Completing the Math Flip

The next piece of our Flipped Classroom has started. We set up the homework for students to complete each night. Most of the students are seeing the need for the homework. We have a couple students that are not completing the work, but they get to complete it at school. That is where the next piece is coming in.

In Math class I have previously been doing the normal schedule where I have students practice their times tables as they come in to help with that skill. After a few minutes I get the students started on the notes for the math topic we are learning that day. After taking a few notes we work on a few problem and practice as a whole group and then do a few practice problems as I roam the room helping students that need a little help. Before I send them to their Language class, we review some concepts from previous lessons and then they head out.

That has all changed. It has taken me a few weeks to set up the way I wanted to work the class. The homework is Sal Khan teaching about the concept and the student taking notes and looking for specific vocabulary. We only have video homework 2-3 times a week. The rest of the time, we expect students to practice skills they need help with (times tables, subtraction, Carrying, borrowing). They can also work on the IXL math site for practice of specific skills we are working on that week. If they do not understand what is happening in the video or a specific piece, they write down a question on the bottom of the page that we can answer or go over the following day.

The next day I start with a question that goes with the homework so I can see what parts the students understand and what they need help on. I let the students work as partners and then explain what they did and how they ended up with their answer. I like to use whiteboards for this part of class. I walk around watching, listening, finding those that need a little help. After about 10 minutes I have them show me their work by holding up their boards (I hope to use the Educreations App soon  so I can play back what students did). I look to see their explanations and decide on four that need a little extra help and four that need basic skills help. This is also where I pull back students that did not complete their homework so they can show that they understand the concept. If they do not, they will watch the homework video so they will understand what we did.

After the question we work on the skills students showed from their practice and review steps to help us in finding the answers as a whole group. We practice a few problems going over the steps and answering questions about the topic. We have a discussion about missteps that might have happened and what to look for when we come upon a problem

We split the group into a couple small groups and a large group. Our resource teacher take the students that need basic skills and she works with them on the one concept I need them to learn that day while working on basic skills. I take the other small group and go step by step the help them understand what piece they are missing so they get the concept and can do a few problems on their own. The large group works on a math page to reinforce the lesson as partners, helping each other using a Tip, TIp, Tell format. If a student is unsure how to do a problem, the partner gives them a  tip to get them started. If they get stuck, the partner gives them a different tip. Finally, if they do not know what to do, the partner helps them through the process of getting the answer by telling them each step and letting the student figure out the problem. If they get finished with the practice page (not drill and kill, busy work) they are able to work on IXL to go into harder problems or review problems they need help on.

The last 10 minutes is spent as a large group reviewing past skills as partners using Kagan Strategies of pairing students. We use the Tip, Tip, Tell strategy as the students use one book, one pencil, one dry erase marker. They complete one problem and pass it to the partner to complete. The student with the book has to explain to their partner what they are doing and thinking as they work on the problem. The partner listens and tips them, if needed. The final minutes are spent as a class having students show how they arrived at their answers and the class cheering their successes.

This is what I imagine a flipped class being. 10 minutes of lecturing, 65 minutes of partnerships working together, small group work, differentiating and discussing skills and strategies. So much better than the 45 minutes of lecturing and 30 minutes of drill and kill. At least the students think so.

How Much do We Flip?

My fifth grade team flipped our vocabulary lessons about six weeks ago and they went great. The students did their lessons each night or early before class. More homework was completed and the students loved watching the videos. Discussion about the vocabulary words were better because we were able to hear if the students knew the words and could use them properly in the sentences they were producing instead of just looking at whether they found the definitions. It is fantastic. It has changed our whole thought process of homework. Instead of having students practice or review problems, we will have them watch the lessons and do all the practice at school. Investigate the work. Learn.

So we are on to spelling. We will hand out words on Monday and have our students take the words home and watch the lesson at home. They will also sort the words as they watch the lesson. W tried one lessons with a small ground students last week and they cam to school knowing more about the words than normal. I do a short lessons bout the pattern that week and how words use patterns to help us understand what they mean and how to spell them. Every week I teach these lessons and they catch on to a couple words, but after watching the video, they knew so much more and remembered more about the words. Their tests seemed to be about the same, but their knowledge bout the words was greater. Since we differentiate spelling, we have about six groups, so the lessons will take a little longer to film. We will start with a few groups and move into filming all of them as we get better.

