 Welcome everyone to the Learning New Podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I'm Chris, your host. Today's special guest is Rachel. Rachel is a sixth grade teacher. She teaches ELA and social studies in Ohio. Rachel is a rock star teacher here to share with you how she differentiates instruction, how she leverages technology, and how she personalizes learning for students. Rachel, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me, Chris. We are so excited you are here just to be sharing some awesome insights into how you use CSOT and how you are just becoming a better teacher with this tool in your hands. We'll kick off with the easy question, just kind of set our baseline here. Tell me about a time that you successfully differentiated instruction to meet your students' needs. What kind of things really worked for you when you did that? Well, CSOT is absolutely phenomenal for differentiating resources for all of your students. Actually, like right now, I have a student in my class that really struggles with writing. He goes through occupational therapy and such. And so with a lot of our writing assignments or activities that we do, I will put them in CSOT so that he can use, you know, like the video chat features or draw a picture to just show his understanding. And that has been huge for him, such a game changer, where he's feeling like he's being like thriving and his grades are showing that. So that's just one easy way that you can differentiate. Yeah. So good. So good. And I'm sure even that student enjoys having some of that freedom, but you also get better information about what that student actually knows when you use those tools. Absolutely. It's just ever since I started using that for this student, just the depth of background knowledge that he has, it's just like night and day difference between what I previously thought early on in the school year to what he really, truly knows. And, you know, I just can't wait to just see how much further he grows using CSOT as a tool. So awesome. So awesome. So you talked a little bit about some quick techniques and how you use it. Can you walk me through how you approach planning and some of those teacher backends? How do you start to think about what you put out there in your, you know, your lesson plan design and all those things to help to differentiate this content for your students? Great question. I guess I, first of all, I need to focus in on what specific things do I want to gather from my students? If it's a formative assessment or an activity, what what standard or what goal do I have for my students? And then I look at the needs of my students. I have students in my class currently that are labeled as gifted students, and then those that are reading well below grade level. So within the planning process, you know, focus in on what's the overall goal? And then I always try to find, you know, engaging fun ways to get about, you know, meeting all those standards, because, you know, teachers have a million standards to meet. And, you know, some of them aren't that fun, quite honest. So, you know, just finding ways if it's a game or in a little activity, or even just draw me a picture of a word that has this root word in it. That way it allows all the students to be successful, but then you can always extend it more for those students that need a little bit more of a push or a challenge where, you know, you tell me of like a handful of root word words that we could use. And, you know, is there another way that you can use this tool, like create a commercial, or, you know, write a story or a letter within CESA where you could use all those skills. So it's just such a versatile tool that it's really great and easy for planning for teachers. And it's fun. The kids think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. So I love it. Exactly. I love that. I love how you're flipping the script on students and really, you know, allowing them to drive their learning and drive their understanding as they start to move forward in your classroom. I think, you know, I as a student would love to have more of that when I was a, when I was a student elementary school. Yes. Yes. Definitely. So good. So you were talking a little bit about standards and you also were kind of hinting at the balance between, you know, what you have to teach and how you start to, you know, think about fun and engagement with that teeter-totter of, you know, bringing in technology, but also making sure you're addressing, you know, what academics you actually have to hit. Are there any other things that you think about as a teacher and as a professional to just make sure that that's balanced all the time? You know, you're really engaging all your students with technology and still delivering on all those standards that you need to. Right. It's, you know, as a teacher, especially in the 21st century with all of these tools available, you know, we have to make sure that we're balancing just perfectly because we're not here to like just entertain and, you know, do all these activities. You know, we want our students to learn and grow and to become lifelong learners. So, you know, it is a challenge at times to figure out, how do I balance that where I can still introduce things and it's fun and engaging, but also, you know, the kids might not understand, oh, I'm meeting this standard and that standard, but, you know, down the road they're going to understand, whoa, I learned this in sixth grade or whatever grade it may be. So, it is kind of a challenge at times to try to balance it out, but I think from my experience, if I focus on the overall goal, whatever it might be, if I want my students just to be able to sign their name in cursive, we can work on that skill using a lot of resources and CSaw, you know, is a wonderful tool for that or just demonstrating math skills and things like that. So, having that overall goal and then, you know, you can throw in the fun and sprinkle it in. So, you don't always have to be that great entertainer on 24-7 for your students, but, you know, it's okay to have fun in class and, you know, I think that's the greatest thing about all these tools that are available right now within like CSaw is that even the assessment portions of it that you can set up, the students think it's a game and they're like, oh, I'm learning from this. It's just like, yes, I planned it that way, kids. It's great. So, yeah, it's just trying to find that magical balance and it's going to be, you know, there's days where you crash and burn and you're going to need to just have the fun or on the flip side, like, no, we got to focus in, but, you know, it just takes some time and some tweaking and, you know, there's so many resources available within just that one program to make it a lot easier for teachers. Absolutely. And I heard you say hints of this throughout your response there is like you were in the 21st century and we also need to make sure that our students are gaining these technology skills because, I mean, you and I both know when they walk out of buildings and out of schools, they probably have a cell phone or a tablet or a smart TV or something in front of them that is going to be on the same lines as how you use technology, how you balance technology for yourself and how to make sure that you're using it productively. And so I think that your focus and making sure that, like you said, it's perfectly balanced is the best of both worlds. You can deliver on your content while teaching students how to productively use technology in their classroom so that they can walk out of your school and or move to the next grade and so on and so forth and, you know, continue to contribute to that as they move. Absolutely. Yes. And I think that's a huge skill, you know, for students of this age and, you know, even younger too, just understanding, you know, what can I use my technology for? Like, can I create this great stuff to show my learning but also using it appropriately and at the right times? And I think, you know, that's a thing that a lot