101 Ways to Use Renzulli (Part 4)

Our list continues:

31.  Create your own virtual assignment from scratch.  Do you have some great resources you’d like to assign your students – along with some guiding questions or tasks you want them complete?  Use the Renzulli Assignment Maker to build your own virtual assignment.  Be sure to click the orange “Create A New Assignment” button to start from scratch.  You can add your own directions, questions or guidance, and send immediately to student inboxes.

32.  Take the class on a virtual field trip. Did you know virtual field trips raise test scores?  Renzulli has nearly 700 virtual field trips in our database – from the Louvre to the inside of a human cell – so fire up your LCD projector, or your Smartboard, and take your class on a trip.  You can use Renzulli’s Advanced Search page to find virtual field trips – just click the Virtual Field Trips box under Select Enrichment Type, and enter any keyword to start your search.

33.  Have students critique websites they find. Students can critique each of the sites or resources they explore in a session, including the categories below. Teachers may want to discuss evaluation criteria with students in a whole class mini-lesson. The type of criteria that students may want to consider are:

• Can I read and understand this resource?
• Do the graphics (pictures, illustrations, print characteristics) grab my attention and make me want to explore the site more?
• Does this site have the type of information I thought it would?
• Does this resource have the kind of information that I am looking for?
• Is this resource something that will help me learn more about a topic or subject?
• Does this resource teach me something new or help me practice something I already know?
• Can I create a product (some type of work) on this site that I can share with others?
• What type of site is this?

34.  Create a Collaborative Learning Group. Renzulli provides a workspace for groups of students to collaborate in a safe, teacher-moderated online platform.  Check out this video for all the info you need to get started.

35.  Open-Ended Questions draw out even more about your students as learners. In addition to the 4-part Renzulli Profiler, Renzulli includes a number of thoughtful questions for your students that will help them to express their interests, and give you more ideas for connecting the curriculum to their lives.  Some of these questions include:

• Pretend that you are a photographer and you have one picture left to take on your roll of film or on your card. What will you take? Why?
• If you could conduct an interview with a woman you admire, past or present, who would you choose? What three (3) questions would you ask her?
• If you could be an exchange student in any other country for half a school year, what country would you like to visit as a student? Why?

36.  Help kids learn to deal with bullies. There’s a great collection of online resources that can help kids deal with difficult peer situations.  You can find a list of recommended resources on our Teacher Resources page – click “Top Rated Student Activities” – then “Specialties” – and click “Bullying Resources.”

37.  Use the PSP to teach math. Did you know you can use the Renzulli Personal Success Plan to teach subject-area content for the core curriculum (and beyond)?  Find a doc with some ideas to get you started on our Teacher Resources page – click PSP Help, then PSP Subject Area Starters – and select Math.

38.  Instant differentiation of content for any curriculum topic. Here’s the fastest way to give each student a completely differentiated set of resources for learning about the curriculum topic of your choosing.  With all of the students in the computer lab, direct each student to click Search Enrichment Activities.  Then give them the keyword(s) you want them to search.  Be sure the students select “Search Your Enrichment Activities”, and each student will automatically get a menu of activities that match the topic you choose AND their unique learning interests and strengths.

39.  Find a contest! With our constantly-updated database of nearly 200 real world contests, your students can find lots of great new opportunities to have their work exhibited, published and critiqued by their peers.  You can use Renzulli’s Advanced Search page to find contests – just click the “Contests & Competitions” box under Select Enrichment Type, and enter any keyword to start your search.

40.  Generate a bar chart of student learning styles (Manager Site only). With just a few clicks, you can create beautiful full-color bar charts reflecting the learning styles, interests and expression styles of all of the students you manage via the Renzulli Manager Site.  From the Manager Site, just click “Reports” in the blue menu bar, then click “Student Profile Report“, and follow the onscreen prompts.

