to be used primarily
while connected to the Internet, with most applications and
documents living in the cloud.
To help support the Chromebook initiative, Harrison
students can also apply to join the tech crew and library
crew. Students who get involved in these programs will help
Mrs. Reynolds and Mr. Afionis with the care and repair of the
Chromebooks, have access to Google tools, and work the
circulation desk at the library and makerspace.
of their learning in their own unique way.”
In addition to changing how his students
process their lessons, Mr. Harrold has also
reversed the way their work is graded.
“Rather than starting out at 100% and
losing points throughout the year,” Harrold
says, “now they start at zero and earn points
as they go.” In this approach, lessons are
treated like a video game: win the level and
earn points, or fail and get the chance to
try again, with more points unlocking new
choices and new learning paths.
“I think students really appreciate the
opportunity to have ownership over how
they learn,” says Harrold, who notes that
having the freedom to pace the lessons
themselves also teaches students the value
of sticking to a schedule, or even getting
ahead: “Some students just took it and ran.
One finished the whole class by March.”
where teams of students built contraptions out
of ‘junk’ that would be capable of popping
a balloon. After many trials and errors,
several successful creations were submitted,
including one of Paynter’s 5th grade classes
who won the challenge in their age group
and will be awarded $2,000 to purchase
anything they want for their classroom.
“What they learned by completing this project is
endless,” says Fusco. “Collaboration has definitely increased
because these projects cannot be done without it. Their social
skills have also improved. I’ve seen students who aren’t typically
ones to get involved, and they have taken a leadership role in
planning the creation of these projects. Their confidence and
self-esteem has been boosted because they worked so hard to
develop something, and when they were able to witness it in
action and see it actually work, their reactions were something
I have never experienced before. This type of learning is so
valuable in the real world, and the skills they will acquire through
Genius Hour will be such an asset to them as they get older.”
G ENIUS
H OUR