Hyperdocs for Teacher Learning

If you know me, you know I LOVE notebooks and have them in all shapes and sizes: my personal notebook of my private most innermost thoughts, my professional notebook of all things teaching and leading, my coaching sketchnote book where I design teacher learning on the page, my One LittleThing notebook and more! I use them in my personal life, my professional life and especially in my work with teachers. And pairing my notebooks with technology and digital tools packs an extra punch because I can easily transform my love of physical writing notebooks into a digital space with creative hyperdocs.

Hyperdocs are interactive, digital Google documents that personalize and transform learning by offering teachers (and students!) launching points for learning experiences. Hyperdocs pace learners through an interactive journey of learning complete with everything you need to begin and even a space to record your reflections along the way. Given my affinity for notebooks, I like to think of them as digital notebooks already pre-filled with invitations to learn. And they have huge potential for instructional coaching.

Humor me for a minute and imagine hyperdocs as your coaching clone. Really! You can easily take what you might say and do in a professional learning experience with teachers and create a hyperdoc to pace them through that same experience on their own time, in their own way, instead. Now, I am not saying that hyperdocs can replace coaching, but they can certainly enhance it. Here are a three hyperdocs I’ve created to do just that:

The first is a hyperdoc that introduces teachers to a resource for professional learning: Heinemann’s PLC Series. This is a series of blog posts “designed to provoke thinking and discussion, through a simple framework, incorporating mini-collections of linked content into your professional development time”. I adore this series and often bring the content into my sessions with teachers, but I wanted a way to not just share the information, but to invite reflection and conversation around it. So, I created a hyperdoc that resembled a double-entry notebook page (my favorite kind!) with the prompts for thinking and resources for learning on the left and a space to record their thinking on the right. Teachers use the hyperdoc to pace their learning, capture their reflections and ultimately, launch our next in-person discussion. You’ll find an image of the ‘Turn Inquiry Into Action Hyper Doc’ below.

I also love to use hyperdocs as a way to pace teachers through a blog hop, which is a fun method of introducing teachers to a content coaching cycle. Using the same double-entry journal format, on the left side of the document, I invite teachers to read blog posts on a particular topic, often adding in videos, podcasts and extra resources along the way. We capture our thinking on the right side of the hyperdoc and use it to launch our next coaching cycle. You’ll find a picture of a hyperdoc focused on book leveling below, too:

Finally, my favorite hyperdoc has to be this: A Writer’sNotebook: A Hyperdoc to Celebrate Writing. This is a hyperdoc I created to help teachers (and students!) develop a physical notebooking habit sparked by technology. The hyperdoc offers teachers invitations to write in their notebook on the left side of the page, like excerpts from Ralph Fletcher’s A Writer’sNotebook, video clips from YouTube and even podcast clips and images to spark writing. On the right side, there are spaces to snap pictures of those pages to celebrate their notebooking and share with others. It really is the best of both of my worlds: notebooking on actual paper and using technology sparks to launch writing. You can find out more about how I use hyperdocs for online learning in my Shifting Literacy Intervention Online course starting August 17th!

Now, these are only three ways I’ve brought hyperdocs into my coaching and there are many more possibilities based on your content area and the process you have for coaching. 

So, how might hyperdocs support your coaching? Could they prepare teachers for your next professional learning session? Could they invite teachers into a content coaching cycle? Think about the possibilities, borrow my templates and make a plan. What hyperdoc might you create next?

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