 

101 Ways to Use Renzulli:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Vacation Time? Renzulli Time!

Soon, we’ll be hitting that time of year when it seems like the kids have more days off than days at school – but not to worry! Renzulli gives you a number of ways to keep connected with your students – and keep them working on enriching, engaging activities that will keep them signing in, even during their break.

Here are a couple ideas:

• Send your students a “Favorite” – they’ll get a note in their inbox that tells them you’ve sent them an activity – AND lets them know you’re thinking of them.
• Set up a collaborative group to lead a discussion among your students on an upcoming topic. You can even attach an assignment. This is a great way to keep students connected to you and each other during a break – and keep the content you need to teach in the forefront of your students’ minds.
• Set up a couple “Curriculum Connections” on topics you have coming up after the break. Direct your students to login during the break and explore a set number of these resources, and give them a couple guiding questions in the directions. This will allow the students the freedom to “dabble” in the resources Renzulli selects for them, but still be exposed to the new concepts they will have to master when they return to school.

 

Is Renzulli just for the “gifted kids”?

Renzulli’s 3-Ring Conception of Giftedness

Originally uploaded by Renzulli Learning

No! All students have gifts and talents, and Renzulli Learning is an engine for developing the gifts and talents of all students, not just those of very high academic abilities. This approach – “teaching the giftedness”- to the development of high levels of multiple potentials in young people is purposefully designed to sidestep the traditional practice of labeling some students “gifted” (and by implication, relegating all others to the category of “non-gifted”).

All students should have the opportunity to develop higher-order thinking skills and pursue more rigorous content and first-hand investigative activities than those typically found in the traditional curriculum. This approach reflects a democratic ideal that accommodates the full range of individual differences in the entire student population and it opens the door to programs like Renzulli Learning that develop the talent potentials of many at-risk students who traditionally have been excluded from anything but the most basic types of curricular experiences.

Renzulli Learning creates a personalized menu of activities for each student based in part on that student’s grade level and academic ability – so no matter what each student’s unique strengths or need might be, Renzulli can find resources appropriate for challenging and engaging that student.

101 Ways to Use Renzulli (Part 3)

The saga continues…

1-10, 11-20…

21.  Create an Interest Development Center. Interest Development Centers differ from traditional kinds of “learning centers” found in many classrooms, in that the focus is not on skill development, completion of worksheets, or other basic activities – but rather on identifying and exploring areas of interest.  Teachers (or students) pick a topic, and work with the students to design activities to stimulate interest and understanding of the topic.  Given one or two web-connected computers in your classroom, Renzulli can act as the resource for introducing and researching the topic, connecting with professionals engaged in the topic, and managing student projects related to the topic.

22.  Engage ELL students. For students just beginning to learn English, Renzulli can play an important role in helping teachers understand student strengths and interests, and using dynamic, interactive web resources to involve these students in classroom activities.  Giving these students access to English web resources in their areas of interest can act as a powerful motivating force – and creates an engaging platform for students to encounter English. Even a tool as simple as the Renzulli In-Box As their English skills improve, students can benefit from more Renzulli features, from relatively simple tasks like exploring Curriculum Connections, up through more complex assignments and projects.

23.  Group students with the same preferred modes of expressing what they’ve learned. Use Renzulli to easily create homogenous groups of students by expression styles.  Go to My Students, then Manage Groups, then Add Group, and select “Student by Common Expression Style”.  Select the expression style you want to consider, and Renzulli will tell you which students share that expression style.  This gives you an easy avenue for differentiating products, as you’ll be able to assign product options to each group based on their preferences.

24.  Share your assignments with your colleagues. Have a great idea for using RLS resources in your classroom, that you’d like to share with the other teachers in your department, or grade?  Use the Renzulli Assignment Maker to record your plans – the resources you’ve identified, any files to upload, and the directions for the students – and then click “Publish” to make your assignment usable by any of your colleagues.  They’ll be able to pull up your assignment as a template they can edit and revise to suit their own needs.