After spelling we will be working on Math. This is the subject that will have the biggest change. We are thinking that our key lessons will be the video. With that students I'll take notes, work out problems and write down questions. When hey get back to class we will have a couple problems for them to work out as a partnership and then we will discuss the problems and answer questions in our class discussions. We will work on what would normally be homework. In the middle of the class we will switch gears and do a review of past concepts and work through a few of those problems. That is the concept we have. This will totally change what we a doing now. We have students first review past concepts and then go into the key lesson we are working on. Once done with the key lesson we work on some problems and hand out homework.

Once we started the vocabulary we started to think about how much are we going to flip each night. In elementary school we teach a minimum of five subjects a day with a few subjects alternating very few weeks. This can become a big issue with flipping. What do we flip and which nights are we going to assign for lessons? How are we going to make that many videos each week and what can we do to make them more meaningful for the kids when we do them? Can the same lessons be used next year? Wow. This can get big. The one thing I worry about is the work at home. How much are we going to require each night for each student and are they going to have the time on the computer or DVD player to be able to get all the lessons done. I would hope they would have enough, but at my house, each child wants the computer to do work on and it can become a scheduling nightmare. I have more than one computer in my house and it still becomes a problem, but most people only have one. We might have to look at sending devices home. What would that look like and how would it be managed?

My team is going to the Flipped Conference 2012 this summer and we hope to have some of these answers worked about before the end of the conference. Being with people that have been doing this for a while will help. Gathering information and ideas will also help us in our own situation.one thing I know for sure, flipping has been great for me and my students. It will be fun to see what else we can do and what they can do because of it.

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Oh, Flip. Here We Go

The time has come to flip the classroom. We have decided to take our classrooms to another level. During our team meeting before we went to Christmas break, we talked about having more simulations in our classrooms. We loved giving students tasks and becoming someone from history to teach about the Native Americans or the Revolution. Having time to play games with words and showing how fun math has become an afterthought in our planning and not at the forefront. After discussing the things we would like to do in our classrooms, my team decided we need to flip our classroom. We did a little looking around and found information from innovators like Karl Fisch and Jon Bergman/Aaron Sams. After some research we started setting up our plan.
Flipping a classroom is not an easy thing to do. Just thinking about it gave one of our team a headache. So let me start with what our flipped classroom looks like. We found a great infographic to explain what we are looking at doing. Our idea of what we will be doing is having students learn short lessons on video at home and we reinforce and investigate the concept with activities at school. Simulations, activities, games, and discussions. Sounds good to me. It will create a little more work, but as we do it more, it will get easier.
So we decided to start small and take it a bite at a time. We will start with our vocabulary lessons that are part of our homework each week. Instead of teaching a lesson about the weeks vocabulary words each Monday, we will have the lesson done at home with a short video. Having students write out the words, meanings, and examples on Monday takes time. Writing takes time. So changing it up by having students write at home will give us time to do a reading activity with students on Monday. The stories will use the Vocab words in the reading so we will be introducing the vocabulary words in the reading. Students will watch and work on a 5 minute video on Monday and one on Tuesday night to complete the lesson. On Wednesday we will have an activity using the vocabulary words instead of finding out if they have the information correct on the paper. The questions they anew will let us know if they understand the word or not.
Starting out with a small flip will help us find the bugs and problems we need to work out. The teachers are pretty excited about the flip. The students were pretty excited about the flip. There were a few negative comments, but mostly for students that look for the negative. We did discuss each comment that came up to make sure we thought about the different issues. We hope to be adding more subjects in the next.

A Flip with a Twist

Just read an article in the New York Times about a forced flip of classrooms in Idaho. I am not sure the Idaho legislature gets the idea behind technology and what can be done with it. The idea of having teachers lecture less and have more time to help students in the classroom is right on. For everything? I am not sure that will happen. There is too much for students to learn in the classroom and we do not want students to burn out using the computer. Flipping a classroom and having students learn a little at home instead of doing their "homework" with their parents will have the students digging deeper at school in their subjects. Parents will be less frustrated and can listen to the lessons to see what we a talking about at school. But having students do all or most of their work on computers may look great on paper, but the tech companies are not teachers. A living breathing teacher needs to help students find and get more out of a lesson. I found out a long time ago that technology is great, but it will never be able to take the place of a good ol' teacher. Computers have to be programmed to have a teaching moment, but teachers are programmed to use teaching moments when they are needed and at any time. One computer idea does not fit all classrooms. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad