In the fall of 2011, I piloted 1 class with the flip classroom. In January of 2012, I decided to roll it out with all four sections of 8th grade science and not only that (at this point, I must have lost my mind), I decided to try to the mastery flip technique. I am not going to lie, I spent most if not all of my Christmas break in 2011 assembling the pieces of trial run.
Since my school district is not 1 to 1, I had to be creative and design a way that could work for my classroom. I was able to sign a laptop cart out for every Monday and Friday during the course of the unit. I would have loved to have allowed students to try self-pacing, however with the lack of computer access, I struggled with a way to accomplish this. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Each week of this unit was designed around a content standard. I asked students to have the video(s) watched by the time they came to class on Tuesday of each week. I gave students one week's notice for each of the videos. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week we did interactive and sometimes very physically active labs that I pulled from different resources like Project Wild or Project Wet and some that I designed on my own. I selected each of these labs for their inquiry components and connection to that week's theme.
On the Friday, students chose how they wanted to demonstrate what they understood from the week. They could choose to take an objective test or they could create their project by themselves or teamed with 1 partner. I created the objective tests using the senteo clickers, so no grading was necessary on my part. The projects I graded on a scale of learning levels from mastery to unacceptable. I asked students who created a project to post their project on a class wiki by the end of class on Friday. If any students finished their quiz or project early, they could begin working on the mastery project or they could use their class time to watch the videos for next week. A lot of the flipped classroom is about allowing students to make choices that help them understand themselves as learners. Students know better than me of what is going on in their life and if using their class time to watch the video is their best choice, then I say, "Watch the Video!"
The mastery project was something students would continually come back to throughout the course of the unit and use it to extend their learning around a singular topic area that they would keep stretching and learning about. This mastery project was set-up around the class wikispace where students would write in the style of nonfiction fiction. Students would write about accurate facts about an animal of their choice (our unit was ecology) in the context of them as field researchers "seeing" these things for the first time.
I was amazed at how much stronger these students understood the concepts compared to past years. They also retained and applied the concepts so much stronger. I was blown away...it was awesome!
However, it wasn't all roses. I have now added three more sections of students to this process and I did feel some backlash. Many students are used to the sit-and-get method and did not want to put in the work. Or as middle schoolers sometimes did, they would put in the work, but complain about the process. As a teacher, it did make me question whether or not this was the right thing for these students. But, I couldn't ignore the results of how much better the students were understanding the concepts!
For the next time that I try the mastery style, I will be tweaking somethings. I think many students chose the objective tests because they thought it was the "easy" way out. However, there grades saw that objective tests weren't always easy. I think I would add a layer with the objective tests for the next time. Perhaps, having students correct the answers that they got wrong and explain what the correct answer is. I might also ease up on the depth of the mastery project. I mildly altered the assignment from the pre-flipped days, but I may need to ask myself, "What is really important?" I may want to simplify a few of the requirements to make sure that students do not feel too overwhelmed to succeed.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Flipped Classroom Reflection Year 1
In the 2011-2012 school year, I piloted the flipped classroom all based on 1 photo.
I had shock and awe and excitement when thinking about this idea. It seemed so huge! Yet, it seemed so simple! I was all over the place. I decided to jump in and see what would happen.
I began with 1 class. I was very upfront with this class. I told them I wanted honest feedback as we went through this process. The first class was very enthusiastic and really liked the idea about "just watching videos" for homework. However, it was just so much more than that. With the 1st class I was able to spend more time talking with students 1 to 1. This class needed that extra time and attention. There was a very high population of IEP and 504 students in this class. With the extra time, I was able to spend the time reviewing with this class, which they needed. At the end of this pilot semester, the majority of the students really appreciated this technique and learned. They were able to explain to me the process better than other classes.
From what I know now about screen casting, I started this process very old school. Or as old school as you can be with an iPad 2. I recorded my lectures by setting up my iPad somewhere in my house and using the $5 app of iMovie started to record myself. Sometimes my cats would make appearances in my videos, but I teach middle schoolers and many of them grabbed on to that to make connections with me. One student told me he was mad at me when I made a video at school. So, I continued to make the videos at home and post them unlisted to YouTube. I would then put the link to the video on my wikispace and create and print a QR Code for my classroom for students to scan with their iPod Touches. I have found that the more ways that you can give them to watch the video, the better. I also quickly learned the more time you give them to watch the video, the higher the watch rate is.
The one question that I was faced with and this process was in motion was: What do I do with the kids who didn't watch the video? The idea of accountability was one that stressed me out. I had no ideas. I felted tapped out. I had been doing all of this to create these videos for these kids and they didn't even watch them?? And then I realized that I'm back to the age old teacher question - How do you make kids do their homework? I realized for middle schoolers some of them needed a reason to do this. A reason to get started. Since the videos were their homework, then they should receive a grade for doing their homework. A couple of times I made quick senteo (clicker) quizzes where students could use notes to answer the questions, but I realized that I'm back to passive classtime. So, for each video, I created a short google doc form with two questions related to key points in the video that I wanted them to understand. In the last two minutes of the video I would put up a tinyurl that had the link to the google form. For the students to complete the google form, I gave them full points. If they didn't, I gave them a zero. This way, I also could see before the students came to class, who was understanding the main concepts! It was great!
These are my main thoughts from my pilot experience of the flipped classroom. I will soon be posting reflections about my trials with the mastery flipped classroom experience and my thoughts for moving forward.
I began with 1 class. I was very upfront with this class. I told them I wanted honest feedback as we went through this process. The first class was very enthusiastic and really liked the idea about "just watching videos" for homework. However, it was just so much more than that. With the 1st class I was able to spend more time talking with students 1 to 1. This class needed that extra time and attention. There was a very high population of IEP and 504 students in this class. With the extra time, I was able to spend the time reviewing with this class, which they needed. At the end of this pilot semester, the majority of the students really appreciated this technique and learned. They were able to explain to me the process better than other classes.
From what I know now about screen casting, I started this process very old school. Or as old school as you can be with an iPad 2. I recorded my lectures by setting up my iPad somewhere in my house and using the $5 app of iMovie started to record myself. Sometimes my cats would make appearances in my videos, but I teach middle schoolers and many of them grabbed on to that to make connections with me. One student told me he was mad at me when I made a video at school. So, I continued to make the videos at home and post them unlisted to YouTube. I would then put the link to the video on my wikispace and create and print a QR Code for my classroom for students to scan with their iPod Touches. I have found that the more ways that you can give them to watch the video, the better. I also quickly learned the more time you give them to watch the video, the higher the watch rate is.
The one question that I was faced with and this process was in motion was: What do I do with the kids who didn't watch the video? The idea of accountability was one that stressed me out. I had no ideas. I felted tapped out. I had been doing all of this to create these videos for these kids and they didn't even watch them?? And then I realized that I'm back to the age old teacher question - How do you make kids do their homework? I realized for middle schoolers some of them needed a reason to do this. A reason to get started. Since the videos were their homework, then they should receive a grade for doing their homework. A couple of times I made quick senteo (clicker) quizzes where students could use notes to answer the questions, but I realized that I'm back to passive classtime. So, for each video, I created a short google doc form with two questions related to key points in the video that I wanted them to understand. In the last two minutes of the video I would put up a tinyurl that had the link to the google form. For the students to complete the google form, I gave them full points. If they didn't, I gave them a zero. This way, I also could see before the students came to class, who was understanding the main concepts! It was great!
These are my main thoughts from my pilot experience of the flipped classroom. I will soon be posting reflections about my trials with the mastery flipped classroom experience and my thoughts for moving forward.
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