25.  Print out a Project Plan. The Wizard Project Maker comes with a handy feature that allows you to print out all of your project information, and get students working – even if they don’t have direct access to a computer in your classroom.  Check out your library of Super Starter Projects, or create your own – and then once you’ve added the project to your project list, click the button marked “Review/Print” to access the entire contents of your project in a printer-friendly format.

26.  Attend virtual professional development. Renzulli offers an ongoing schedule of opportunities to participate in webinars with a Renzulli expert consultant.  Check out the calendar on the RLS homepage – pick any topic(s) of interest, and tune in to these 20-minute sessions where you can learn practical applications for differentiating instruction, and get your questions answered in real time by the presenter.

27.  Check in on your student’s web browsing. With Renzulli, you can access a timestamped copy of every URL your students access via Renzulli.  Just go to My Students, then select “Site Visited” from the dropdown menu marked “Display”.

28.  Help students identify people they know who will support them as they go after their dreams. The Renzulli Personal Success Plan includes a section devoted to “Helpers” -

Everyone needs helpers, role models who know you personally and provide assistance. This assistance may take many forms: teaching, mentoring, coaching, encouraging and believing in you, giving you financial or personal support, or just spending time with you. We always look up to heroes; we look up to, and sometimes also lean on, our helpers.

Use the PSP to not only help students think critically about who their helpers are – but also help students actually reach out to those helpers and create lasting relationships.

29. Save your students’ backs. We often think about our program as “Renzulli Next-book” – a next-generation textbook, that’s always up-do-date, always available, and custom-build for every student.  Renzulli can replace most if not all of the functionality of your class’s textbooks.  So save your students backs, and yourself the trouble of tracking down those lost and damaged books – by using Renzulli instead.

30.  Follow Renzulli on Twitter. Use our Twitter account to get the first word on new features and updates – or even get your questions answered.  Just tweet @RenzulliLearnin and say hello.

Teach the World Series

Here at Renzulli World Headquarters, located not far from the University of Connecticut, we are in a kind of “no-man’s land” between Red Sox and Yankees territories – and our main office is pretty evenly split between fans from both camps – so this year’s postseason baseball has been a hot topic of conversation!

Here’s some ideas for projects and resources you can use to bring a little baseball fever into your classroom:

World Series 2009:  New York Yankees vs. Philadelphia Phillies

A Class World Series Almanac

(Material:  Renzulli and a Farmer’s Almanac)

Using Renzulli Learning, have your students research through My Enrichment Activities these key words:

• Baseball
• World Series

Or provide the websites below thorough Share with Students/Teacher

Or Create 2 Curriculum Connections

1-using the keyword baseball

2-using the keyword World Series

Show the student’s the Farmer’s Almanac and provide the class with a definition of an almanac:    “a usually annual reference book, composed of various lists, tables, and often brief articles relating to a particular field or many general fields.” Have a class discussion and ask students what statistics about the World Series they think should be featured in their almanac.  Students will use Renzulli Learning to research these facts.

Divide students into five groups. Each group will research Renzulli Learning to find facts about the World Series.  In addition students will record their information and can use their Renzulli Journal. The 5 groups will be responsible for the following years:

* 1903-1925

* 1926-1945

* 1946-1965

* 1966-1985

* 1986-2005

Following the research, students will then be grouped by Expressions Styles.  Each group will have a specific task in preparing the Class World Series Almanac.

• Artist:  Cover and Illustrations for the World Series Almanac
• Written:  Compiling the information received from their classmates
• Technology:  Typing the information
• Audio/Visual:  Produce a commercial ad to promote the Almanac
• Musical:  Write a song about the World Series using some of the facts collected during research. (Add song to the Introduction of the World Series Almanac)
• Oral:  Visit classes to display and explain the making of the Class Almanac

Resources and Ideas for Election Day

Election Day is this coming Tuesday.  Here are some last-minute resources and ideas from Renzulli:

(As always, you’ll need to be logged into Renzulli in another browser window or tab to use these links.)

Election Day on Tuesdays?
Why does every American presidential election take place on a Tuesday in November? The answer involves farmers and the distances that people used to have to travel in order to vote. Find out why Tuesday was chosen over the other days of the week.

