Flipclass assignments

Flipping my classroom has been awesome.  I have gotten to know my students better amongst other myriad things about which I have already posted.

Lately, however, my students have been struggling getting work done.  We have a 9th grade biology class that cannot seem to get everything done.  After much deliberation and discussion with my co-teacher, we decided to change.

In the past, I just assigned "video notes" as homework with the only direction being that they take notes as if they were in class.  Last year being my first year dipping into the well of flipping, this was and has been the easiest way for me to go.  The biggest problem with that is that we could not figure out if students were actually learning anything while watching the notes.  Also, they could easily just copy down what I said without actually watching (although to me, this is a minor point).

The decision we made was to make tiered assignments based on the notes.  The first one I made was on energy passage through an ecosystem.  Rather than my discussing ad nauseum here how it is done, it is easier to see one linked here.  You see that they now have a choice.   They can choose a 3/5, 4/5 or 5/5 on this assignment.  Here is another much like it.

The key is that the required ones are ones they MUST know to pass any test over our objectives for the unit.  The ones for a higher grade require a little more critical thinking and some original research.  This is to hopefully motivate the upper level student to go above and beyond the "normal" assignment while giving the very busy or struggling student an "out" where they can still get it done but without the angst of having to "get it all done".  This also introduces a little bit of educational choice.  Students feel like they can choose how much to do.  As Daniel Pink shows in DRIVE, feeling as if you have some control over your life can be motivating. 

I realize that this is not a new concept but I have found it very easy to use and the students are now starting to get used to it after 3 assignments like it.  I will be surveying them regarding the class soon and am excited to hear how they feel about it.  One other key thing is that they have more than 1 night to get it done.  I usually give them 1 or 2 every week.

On the due date,  I use @crystalkirch WSQ idea and put one of the student's work (randomly) on the document camera. The class evaluates it and proposes changes in order to make it an "A" paper.  We then go over the changes and discuss them.  This is valuable on so many levels.  The student whose paper it is gets evaluated by peers rather than me (they do not know whose it is unless the student blurts it out), they get quick feedback and can make adjustments to their own work painlessly.

I do not grade them on correctness of their work but merely that they tried it and have some kind of answer that makes it obvious that they tried.  I do not worry about "cheating" because it is only worth a small portion of 20% of their grade and they will still have to take a summative over the material to prove that they do indeed understand and did not just copy their way to a grade. 

So far, this has been a very good trial.  Students can always work on this if they get done with our class work (lab etc.) and they know exactly what to do while watching the notes.  They do NOT like the fact that the answers are not obvious but they have to actually think to get them correct (or close to it).  I also like the fact that the work is non-googleable (is that a word?).  There are no pat answers that can be found with a simple search.  Too many assignments I used to give in the past were.

Please feel free to comment!

Make your own videos!

Much of the discussion and many of the questions about flipping the classroom revolve around the use of video to transmit information to students.  There has been much discussion about Khan academy and the like as tools for this transmission of information.  While KA and other sites are phenomenal and are often used by students as review/learning tools, this author believes that for any classroom teacher to get the most out of flipping their class, every teacher should make their own videos.  Here are some reasons for that:

1. Making your own videos enables you to deliver the exact content you feel your students need.  Many other postings are maybe too detailed for your class or emphasize points that are not that important to learning what is needed at the time.

2. Making your own videos is a great personal learning tool for the teacher. There is external pressure to say the right things because this becomes a public process.  Therefore you ensure that you have the information correct before you publish it.

3. Making your own videos gives you ownership of your instruction.  I have tried using other's material for teaching in the past: powerpoints, worksheets, etc.  and I never have felt comfortable as a teacher doing it this way.  A student WANTS to know their teacher and if the teacher is using someone else's voice to deliver material, the class becomes much less personal and more distant.  This also becomes a way to connect with parents who hear and see what their children are doing in class and can hear you teach when they could not before.


4. Making your own videos allows your voice to be heard locally.  I use local examples that would not apply to someone in Germany or even Kalamazoo. One of the failings of a textbook is that they have to use very general examples that could apply anywhere.  I can use examples of the landfill just outside of town, the cheese factory, the river, Lake Michigan, etc.  


5. Making your own videos is an easy way to sell the idea to parents because the perception that flipping is a lazy way out goes away when they realize that you have taken the time to put all of this together and you aren't just doing a quick internet search and using someone else's hard work.


Now, in our school, we have 3 teachers that teach 9th grade biology.  I don't think it is necessary in that case for all of us to make videos on the same subjects.  In fact, it is pretty cool when my students listen to a lecture made by another teacher in our school because they are getting variety of style, ideas, humor, etc.  but in a LOCAL flavor.  They are hearing someone they see in the hall and their friends have as a teacher.  That is far different than hearing someone you will likely never meet or see.


Comments/Ideas for and against are welcome! 

Blending Student Evals

Here is my students reaction to a couple of questions regarding our AP biology blended learning class this year.   Their comments were unedited in any way   

Q:  What did you think of how the class was done this year with 50% online and 50% face to face instruction? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? 

a1. The structure of the class was very convenient.  I obviously liked how I could do my work whenever.  I prefer the traditional classroom setting to the online setting, but I don't dislike the online setting. 

a2 I liked it, it gave me more time to do the assignments on my own time, the videos were really great but i felt like we didn't get that in depth but that is probably because of how much material we had to cover. 

a3. I thought it was really good! I feel like I learned a lot more from the video lectures than I did when we came into class. I think it is because i took notes for the videos, but sometimes i didn't think there was a whole lot of benefit from coming to class. I think a lot of people struggled with knowing when things were due what the requirements were for some assignments. It was probably our own faults though. 

a4.I think it was a good idea. I appreciated the ability to work through things on my own. I would have appreciated more control over my study, such as the ability to skip homework over stuff I understand already, and, to be honest, I thought the video notes could be shortened by half or three-quarters without losing any of the information. However, these are my own feelings, and I do not think it would be beneficial for an entire class to implement them 

a5 The online was not my favorite because I think that during class, we would have done more with the time that we had than we did online. With online, the assignments were short and sometimes I did not have time outside of school to do the review that we were supposed to do. The reason I saved the review for home was so that I could remeber it better the next day when we had a quiz or whatnot. 

a6.  I liked that we were able to take our work home and work on it there because I work a lot better when I'm at home by myself then I do in a class room setting because I get distracted really easy and can't focus but at home I can do whatever it is that im suppossed to be doing because I focus and just listen to music and don't talk to anyone. And I liked doing all the labs in class. 

Q: Your grade aside, evaluate your personal efforts in this class. Do you feel you worked as hard as you needed to? Do you think that the format of the class was a hindrance or help to you in this way.

a1. I do not think I worked as hard as I needed to.  I think the format of the class caused me to postpone work more than I would have in the traditional classroom setting

a2. I feel like I could have worked harder to get a good grade but I did in fact learn a lot and that matters. 

a3. The setup this year in my opinion allowed me to work harder because we only met once every two days. If I could not complete the homework on a specific night I had an extra day to catch up and watch the notes. However, the last few weeks I did slow down more and not pay as much attention because it seemed easier than the beginning of the year.

I do think that many of these comments and issues could be applied to flipped classroom also.!