My flipped classroom

About October of last school year I came to the revelation that I HATE lecturing. I hate that my 12 year old students sit there in silence for almost 45 minutes and I talk at them. It's not a discussion, its a lecture. It is me imposing what I know on them whether they care or not. And I was done with it.

Right after parent teacher conferences I decided to curb the madness. I would make videos to get my "lecturing" out of the way and then we could DO math in class. It was definitely an ever changing process and my kids were wonderful in hanging in there as I modified and changed. Sometimes we would have 4 videos in a week, sometimes none. It all depended on content and their understanding.

At the Christmas break I asked students and parents to fill out a google form asking how they felt about the flipped classroom so far. For the most part, the response was wonderful. Parents were saying that their child who had hated math since kindergarten was suddenly excited to do homework. Kids were saying they loved having less math homework and felt like they were doing well. I did have some kids say they preferred bookwork, which I totally get. The most jarring comment I got was from a parent who obviously didn't understand what I do during the day.

It went something like this:

           You are being paid to teach our children not make videos and then just sit around all day.

I was taken aback, alarmed, confused, concerned, and angry. How could this parent really think that's what I do??? I had discussed my plan with principals, parents, and students in depth and she really thought that was what I did?

I had to let it roll off and look at all the other positive and supportive responses to how I had chosen to teach. This one parent was simply uninformed. About a week later there was a special on PBS about the flipped classroom and I wanted to force that parent to sit down and better inform herself.

So... what is it that I do? What makes my flipped classroom different than a traditional classroom?

My traditional math classroom routine: EWWWW

Bellwork-
     - While students complete a problem on the board, I checked the dreaded homework. Up one aisle and down the other. Checking off VERY quickly if they had completed the correct questions, all the while trying to keep them quiet. For all I knew, they could have shown me someone from another hours homework. I did have a couple kids try to pass off a different homework assignment altogether!

Homework Answers
     - I would read off answers to homework problems as they checked. In theory, they should all ask questions when they get one wrong to better understand the problem right? Wrong. If they got them wrong they didn't want to be called out for it so they may miss 9/10 problems and remain dead silent. Super. Great learning going on there.

Lecture
     - Me wandering the room (my biggest complement of the year was that they could never be on their cell phones because I move around too much) and talking at them... Woo hoo...

Homework Time
    - A worksheet or a selection of problems from the book that they may or may not understand how to do based on minimal time talking at them.

Doesn't that just inspire you to be in my classroom??

My flipped classroom routine:

Disclaimer: my school district has adopted a 1:1 technology program where every middle schooler will come to school next year with an iPad air. This helps with a lot of my technology problems. My kids can watch videos and get practice without my having to check out laptop carts. Yay!

Mondays look somewhat similar to a traditional but minus the bell work and homework parts. It's a little more lecture heavy but I definitely still have them practicing the skill. Why Mondays? Because I have learned from experience that even the best student won't do homework over the weekend. Why fight a battle you can't win.

Monday Night Homework: A video and 3-5 questions. I try to make at least 2 of the questions review of something from either the week before or that week and 3 questions over the new stuff from the video.

Only 3 questions over the content?????

Yep, only 3. Imagine this scenario: Jimmy watches the video and comes away thinking that the area of the circle is A = pi x r x 2. He then does 20 questions using that formula. He has now cemented that in his little brain and will never unlearn it.

Versus Scenario 2: Jimmy watches the video and comes away thinking that the area of the circle is A = pi x r x 2. He does 3 problems using that scenario. His brilliant teacher notices that he got them all wrong and he corrects his problems in class, learning the correct formula. Success!

They answer the questions on a google form and it automatically submits their answers to my spreadsheets.

Their answers look something like this:

I have them coded to turn green if they had the correct answer and red if they didn't. This allows me to EASILY see who is getting it and who isn't. I also tell the form to send them a copy of their responses to their school email.

Tuesday - Thursday

• First 5 minutes- 
• Students put their bell work answers onto a google document so we can see everyone's responses at once. We then discuss any common problems or solutions we see. Sometimes its short answer, sometimes its a number. 

