A typical day in my classroom used to be quite boring. To be honest I've always had a love hate relationship with teaching math. I absolutely love the topic, but the constant "when am I ever going to need this?" question and the monotony of lectures have always frustrated me. Before flipping, we would go over last night's homework (which were normally a few problems exactly like the examples I had done the day before), answer any lingering questions and then fill the remaining minutes with boring notes. I was bored, so I know my 13 year old students were too!
Now, a day in the life of my class goes something like this:
When students arrive they get out the video notes they completed last night. Some days I check these, some days I don't. We take a quiz that usually has 3 to 5 questions on it. Some of the questions are similar to the problems from the video, some questions are about understanding what was learned. Students are allowed to use their notes to help them and then we grade the quizzes together. I want these first few minutes to be a time where it's ok to make mistakes; sometimes mistakes can be more helpful to understanding than doing things the right way. I purposely don't give my students grades on these quizzes, this is a way to for students to assess their own understanding and application of the material.
After the quiz, students use the rest of the hour practicing and applying our new information. Depending on the topic, I give my students requirements that tend to include options. Today in class students could choose from 4 different worksheets. They were required to complete at least two of them. I love giving students options, I feel that it helps them take charge of their own learning.
Other days, class is more structured and we do an activity or worksheet together. Earlier this week we did an activity where collected data from cylindrical objects. Students recorded the circumferences and radii, plotted the data, found a line of best fit and created a linear equation to model the rate of change (with something close to pi being the slope). Using this information, they had to make predictions of objects given one parameter. The groups with the closest data won candy because nothing encourages learning like sugar : ). Activities that can be added in addition to the required curriculum, makes math real to my students. My students discovered pi, just like past mathematicians!
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Lectures for Homework
The biggest difference my students will notice durning this flip is our notetaking. Usually I spend almost the entire class period lecturing and taking notes with my students in our nicely organized notebooks. If there is any time left in class, students can use this time to complete practice problems that are almost identical to the ones I just modeled.
In our flipped class, I wanted my students to take notes from the videos that didn't last 50 minutes (our class period time). In order to get quality notes and not spend an hour watching videos every night, I decided to make outlined notes for my students to fill in. This allows the students graphs, tables and general look of the notes to be consistent between students. When I model notes in class, students tend to follow my lead, but watching a video with no guide can lead to very different ideas of structure and importance.
To make these notes I took screen shots of the video lesson so that my students have absolutely no confusion as to what I think is worth writing down. Every section has vocab at the top that I told my students to look up BEFORE watching the video. This will insure that when Dr. Burger starts talking about something important, they are at least familiar with the word.
My students have commented more than once that this homework is way easier. All they need to do is watch and write- no figuring out or getting stuck on a process. They like that they can rewind and rewatch and also use their book. They have said that the one annoyance is that they can't ask any questions, but they have done a great job of writing their question down on their notes to ask me the next day.
In our flipped class, I wanted my students to take notes from the videos that didn't last 50 minutes (our class period time). In order to get quality notes and not spend an hour watching videos every night, I decided to make outlined notes for my students to fill in. This allows the students graphs, tables and general look of the notes to be consistent between students. When I model notes in class, students tend to follow my lead, but watching a video with no guide can lead to very different ideas of structure and importance.
To make these notes I took screen shots of the video lesson so that my students have absolutely no confusion as to what I think is worth writing down. Every section has vocab at the top that I told my students to look up BEFORE watching the video. This will insure that when Dr. Burger starts talking about something important, they are at least familiar with the word.
My students have commented more than once that this homework is way easier. All they need to do is watch and write- no figuring out or getting stuck on a process. They like that they can rewind and rewatch and also use their book. They have said that the one annoyance is that they can't ask any questions, but they have done a great job of writing their question down on their notes to ask me the next day.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Preparing My Students
Since flipping was new to both me and my students, I decided I needed to prepare them for taking notes via video rather than just assigning them a lecture at home and hoping for the best. So for the last lecture of chapter 4, we watched a video lesson as a class. I had made note outlines for the students to follow along with and so they didn't need to spend their time drawing graphs, making tables AND taking notes. I frequently paused the videos, showed my students where important information would be located and the kinds of things I expected them to write down.
Class went really well, the students seemed to like cheesey Dr. Burger and found it easy to understand his explanations. Being a couple days into my flip now, I really think this introduction was beneficial to both me and my students. It helped them realize my expectations and it gave them a level of familiarity with a brand new system.
Class went really well, the students seemed to like cheesey Dr. Burger and found it easy to understand his explanations. Being a couple days into my flip now, I really think this introduction was beneficial to both me and my students. It helped them realize my expectations and it gave them a level of familiarity with a brand new system.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Parent Letter
Since I decided to do my flip a month and a half into the school year, I figured I wanted to let my parents know what was going on. I sent them home a letter explaining how homework would look, how class time would be spent and what they could do to help their child. At the end of the letter I had parents and students sign letting me know that they understood the changes that would be taking place in my class.
