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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Reflecting on flipping and structure while writing to another teacher......

 I am flipping all my lessons this year. Last year I only tried it a little in term 4 but I also only had 45 min and it was very challenging. This year I will have 54 min. What I learned last year for most of my classes, flipped or not, was to reduce the number of problems by choosing ones that are specific to the learning goals. If a student knows how to add fractions with like denominators then they only need to show me 1-2 times and move on to the next skill in the learning progression. Interestingly, my students seem to put more effort into the smaller assignments once they realized I was using this work as daily formative assessment. This daily formative assessment became our exit ticket for the lesson. They enter answers on an assessment system for feedback and tracking data. I had more control, was able to track each skill and each student daily. My students became so good at inferring their data that they knew which group to sit in each day without me organizing. I also visited each group every day because I knew from my data which groups and students were struggling the most. Homework is to finish  any classwork and enter on assessment system if they don't get it done in class because the formative assessment data drives the next class. Next they watch video, takes notes and do the launch problem for next day which is also entered on assessment system. This cycle seemed to motivate students to get the work done in class with my support rather than at home along with the next day's flipped lesson. I hope that helps. I don't start school until 8/27 so I will let you know how this plan works this year.

Here is what the cycle should look like and I am going to try it on a small scale from day one and then build up to full lessons.

1. classroom intro to standards, topic, take a preview or review on paper to be entered on Assistment for homework.

2. homework: 

  • complete any classwork and enter on Assistments.org
  • watch video, take notes, do launch problem, enter on assistments
3. next class:

  • grouped by data
  • review notes in groups
  • whole class discuss data on launch problem
  • groups work on next lesson problems 
  • teacher visit groups based on data and need
Lastly, I plan to not dive in and overwhelm myself and my students. I plan to teach them how to do each part of the cycle well and demonstrate how it will help them learn better. My goal is to be running this cycle fully by Monday 9/10.  We will see...........