of students are, you know, learning and, you know, some struggle with. I mean, sixth graders love their cell phones. So, you know, it's just an ongoing process, but it's kind of exciting to see when the light bulb they have like clicks like, oh, I can use this technology in so many ways to reach this outcome that I have. And it's just like one of the greatest things that I see within my classroom is when you see those light bulbs kind of go off with those students. And I just love that. That's awesome. That is so good. I want to come back to the academics you talked about and you hinted a little bit this about assessing. Can you just share with the audience and people listening like what is your process for assessing this student learning, especially when you're differentiating? And how does CISA really help you to make that more efficient and or just more streamlined in your classroom? Sure. Well, recently, you know, I tested out the new assessment feature on CISA with the AI, generating the quiz that I had for my language arts class. And it did such a phenomenal job. I was I'm still kind of new to the AI game. But I was just blown away how fast and easy that was and how it was like perfectly aligned with everything that we were doing in class. And so with this quiz that I use, I was testing out there's the drag and drop feature, but I use like the let's check for understanding where the students can click on it to see, did I get this correct? Or did I not? And they'll allow them to, you know, correct themselves or, you know, try again. And I use that as a formative assessment because I loved how I could create varying questions and how the AI kind of created a lot of great questions for me that met at all my students levels for, you know, my lower readers and struggling writers. They, you know, we had a lot of picture prompts that were posted and that helped them a lot. And my more like advanced or gifted readers and writers, they were able to write sentences and, you know, find the correct words with, you know, three, four roots in them. And it really did help them. But I loved the feature with the checking because I could see how many times a student had to redo one particular question. And so from that data, I was able to pull those students that, you know, we're really struggling with certain areas. So then I can really pinpoint what they needed. And so I'm really excited to use that more often to drive, you know, small group instruction, or, you know, hey, we just need to like build this up before we have this final assessment and growing. So it was just so cool to be able to use that. And it took like grand total of like 10 minutes tops for all my students to do this. And so it was just such a cool feature. But I just loved all the data that came from that because it totally drove my instruction for the next few days of school. That's so good. So good. It's so encouraging to hear stories of how teachers can gain back teaching minutes. Yes. I know that there's no greater time than having that right now where teachers need more and more minutes in their classroom to teach and to deliver instruction. So it always warms my teacher hard to hear that you feel that you're gaining back minutes to really deliver instruction that matters for kids. Yes, it was, I had to check my watch like, wait, I was not expecting this to take this less amount of time, but it did. Okay, that's really awesome. Because usually it's, you know, like you say, you're like losing minutes and time is the most precious thing in the classroom. And it is. We have just a couple more questions left. I want to pitch to you our loopy question, which is just a fun question that will have our audience members also maybe get a little laugh out of. Can you just share with us if you had to choose like one pet? If you if you had all the pets in the whole world and you were like, I need to pick my favorite pet. What would that be? And you can be as specific or as broad as you want to. Oh man, that is a very intense question. My kids are very much into going to the zoo. So they want all the animals that are at the zoo. I would probably if space was not a problem, I'd probably go with an elephant. Yeah, they're just so cool. They're so cool. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that you really thought outside of the box with the elephant. I think, you know, you could put the the old adage to the test, you know, an elephant's memory never fails and some things like that. And they love to eat peanuts. But I think it's definitely a conversation point to have when you have guests over too. So good. We're going to close up here since we're almost at time. I just want to make sure that anybody who's listening, anybody who's going to be tuned into this later, that they can leave our episode with just some practical tips, tricks and next steps for them. So if you had somebody who's who's new to CSI and or new to teaching, what advice would you give to this teacher and so that they can learn how to really effectively differentiate instruction using CSI? What are some, you know, one, two, three different tips and tricks that they can start with so that they can really start to get to the point that you are right now down the road with understanding CSI and what this really can do for students. Perfect. Well, when I introduce CSI to teachers around my district or outside of district, teacher friends throughout Midwest, I always tell them to start with just one feature and just play around with it in your classroom. So and it's kind of fun when you introduce that for the first time for students that have never been on CSI. So I, for me, I always like the drawing tool and I'll let the kids just just draw me a picture, just whatever is on your mind or a great one to do is if you do like a read aloud or a first chapter Friday, have the students hop on with the drawing tool and just have them draw what they are visualizing as you read or as you listen to an audio book. Just those little things that they're not taking away from your classroom time, but it can add a lot more to not only like understanding what the students know, but you know, it can kind of boost up like background knowledge that your students already have that maybe you didn't know. So there's so many cool things on the drawing tool and you know, the kids love like the glow pen feature because they're like, whoa, it's like glow in the dark. I'm like, yeah. So that is one area that I would, you know, just focus on doing that. And then from there, you know, think of just one quick easy little activity that they can do, you know, if you're working on cursive, have them try to write a word that you're focusing on in cursive or, you know, write out a math problem and then you can add in the recording, have them explain what they're doing for this equation and why they're solving it this way. So there's just so many very useful and amazing tools within just that little feature of CSaw that can really give a lot of insight for teachers on what their students know and what they need to grow. So good. Such easy steps too to take as far as, you know, just clicking on that campus, opening up the drawing tools and letting your students explore and get started and just, like you said at the very end there, allow them to show what they actually know in their head versus it being a guessing game or something that you're just trying to hit at. You know, they can really be authentic and they're true selves too to be able to share that. Right. Yep. Well, that is our time, Rachel. I just want to say thank you so much for everything that you do every day for these students. Thank you for taking time out of your day to be here and share some amazing CSaw expertise with everybody who's tuning in. I know that they are going to walk away with some really practical next steps and some powerful tips that they can use to start to differentiate, excuse me, their instruction in their classroom. So thank you, thank you so much, Rachel. Well, thanks again for having me. I really appreciate it.