Room to Breathe Round 1
Room to Breathe x The Modern Classrooms Project Round 1
By Erin Quinn
In 2024, I learned about The Modern Classrooms Project and could immediately see how it could be a great fit with Room to Breathe. Modern Classrooms' foundation is three things: self-pacing, blended learning, and mastery-based assessment. I teach at a school with socioeconomic challenges, trauma, and many complexities, and attendance is a major concern. The biggest benefit to Modern Classrooms that convinced me to take the plunge was to support my students in continuing to learn even after being away from school. In a self-paced environment, students could just pick up right where they left off.
This kind of self-pacing was something Tara and I dreamed about when we first conceived of Room to Breathe, with students working on different things at the same time, but couldn't imagine how we could do this. Video-based instruction and the ability to access the resources for each step of the project whenever they are ready for it solve that problem. After I build up a library of videos, resources, and workflows I could imagine a really neat situation where my students get to choose which round they want to work on and in what order they want to do them.
The beauty about the Room to Breathe approach is it flexes to meet the needs of your students and your situation. Last year, I had students completing one round at a time. I chose the Inhale goal and we did some minilessons related to goal. Students selected their own text within some kind of parameter. For example, Round 1 had them choosing an illustrated text like a graphic novel or picture book. Round 2 looked at song lyrics. Round 3 focused on research. Round 4 had them working in book clubs. After the Inhale, students chose their own Exhale goal, and completed a project to demonstrate their understanding of the text they looked at during their Inhale. This worked fairly well in my setting and with the unique needs of my students. I didn't like what conferencing looked like in this model - it came too late at the end of an Exhale and conferencing with students prevented us from rolling right into the next round's Inhale.
I was away from my classroom this fall as I was filling in as Acting Vice Principal during a leave, so I started my Room to Breathe x Modern Classrooms Project hybrid after winter break when I came back into my classroom. I started with a short 4 lesson Round 0, where I introduced the concept of the Modern Classroom, introduced myself to my students, and let my students introduce themselves to me.
One of the things I had to adjust as it fit with Room to Breathe was Modern Classrooms' conception of Must-Do, Should-Do, and Aspire-to-Do tasks. I have students in my grade 7 and 8 classes whose reading levels span from grade 1 to beyond grade level. Differentiating for this huge range has been a major challenge. I decided to use the Must-Do, Should-Do, and Aspire-to-Do structure to support this differentiation. Instead of having different tasks as optional, I built in three levels of challenge right into most tasks. Students who are on pace or ahead of pace can complete all three levels of challenge. Students who are catching up or students who need less complexity to their tasks can focus on just the Must-Do step.
Round 1 began right after that. In Round 1, we learned about annotation, and we practiced annotation on a text I selected - a short poem by Tupac called "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." Then, students brainstormed ideas for Exhales and designed their own project for their Exhale.
I'm really happy with the way these two frameworks fit together. My students are, as expected, working at different paces. Those who are absent frequently are further behind their peers. Some of my students just need a bit more time to work through stuff and are grateful for the opportunity to do so. Though I don't think the Modern Classrooms folks conceived of it ever looking this way, I expect that I am going to have some students still working on Round 1 while others are working on Round 2, which I think it just fine. They'll work through at their own pace and end up wherever they end up.
Please feel free to grab any materials you want. You'll likely want to record your own videos, because I doubt your students will want to watch me teach them. I paid for a subscription to ScreenPal to record my videos and it's been so great. Very user friendly, and I like the built-in questions to keep kids focused.
Lesson 1.1
In this lesson, students are introduced to the concept of Room to Breathe.
Video for my New Grade 7 Students:
Video for my New Grade 8 Students:
Lesson 1.2
In this lesson, students create a Commonplace Book where they will keep all their Inhale annotations.
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Lesson 1.3
In this lesson, students learn about literal, inferential, and critical annotations and practice annotations using a picture. I used Mary with a Mountain View's Observe to Infer work for this part of the process.
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Lesson 1.4
In this lesson, students apply their knowledge of literal annotations and practice them with Tupac's "The Rose that Grew From Concrete."
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
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Lesson 1.5
In this lesson, students apply their knowledge of inferential annotations and practice them with Tupac's "The Rose that Grew From Concrete."
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Lesson 1.6
In this lesson, students apply their knowledge of critical annotations and practice them with Tupac's "The Rose that Grew From Concrete." This lesson ends with a conference with me to conference about their three levels of annotations.
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Lesson 1.7
In this lesson, students learn about the Exhale part of the Room to Breathe approach and brainstorm ideas for potential Exhales.
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Lesson 1.8
In this lesson, students plan out the first side of their Exhale planning sheet.
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Lesson 1.9
In this lesson, students plan out the second side of their Exhale planning sheet. This lesson ends with a Conference with me for me to approve their project and sign their planning sheet.
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Lesson 1.10
In this lesson, students work on their Exhale. There is a midpoint check-in point where the students conference with me partway through their project.
Lesson 1.11
In this lesson, students learn about and write an artist statement to go with their project. This lesson ends with a Conference with me to assess their work collaboratively.
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