• Activity/ Group Work/ PBL / Lecture (when needed) - 15 minutes
• This is my flexible-add instruction- do activities etc. time. It is entirely based on what the content is and what the kids need at that time. It might be the majority of the class working on one thing and a small group working with me. It just depends. 
• I will need to work on KEEPING MY MOUTH SHUT. I tend to want to start talking and teaching and talking but that is not the point of this time. 

• Flex Time (20 minutes- 2 x 10 minutes)
• This is something new I'm trying and like most everything I do, it may change. My thinking is that I will provide 3 options for them to work on. 
• One will be an individual worksheet covering whatever the previous nights video was on. 
• One will be a buddy activity. 
• One will be an online practice link or application based questions.
• We will have 2 fifteen minute chunks and they have to do 2 of the 3 options. The thinking is that the kids can move at their own pace, get help when they need to, and get the practice they need in an environment where they can get help. 

• Wrap Up (5 minutes)
• This is something I completely STINK at. I am really hoping that building the time and structure in will help. I think I may connect this to their bell work google doc so they can write 1 thing they are still struggling with or a question they have. 

Friday- Quiz Day usually.

And that, dear critic parent who thinks I sit around all day and eat bonbons, is what we do during the day.

The first quiz

This past week we covered Adding and Subtracting Integers. It was rough. We talked about when we add we can sing the Adding Integers song:

Same sign add and keep
Different sign subtract
Use the sign of the larger base
and it will be exact

They did pretty well with that (so I thought). Subtraction was harder for them. We talked about "adding the opposite" but it didn't stick with a lot of them. For those students who are going to retake the quiz I'm going to teach them "LoCO." Leave... Change... Opposite. Something they were doing was changing the first number, changing the sign, not taking the opposite. I'm hoping that LoCO will help because it's more specific.

I sent out progress reports yesterday and have already had quite a few emails from parents and kids both asking about the retake. Yikes!

Fractions are next...

It's a good thing I'm tall...

Today we had a couple of hours of orientation at our school. When I pulled up there were people EVERYWHERE. Apparently today is one of the days the kids can come and get their schedules, lockers, and pay any fees.

I learned a few things in my subtle observations of the natives:

1) They're a lot bigger and taller than second graders.

2) It's much harder to tell how old someone is when they get this big. (I have a gift for pinpointing an elementary school students age...  not so much middle school students)

3) Most of them still looked terrified and followed closely behind their parents, listening to everything they said (I bet the parents wished this happened more often).

One of the parents is the office manager at my apartment and I ran into her in the building. She was saying how she wished they could walk to the academic classrooms but that they were closed off for construction. I wanted to be like "You're telling me!! I currently have no classroom!" Turns out that her daughter will be in my 3rd hour pre-algebra class. Fun!

I also got to see my class rosters! I have one class that has 29 students (umm... ahh!) and the rest have 25-26. I texted a good friend from my school last year who teaches 1st grade and asked how he would like 29 students. He said I could keep them.

The district gave us some great bedtime reading material today. They supplied all 120 new teachers with a new copy of Harry Wong's First Days of School. Believe it or not, I spent about 10 minutes trying to locate my copy of the book just last night only to decide it's in my parents basement. How fortuitous.

Tomorrow we have math curriculum meetings in the morning and then more building orientation in the afternoon. It is the last day of new teacher in-service and then the whole school comes back on Wednesday. Exciting!

Wait... You want to hire me

Note to self: When blogger asks "are you sure you want to be directed away from this page cause it's maybe not saved..." HIT NO. Oh well. Here goes take 2.

About this time last summer I had the same moment of realization/panic. I went from... "crap, crap, crap I need a job!" to "crap, crap, crap I have a job!" I have focused so much on getting a teaching job this summer that I forgot that if I did actually get one (which sometimes I had my doubts), I would actually have to DO IT. Not that I'm not excited, I am, it's just that the realization took a while.

I really am excited about my new job! I'm delving into the terrible, horrible, worst-two-years-of-everyone's-life... middle school. Sound's fun! Right?! I have yet to encounter someone, who, when told I was going to be teaching middle school, hasn't said, "Oh! Middle Schooler's are awful! They're so mean all the time. I hated middle school!" Well geeze people, thanks for the boost of encouragement.