View Activity

Democracy Kids

All of us, and the people we elect, make democracy work.  Click on this website and find out just what our elected officials do, and how you might be able to get more involved in our democratic system.

View Activity

Voter Registration
You may be too young to vote, but do you know what to do when you turn 18? Find out how people register to vote by checking out this website!

View Activity

Step Inside the Voting Booth!
How does voting work and how important is each vote? Even though you are not yetold enough to vote in official elections, you can learn all about how our government works, and about the fascinatinghistory of voting. You can even make your own Future Voter’s Card!

View Activity

 

Ideas

1. Send the above websites by using the “Share With Students/Teachers”
2. Create an assignment and attach the above websites.
3. Create a Collaborative Group where the students can discuss interesting facts about the election after perusing the above websites.
4. Have students write in their Renzulli Journal explaining facts that they found interesting regarding the election.
5. Have students research local or state candidates and make class presentations on the strengths and weaknesses of each.
6. Hold a debate in which students uphold each candidate’s point of view.
7. Create a class government and simulate the process of an election. Student candidates must focus on classroom issues and solutions.
8. Have students prepare a presentation and explain the election process to younger students at the school.
9. Have students write letters to a congressperson expressing their ideas concerning the current election.
10. Have students interview a local politician and share their findings with the class.
11. Have students create bookmarks that encourage and provide reasons for voting and/or bookmarks that give some local election information.
12. Have students create a comic strip about the election

Video: Introducing Renzulli to Parents

Here’s a great video we spotted on the web of our own Debbie Crawford introducing Renzulli to a group of parents in Houston.

Thanks to Oliver Bogler!

101 Ways to Use Renzulli Learning (Part 2)

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…

K and 1st Grade: Want to skip the profile?

Some great news for Kindergarten and First-Grade teachers – your students no longer have to complete the Renzulli Profile to take full advantage of all the activities Renzulli has to offer our youngest learners. Instead, newly-registered K and 1st grade students will be taken immediately to the home page, and have instant access to a menu of Enrichment Activities selected for early grades.

Of course, it’s up to the teachers whether the students bypass the profile or not – although they’ll now bypass the profile by default, the teacher can easily change that setting on their My Students page for any students they feel should complete the profile.

Here are the particulars of the K-1 Profiler Bypass Option:

- All new K-1 students will be defaulted to the bypass option upon their initial registration.

- All existing K-1 students who have NOT started a profile will be defaulted to bypass status.

- All existing K-1 students who HAVE started, but not completed, a profile will remain with their existing status—a teacher will need to bypass those students individually, so we don’t clobber a nearly complete profile.

- All existing K-1 students who have COMPLETED their profile will remain with their existing status.

- A Calendar event will be posted for each new K-1 student, advising that s/he may go right to Enrichment – Activities and/or Portfolio, thereby avoiding the initial page of text about doing the profile.

-There is a new profile option to bypass Profilers for students in K-1 on the Student Registration page of each student under “My Students.” This appears directly below the option to select a profile type. It will display ONLY for students in K-1 grades.

- A generic profile will serve as a default for bypass students.

- A bypass student may elect to take an EZ-Reader profile at any time, by clicking Puzzle Piece #1 and changing the default answers on any or all pages.

- Bypass students are allowed to do anything available to other students, except display a differentiated profile narrative. The narrative for a bypass student is generic and describes the bypass environment, and what students may do within it.

- Teachers/Parents will see the bypass profile narrative statement under both Profile and Questionnaire displays.

- Manger Site Profile Summary reports: Bypass students are excluded from that report.

- There is a new attribute (“Bypassed”) on the teachers’ My Students dashboard for affected students.

- Effect on teacher/manager differentiation reports by profile demographics: bypassed students are excluded from reports, just as if they had not completed a profile.

101 Ways to Use Renzulli Learning (Part 1)

Kids don’t come with scripts, and so neither does Renzulli Learning. That’s a source of comfort to many educators who are feeling burdened by the number of rigid, highly-scripted curriculum resources that seem so popular today. It’s also a source of consternation for some educators, who are more comfortable working with programs that have a more heavily structured rulebook for classroom adoption.

Renzulli includes a library of unit supplements, lesson plans and ideas in various places on the Teacher Site – but, in hopes of making an even more easily digestible resource, we recently challenged some of the crew at Renzulli to drum up a list of 101 ways teachers could use Renzulli in their classrooms. We ended up with more than 200 suggestions. So – starting today, we’ll begin posting items from the list, and will be updating it over the next few weeks, until we get to 101.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(The links below will only work if you’re also logged into Renzulli in another browser window or tab.)

1: Create tiered assignments with the Assignment Maker. Use the Assignment Maker tool to create and send virtual assignments to students, tiered with different levels of complexity and challenge for different groups of students.

2. Curriculum Compacting. There’s an entire page on Renzulli devoted to Curriculum Compacting. Compacting is streamlining the regular curriculum for students that have previously mastered the skills or concepts being taught, in order to eliminate repetition and provide time for more appropriately challenging or enriching activities. Find eight essential steps for compacting, step by step instructions, and related planners and samples.

3. Find great books that match your students’ interests AND abilities. Use Renzulli’s Advanced Search tool to search our database for the names and reference numbers of more than 3,000 popular nonfiction, fiction and how-to books, most of which are available in school or community libraries – many of which are available for free as e-books. Select “Fiction Books”, “Nonfiction Books” and “How-To Books” as your enrichment types, then select the student interest area(s) and grade level and abilities you want to search.

4. Search by State Standards. If you’re in New York, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, or California, you can search the Renzulli database by all or some of your state’s standards. Just click Search Activities, and look for the orange button marked Search by State Standards.

5. Get teaching ideas from case studies. There’s a link now in your Toolbox to a library of about fifty real-life case studies of teachers and students from a variety of backgrounds, and how they used Renzulli. These case studies are organized by topic – (Title I, Special Education, Intervention, etc.) – so it’s easy to find examples that match your own goals and circumstances.

6. Build virtual student portfolios. Every student on Renzulli has already begun building an electronic portfolio of their work. From the day they login and complete their Renzulli profile, this portfolio records every activity they access through Renzulli, every self assessment they complete, every group they join, note they record, journal entry they compose, and project they undertake. You can use the portfolio as an important authentic assessment tool, as a storehouse for student work, and as a discussion piece for helping students reflect on their own learning. Plus: the portfolio can travel with the student from year to year, and over time snowball into an impressive compendium of student work.

7. Group students by shared learning styles. There’s two ways you can use Renzulli to create homogeneous groups of students that share the same learning styles. 1) You can use the Manage Groups page, and just click “Add New” and specify which learning style you want to use; or 2) you can use the Create Reports page, select Students by Common Learning Style, and when the names of the student appear, just type in a name for the group, and click Create Group. Now you can begin tailoring your instruction to the preferred learning styles of these groups of students. Put the “peer tutoring” kids together to collaborate, bring the “lecture” kids to the front of the room, let the “independent study” kids spread themselves out, and so on. Just knowing your students learning styles will give you plenty of ideas.

8. Identify and research role models for students. Use the “My Heroes and Helpers” tab on the Renzulli PSP to walk students through a detailed process of identifying and thinking critically about their own list of role models.

9. Find lesson plans. Did you know Renzulli links to dozens of external websites full of lesson plans for teachers? Look under Teacher Resources and click Great Teacher Links. You’ll find lesson plan websites organized by subject area – as well as information about grants, research and other topics of interest.

10. Expand your teaching knowledge with Renzulli TV. Renzulli links to a wide variety of videos showcasing the research behind Renzulli Learning, plus video tutorials and step-by-step directions for doing all sorts of great things with Renzulli in your classroom. You can click Renzulli TV or Online Video Training.

Much, much more coming soon…