I got a lot of positive feedback! Some of my student's older siblings had been in my friend's flipped class in high school, so the parents were familiar with and enjoyed this approach. I had another couple of parents tell me this was a "neat idea", something they were "really excited for" and a great way to encourage students "to really understand the topics". I was so excited and grateful to have parents that are supportive, encouraging and willing to let me flip the normal classroom around.
One of my biggest fears in implementing this method of teaching was meeting resistance from parents, students or the norms of education. So far I have found none of this. I think coming to the situation prepared, knowledgable and confident went a long way in assuring people I knew what I was doing. I had one parent that wanted more of an explanation than my letter gave, but I feel that after our phone conversation, they were satisfied with my reasons for flipping.
Here is the letter I complied. I found some resources online explaining the flipped classroom and borrowed ideas from other parent letters I found as well. Feel free to use or modify to fit your classroom!
Parent Letter
I got a lot of positive feedback! Some of my student's older siblings had been in my friend's flipped class in high school, so the parents were familiar with and enjoyed this approach. I had another couple of parents tell me this was a "neat idea", something they were "really excited for" and a great way to encourage students "to really understand the topics". I was so excited and grateful to have parents that are supportive, encouraging and willing to let me flip the normal classroom around.
One of my biggest fears in implementing this method of teaching was meeting resistance from parents, students or the norms of education. So far I have found none of this. I think coming to the situation prepared, knowledgable and confident went a long way in assuring people I knew what I was doing. I had one parent that wanted more of an explanation than my letter gave, but I feel that after our phone conversation, they were satisfied with my reasons for flipping.
Here is the letter I complied. I found some resources online explaining the flipped classroom and borrowed ideas from other parent letters I found as well. Feel free to use or modify to fit your classroom!
Parent Letter
Sunday, October 14, 2012
About Me and My Classroom
Hello! My name is Frantz and I am currently in my 5th year of teaching. I have taught high school math and science until this year when I got moved to middle school. I currently teach 8th grade Honors Math (Algebra 1), Pre-Algebra and 8th grade Science at a pretty awesome school district in the middle of Michigan.
I have heard so much about Flipped Classrooms and had two teacher friends of mine give it a try, both in high school (Geometry and Chemistry). They both had nothing but good things to say about the switch so I have decided to give it a try!
I am starting with my 8th grade Honors Math class and committing to at least one chapter of flipped-ness. We use Holt Algebra 1 for our textbook and I am so impressed with all the resources available (that are not only amazing, but very differentiated!).
We are on Chapter 5- Linear functions. I have a lot of resources, knowledge and ideas for activities on this topic and I am excited to have this be the first chapter I try this with. My students are actually using the videos that the book supplies- Dr. Burger is pretty cheesy, but does a great job of explaining the topics and the videos are very well done. There is options for CC, a picture of Dr. Burger and him actually writing stuff down, a nice tutorial section, objectives and key words down at the bottom.
Like you might imagine, my students are very motivated and pretty intelligent. The school district I teach in is progressive and my students' parents tend to be very educated and supportive of teachers and their classrooms. My students are passionately curious and most are very excited about this opportunity. There are a few smarty-pants that are bummed that they will actually have homework, since they tend to complete the book work sometime in school, but still intrigued by the idea of having fun in math. I am so excited to get this started and see what awesomeness comes from this new idea!
I have heard so much about Flipped Classrooms and had two teacher friends of mine give it a try, both in high school (Geometry and Chemistry). They both had nothing but good things to say about the switch so I have decided to give it a try!
I am starting with my 8th grade Honors Math class and committing to at least one chapter of flipped-ness. We use Holt Algebra 1 for our textbook and I am so impressed with all the resources available (that are not only amazing, but very differentiated!).
We are on Chapter 5- Linear functions. I have a lot of resources, knowledge and ideas for activities on this topic and I am excited to have this be the first chapter I try this with. My students are actually using the videos that the book supplies- Dr. Burger is pretty cheesy, but does a great job of explaining the topics and the videos are very well done. There is options for CC, a picture of Dr. Burger and him actually writing stuff down, a nice tutorial section, objectives and key words down at the bottom.Like you might imagine, my students are very motivated and pretty intelligent. The school district I teach in is progressive and my students' parents tend to be very educated and supportive of teachers and their classrooms. My students are passionately curious and most are very excited about this opportunity. There are a few smarty-pants that are bummed that they will actually have homework, since they tend to complete the book work sometime in school, but still intrigued by the idea of having fun in math. I am so excited to get this started and see what awesomeness comes from this new idea!
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