Ever since the TED-Ed release and announcement, there has been another flurry of blog posts and articles on the web about flipped learning.  One, a challenge to the process, is at TeachPaperless, and, as often is the case, the comment section is where the real action lies!  A nice summary of articles and posts appears at eSchoolNews.  I signed up to view the virtual version of the 2012 Flipped Conference in June, and I've made a summer "to-do" list similar to Crystal Kirch's!  

Meanwhile, we're down to just a couple more weeks of class; our end-of-course exams were today.  My students re-viewed the videos to prep for the test, and the feedback was that my tests were harder than the state's!  We're going to spend the rest of the year doing science to appease the former physics teacher that I am: letting a pendulum swing, measuring a stretched spring, getting some quadratic models for objects videotaped in projectile motion. 

As the school year comes to a close, I'm working to form a "forest" view of how to use flipping next year.  I feel like I understand the trees now, but the big picture, organizationally, is my summer challenge.  I do love that the whole movement, beginning with Bergmann and Sams, has been teacher-driven.  It respects the differences in teaching styles and the myriad ways in which flipping is implemented. I am convinced that flipping some lessons, some units, some projects--whatever the "chunk" is that you choose--can challenge students to step up to take more responsibility for their learning, can personalize that learning, and can support students and provide better formative assessment of their progress in the classroom.  

Have a great summer!

Wow!  Today, TED launched an online toolbox that will enable any teacher to customize a lesson around any YouTube video.  It's telling that Jonathan Bergmann made one of the first flipped lessons on the site, since he is one of the original flippers.  There is the ability to create lessons, build in quizzes, and monitor student understanding and progress in the TED-Ed universe, even using teacher-made videos!!  This is HUGE for flipping!  Check it out yourself at TED-Ed.

It has been crazy busy lately, getting ready for end of course testing and managing all those other tasks that teachers deal with at the end of a school year.  Our students take their EOC in math on May 8, and their last day of school is May 25.  We are in crunch time!  Look for another post as soon as I can manage it on how I am using flipping resources for EOC prep.  

Our first round of benchmarking in some subjects and state testing in others is complete, so it's time to get back in the groove.  My students will be reviewing the entire Algebra 1 course in the coming weeks, and I am brainstorming how the flipped classroom model will best help them in this endeavor.  I'm also looking ahead a bit to next year already and doing a lot of research online to learn more from the experiences of other teachers who have flipped their classrooms.  I watched a webinar that the original "flippers" did that affirmed some of the thoughts I'd had lately, things like focusing on the really important parts of learning that can be enhanced by interaction with the teacher and with peers and making sure those can be done during class time.  I've been checking in at Crystal Kirch's awesome blog more often.  And I am learning my way around what I think of as "Flip Central", the Professional Learning Community for flippers.  Meanwhile, I completed a survey that Jerry Overmyer (of the Univ of Northern Colorado) and Crystal Kirch sent out, spent some time at Overmyer's website, and educated some administrators in my district about the flipped classroom.  Whew!  There's so much to learn and to think about when you do this!  It has forced me to rethink my whole approach to teaching so that I am much more focused on the best use of class time to optimize student learning.

Just a quick note to say that...

Whew!  It is working!  :)

Summary: 

All students answered all questions on the test.  Before, a small number of students would leave a lot of questions untouched.  

Mistakes made are mostly small computational errors rather than large conceptual misunderstandings.  When the students corrected their tests, the process went much more smoothly.  This is likely because they are more comfortable consulting with peers now, they are more comfortable asking me for help, and they didn't have huge mistakes to correct.  

Overall, scores are better than they were with the old teaching model.  There are no huge gains and we aren't where I'm aiming yet, but I'm pleased because I can tell from their work that they are learning more.  

Cool thing:  I had them do the LTF Alg 1 lesson, "Exponential Functions Exploration" during that unit, and the students NAILED the questions about exponential functions that were on the test. In the future, the only thing I would change about the lesson is to have them draw the lines that "cut" the sheet down to size instead of actually cutting the page.  And that's just so they could use the same sheet (front for #1 and back for #2) for both explorations.  

Anyway, now I'm wondering if I should try some kind of pre-test + post-test approach.  Then again, the last thing my students need is more tests!  Off to make a new video....