Use ScreenPal to Meet Every Learner’s Needs

If you’re a teacher reading this blog post, you’re probably already familiar with the concept of a screencast video. You may know how easy ScreenPal videos are to create. (If not, I recommend you follow this quick and comprehensive tutorial.) And you may already be creating ScreenPal videos to:

• Save yourself time (so you don’t need to repeat things over and over)
• Help your students become more comfortable learning from videos (a very valuable skill)
• Connect with your students’ families (who can watch your videos at home)

Those things are all great. You should absolutely save time, help your students to teach themselves, and make your instruction accessible to students and families who can’t make it to your class. But I think you can do even more.

In fact, I think you can use ScreenPal to redesign instruction itself. 

That’s what I did as a teacher, when I used ScreenPal to create videos that would meet my students’ widely varied learning needs. That’s what I do today, when I use ScreenPal to train and empower educators worldwide through the Modern Classrooms Project, the nonprofit I founded with my colleague (and fellow ScreenPal user) Kareem Farah. And that’s why I wrote Meet Every Learner’s Needs, a book that explains what any teacher can do to deliver instruction that helps every learner succeed.

I recommend you read the book! But in the meantime, I want to share three quick things you can do – once you’ve recorded videos using ScreenPal – to meet all of your learners’ needs.

Sit down with your students

When I started teaching, I stood at my whiteboard and tried to explain content to all of my students at once. This was really hard for me – I was constantly interrupted by off-task behavior, late arrivals, etc. – and not particularly effective for my students: my lessons were inevitably too hard for some, too easy for others, and inaccessible to students who were absent that day. This method also made it really difficulty for me to develop strong relationships with my students. I spent so much time policing their behavior and explaining things from the front of the room that I rarely had the time to get to know them as human beings.

Once I recorded my direct instruction on ScreenPal videos, however, everything changed. I didn’t need to stand at my board and demand my students’ attention anymore! Because they could access my explanations on video, I could spend class time sitting down with my students, one-on-one or in small groups, answering their questions about math – and about life too. This was so much more relaxing for me! It was nicer for my students, too: they could ask me questions individually, without needing to interrupt class or risk asking questions that might seem obvious to other students. Perhaps most importantly, this style of teaching gave me lots of time to build relationships with each of my students, which were both meaningful in themselves and a powerful motivational tool. Students don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care, and using ScreenPal videos let me show they every day how much I cared.

Let learners set the pace

Before I used ScreenPal videos, I moved all of my students through my content at the same pace: mine. It didn’t matter if some students already understood the content, other students weren’t prepared to understand it, or other students weren’t in class at all. Because my only method of explaining content was to deliver it from my whiteboard, and I had a certain amount of content I had to cover each year, I set a pace and stuck to it, even when I knew it was too fast for some learners and too slow for others. What choice did I have?

Of course, I did have a choice: record videos! Once I had my lessons on video, I didn’t have to make every learner see the same content at the same time. Learners who were ready to move fast could move fast – they just advanced from one video to the next – while learners who needed more time could take it, either in class or at home with their families. For the first time, none of my students felt held back or rushed. I didn’t either! Everyone was appropriately challenged every day, and I could sit down with my students to provide appropriate support.

This wasn’t always easy to accomplish: it required me to develop sustainable systems, track and communicate each student’s progress, and balance the demands of my curriculum with the needs of my learners. (I discuss each of these in much greater depth in my book.) But once my learners could control their own paces, they all learned more – and enjoyed being in class more, too.

Require mastery

When I delivered direct instruction live, and moved my classes along at my pace, it was always difficult for me to ensure that any of my students actually learned. They would complete an Exit Ticket at the end of class each day, which showed that some students understood the content while others didn’t, but I always moved to the next lesson anyways. My students were seeing my content, but many weren’t getting it. But I had no way to require understanding, because the class always had something new to learn the next day.

That all changed when, powered by ScreenPal, I let students set their own paces. Now, because each student had the time they needed to learn – and the opportunity to keep learning after class – I could make sure that each student understood Lesson 1 before advancing to Lesson 2. In other words, I could require mastery! To do this I gave each student a brief, one-question Mastery Check at the end of each lesson, as soon as each student felt ready. If they showed understanding, they moved to the next lesson; if not, I could take the time to address their misconceptions and then (when ready) give them another chance.

This was a change for students – and for me – but its impacts were transformative. I no longer let students move to advanced content before they were prepared to understand. They no longer developed learning gaps that would hurt them in future classes. And we all felt well-deserved pride every day. We were really learning!

In conclusion

This may all seem hard to do. But really, it isn’t. I did it in my classroom, and the Modern Classrooms Project has now helped thousands of educators around the world – in every grade level, content area, and type of school you can imagine – implement a similar approach in their own classrooms. There are simple steps, like recording a ScreenPal video or designing a mastery check, which you can take tomorrow. And for your and your students’ sakes, I hope you will!