This past week I attended a workshop through BER - Bureau of Education & Research. If you have never attended one of their workshops you are missing out. Click on the link above to see if there's one near you, they are all over the country. It's a full-day workshop with lunch on your own, and you leave the seminar with a resource book. Note - eat lunch with people you don't know, you'll probably meet some rather awesome people like I did.
The workshop I attended was The Flipped Classroom: Practical Strategies to Successfully "Flip" Your Classroom (Grades 6-12) By Corey Papastathis
I arrived at the workshop not knowing much about flipping my classroom. I had more questions than answers. By the end of the day I was confident enough and motivated to try something new.
What students do at home needs to be engaging. Just going home and watching videos about math isn't going to hold any one's attention. Of course the video can't be boring, but there needs to be more. Are they suppose to post something to twitter when they are finished? Is there a cliffhanger at the end of the video to keep them wanting more? There is some software out there where the students have to interact with the video in order to keep it moving forward.
The workshop I attended was The Flipped Classroom: Practical Strategies to Successfully "Flip" Your Classroom (Grades 6-12) By Corey Papastathis
I arrived at the workshop not knowing much about flipping my classroom. I had more questions than answers. By the end of the day I was confident enough and motivated to try something new.
What students do at home needs to be engaging. Just going home and watching videos about math isn't going to hold any one's attention. Of course the video can't be boring, but there needs to be more. Are they suppose to post something to twitter when they are finished? Is there a cliffhanger at the end of the video to keep them wanting more? There is some software out there where the students have to interact with the video in order to keep it moving forward.
What I learned:
My time is valuable. Have you ever tutored a person one-on-one? If you have, then you know the price some people are willing to pay. Think about it. We need to stop doing things during class time that students are able to do on their own time. For instance, we don't need to lecture or do direct instruction, the students can watch that on their own time and write their questions about the lesson. Then you can spend your time setting up students centers and working with students rather than talking at them, and this is where your real value comes in.
When making your videos keep it short. You wouldn't want to watch a marathon episode of a lecture and neither do your students. If you can break a video down into sections, make each section its own video.
Also, when making videos, don't do it alone. The audience will find it more interesting if there is a conversation rather than one person talking. Corey suggested using a student in the video to ask questions and to have someone to talk to, or have another teacher co-teach with you in the lesson.
Flipping your classroom, may decrease the behavior issues that I've been having. Most seem to happen when I'm direct instructing. I'll keep you updated on that.
Here are some resources for us to check out:
Books:
Websites:
Flipped Learning: Here you can find examples a videos, access to conferences, and other resources.
Here is a Pinterest board to follow about flipping.
Clintondale High School: This high school is completely flipped. See what they have to say about it.
Jonathan Berfmann's Blog: This post has the 10 questions you should ask before you flip your class, but his entire blog is full of flipping goodies.
Flipped Math: This website is so that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. They have videos, handouts, and it's all organized. Check it out.
Video-Making Stuff:
Screencast-o-matic: This has a free and a paid version
Educreations: You can use the website or the app.
Here's Goes Nothing:
I'm going to give this a try on Monday. I created a video for the students to watch, a notes guide to fill in as they watch, and then practice problems to complete with their classmates. I know this is nothing earth shattering, heck, it's not even that interesting. But that's okay for my first attempt. My plan is to build from there. To create more interesting videos Mr. Pod has already agreed to co-video with me.
It's here for the taking for what it's worth:
Solving Systems of Equations by Graphing:
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