Jill Gilbert: Because of professional development at Kettle Moraine, teachers have the skills and the tools that they need to really meet the needs of all of our students. Everyone is working towards creating a culture of growth, and taking risks to interact and engage with their class as a whole.

Jill Gilbert: At Kettle Moraine, we have a vision of continuous growth. Whether that’s students,
teachers, its about how can we get there together.

Jill Gilbert: Visible learning is a strategy where staff will actually get behind a camera and have the opportunity to look at themselves and to watch and reflect on their teaching practices.

Elliott Van Dyke: It helps me see what the learning looks like in my classroom through a different lens. We did a few test filming sessions and I saw students all over the place, as far as engagement. And, so, for my goal I chose to try to increase student engagement through use of vocabulary words.

Jill Gilbert: More vocabulary, I’ve defined as more engaged. When students walk into the classroom it is nice to let them know, like hey, I’m going to be filming you today. They are all part of the process and I share my goal with them as well.

Jill Gilbert: I’m usually filming about thirty minutes of discussion time; so I can see whose really interacting, if they’re writing things down, if they’re drawing, if they’re showing each other different things.

Jill Gilbert: The swivel is set up for an iPhone or an iPad. Sometimes, teachers choose to have the camera on students and then, sometimes they will put the camera on themselves. So that really just depends on what the goal is.

Michael McIntyre: We often fall into the habit of making assumptions about what’s going on in the classroom. And visible learning gives us a chance to see our habits and our patterns and recognize may be why they aren’t effective all the time. Just having a little bit of a shift in our practice can lead to gains on the students part.

Jill Gilbert: It’s really important for a teacher to have the ability to reflect on what their seeing initially. It just allows teachers to get comfortable with the experience.

Elliott Van Dyke: I try to watch those films on the same day they’ve been recorded. Just so they’re fresh in my mind. What I do is I watch it through once without really tracking anything. The second time through is really when I start to track. I’m gonna stop the video every minute and tally which students are authentically engaged and which students are not. I’m writing down which vocabulary words they’re using and what I was seeing on film was a lot of non engagement with their peers.

Jill Gilbert: After a teacher watches their video, they meet with the coach to talk through some of their ideas.

Jill Gilbert: To get another set of eyes either on what they think that they’re seeing in the classroom or some possible solutions.

Elliott Van Dyke: In order to change the students interaction in class, I needed to give a little more direct instruction on how to interact with your peers and how to use science vocabulary words.
Jill Gilbert: Individually, the teacher is going to be the one that determines what that success looks like.

Michael McIntyre: Visible learning gives us a chance to reflect on our practice, to align what we believe is happening in the classroom to what really is happening. And also, it gives us a chance to adapt to reach as many students as possible.

Elliott Van Dyke: We are all trying to grow in our professional career and it’s all gonna help the students at the end of the day. And that’s really the goal of the whole teaching process.

Schools That Work

Kettle Moraine High School