But seriously... I am excited about teaching middle school, despite what the general public has to say about they're horrible years in middle school.

I'm really blessed to have this job. It took one determined principal to get me hired. See... I'm not actually endorsed to teaching middle school math. I'm endorsed to teach middle school science and K-6 but not 7-8 math. The principal had to convince central office that I was worth the hassle and that come October I would have added the endorsement.

It does mean I have to take the middle school praxis exam in September. I've been using the last of my summer break to study up on some content that is on the exam. You might be thinking: She has to study for middle school math?! And they're letting her teach it?!

BUT: Before you start getting your knickers in a knot about my future student's lack of instruction, how many of you would remember what a multiplicative inverse was? Or the commutative property of addition? Or even how to find the distance between two points on a graph?

Probably not very many! But if you read that the multiplicative inverse was the number you multiplied to a number to make it equal one (aka... 354 and 1/354) you might remember it. And the commutative property just says A times B is the same as B times A. Not too complicated. The distance formula just requires making the two points into vertexes on a triangle and the using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the hypotenuse. Okay, that one sounds more complicated, but it really isn't!

All that to be said, middle school math does takes some reviewing. I am confidant that I will be fine both in teaching math and in taking my test.

I'm off to make some STELLAR mac n' cheese for my boyfriend who had a hard day at work.

Until then, remember:

Let the games begin...

Orientation starts tomorrow. Oh. Crap.

I really should be in bed sleeping but I had a stressful night and need to unwind. You know how you have these plans for how you are going to go about your day and then a wrench gets thrown it to remind you "HEY! YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL HERE!" Ya, well today my car keys were that wrench.

On my way home from babysitting I noticed that my gas tank was way low. I pulled into the gas station and promptly locked my keys in the car. Crap. Crap. Crap. Keys and phone. I was at a loss for what to do. Thank God for the young woman who walked in with her smart phone. I learned later that her name was Beth and she was literally a Godsend. She called AAA and waited on hold for a while. We got them set up to come and she gave me her cell phone number in case they didn't show up. I honestly don't know what I would have done without her. I am still in awe of how the whole situation ended up and am so glad to be lying here in bed typing instead of pacing up and down in front of mapco.

I'm really terrified of starting this job. I know that I am tired and overwhelmed by the gas station fiasco and that everything will look brighter in the morning but right now I just keep thinking "I don't want to do this. I want to stay home and keep doing what I'm doing." I found a great devotional tonight though that focused on Jeremiah 29:11: I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. The devotional was specifically for teachers, which is great. It talks about how God gave me this job because he knows me and he knows where I need to be. He placed me in this school, with these teachers and these students because it's part of His plan for me. While I know all this is true, I'm still scared to death that I don't know what I'm doing. I guess I just have to trust that God has placed people in  my life that can show me and teach me how to fulfill my job.

I actually do need to sleep now so I can wake up bright and early to head to new teacher orientation in the morning. Bring on the acronyms!!!!!

Let the race begin.

I've finally done it. I've landed my first job. According to my email, I've sent out over 70 cover letters and resumes. I've had 7 interviews and received 4 job offers. It was a painful, frustrating, and obnoxious process. There was tons of waiting, pacing, and calling Dad to ask "when can I email them again?" But now it is finally over, for this year. I have a job teaching second grade next year at a Title I school in Franklin, TN. While its just an year long interim position, I really believe that this is where I am supposed to start my career. If you had asked me a few months ago, really even a few weeks ago, I would have told you that I wanted to teach above third grade. But after some thought and conversations with my mom and a trusted professor I decided that this was a really good opportunity and that, while it would be hard, second grade would be a great place for me to start.

The scary thing? Now that I have a job, I actually have to be a teacher!!!!! School starts in less than one month (OH MY GOSH. THAT'S SOON) and I have no idea where to begin. I meet with my new teacher mentor next week and I'm sure I will discover lots of things to do. So far I have very little ready. I did write my classroom management plan last week (although I'm sure it will get drastically modified between now and August 9th) and have made labels for materials. They're pretty cute :)

My mom and I are going to do some light school supply shopping this weekend to get a little bit more done in terms of getting my classroom set up. I still have a long way to go but at least I know where I am going.