Flipping v lecture

I began this post about one year ago.  I have not posted in quite some time due to many things.  I am beginning again I am leaving the part I began as it is and am editing after in italics

Flipping the classroom is all the rage right now and I am was fully on the bandwagon.  I have this niggling fear that many of us in the teaching profession are going too far with this idea.  I have tried fully flipping and although (as I posted earlier) there are many benefits to doing it, after a couple of years I feel like I am losing the very thing that makes me a quality teacher.  You cannot be personal on a video.  You can tell stories but videos are really all about information.  I am a story teller.  I love to teach (lecture, discuss) biology with stories about my life, life in our town, their lives and things I have learned.  This is extraordinarily difficult to do in a ten minute video.  When you lecture, you are delivering a message with words, powerpoint, images and video clips.  You are in the moment, engaged with students in an adventure of learning.

"Sage on the stage" is the derogatory phrase often used for a "lecturer".  However, I can really remember things I learned from great teachers who lectured.  True, not every kid may be "engaged" in my lecture, but not every kid is "engaged" when I give them group work to do either.  NO KID "engages" all the time.  I don't "engage" all the time in meetings etc.  It is human to disengage and reengage.  It is up to the leader to keep a person "engaged". 

One phenomenon I have found interesting is how the very people who preach against lecture espouse using things like Ted videos for learning.  Wait a minute...isn't that a VIDEO OF A LECTURE?  That is interesting.   So, I (the person they see every day, the person who taught their siblings, the person who hugged them when they were down, the person who laughs at their dumb jokes, the person who has met their parents) should not lecture them but an anonymous scientist from some far off land should?  This is not to say that TED lectures are bad to do in class, far from it.  Neither are Khan academy videos or any other means to bring the outside world in.  They just should not be the be all and end all.

I have come to the conclusion that if I cannot make an interesting lecture out of a topic, then students should watch a video.  If it is facts I want them to know, a video is a good way to do it.  If it is a topic that requires thought, is interesting to talk about, and can be fun to discuss, the lecture/discussion should take place live.

Over the years as I incorporate lectures back into my classroom, my students ask for them more and more.  They don't really say why but I believe it is because lectures stimulate thinking and the "Why" questions pop up.  They want me to be the leader in the classroom, they don't want to have to look up every factoid in google, they want to hear interesting stories and laugh out loud.  They want to know why things work the way they do not from "howstuffworks.com" but from me.  

If you read my previous posts, I went into flipping with all I had.  There are MANY good reasons to do it. I am not sure that LEARNING is one of them anymore.  

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!

Study guide or research?

So, I have always considered myself a good teacher.  I teach all ages of high school and kids like to take my biology classes.   I get along with all kinds of student.  I have been doing this for 20 years and it wasn't until THIS year that I realize that I could have been doing SO much better.  You see, I now have my son in my classroom taking AP biology.  I now see how students view and do the work I assign.  I now see that I have been doing it wrong for 20 years (well, if not wrong, then poorly).

I usually assign a study guide and reading from the text as homework.  Well, last week I read @ichrislehman post on research in education.  I thought about it and realized that I was guilty of telling kids what to research.  So with my AP class, I tried a bit of a simple experiment, one that I could not do without my son in the class to observe his at-home work actions.

I assigned my normal 2 page study guide on fermentation (alcoholic and lactate) for them to do.  This study guide is as comprehensive as I could make it with all of the information they needed to know.  I also assigned them to summarize this question:  How are muscle contraction, beer and bread making related?

I then was able to observe my son as he worked.  It took him approximately 15 minutes to complete the study guide.  He had his book in front of him but, rather than reading it, he merely looked through the text for the answers or copied down the diagrams as necessary.  He then attacked the question.  5 minutes in, he says "this question is dumb."  "I can't find the answer anywhere."  Being a pretty good student, he spent another 20 minutes poring over the text before slamming it shut.  I asked him what the problem was and he said "I have no idea how to answer that question."  I then asked him why not?  "I can't find the answer in the book."  What he meant was:  "I am so used to just looking for the correct answer, I have no idea how to RESEARCH and CONNECT to come up with an answer that works."  After thinking for a while, he logged on to a computer and managed to come up with a response but then said , "But I have no idea if it is right or not."

All I could think is...why have I not done this all the time?  He spent far more time and learned WAY more by trying to answer one simple question than he did on the whole 2 page "study guide".  AND his answer is not really copyable.  In other words, anyone can do the study guide and give it to everyone else...not everyone can come up with an original response to a research question.

I think we have been shortchanging kids in education for a long time now.  We have been teaching our kids to "use the glossary" and "look it up in the dictionary" and " fill out this study guide (which to students means test review guide)  and memorize it and you will get a good grade" when we should be getting them to see connections and answer simple questions with deep meaning.  If I can get my students to spend 20 minutes researching a simple question, they will learn more than if they fill out a rote form.  I think I taught that way because that is how I was taught.  Now I dont have to teach that way anymore.  It is freeing.  The trick will be to come up with interesting questions that make the topic researchable.  But that is fun!  And way less work for me than making a 4 page study guide on anything

What makes my school awesome to work at

So...what did your staff do on the first day of school professional development?   In the past, our staff met, had a keynote speaker, gave out some awards, had some meetings and left for the day looking forward to 2 more of the same.

This is what we did today:

8 am: 

1. We met as a whole school community (bus drivers, parapros, teachers, admin etc.)  in the auditorium. 
2. Our superintendent had a 10 minute presentation (hilarious) about what he learned in his first year on the job (he learned that if he is only half as good as the last one, he will be fine :) )
3. Each administrator (transportation through administration)  introduced new staff and noted the ones who have worked there for a certain number of years (10, 20, 30) 
4. We split into 16 "power teams" (I am on the pink power processors team and wear a pink shirt!) that are a mix of all staff.  My team has 2 admin, 8 teachers, food service, bus drivers, parapros, admin. assistants.  We met in a classroom to get our instructions for the day.  We also collected 50 cents from each member of the power team.
5. Each power team had to go to 3 business partners in the community and thank them for what they do for our school every year.  We rode school buses, went to the local companies and delivered a care package with a note signed by the staff thanking them for contributing to our school community.  We then had to find a way to use our money to "pay it forward" by using the money to help out in the community somehow.  We only had $10 but we were able to parlay that into a free oil change for a customer at the auto store, 3 free children's haircuts for a family and gave $5 a family at the grocery store to assist with the bill.  We had to take pictures everywhere we went and generally had to spread good cheer in the community. 
6. We returned to school, got back in the classroom and spent the next 30 minutes brainstorming how we would pay it forward all year as a team.  Our team will clean up baseball fields in the spring, attend a sporting event and collect canned goods, donate any gift cards we receive to needy families, and every once in a while, buy a student lunch.
7. After we finished with that, we had lunch together.
 8. We gathered back in the auditorium to celebrate what we had done that morning by looking at pictures from the morning and talking about what we were going to do. 

For the afternoon, we were free to work in our classrooms and prepare for the upcoming year. 

I am not sure I have ever felt more a part of the community than I did today.  I live in the town and am a teacher there.  I live 2 minutes from school and 5 minutes from every business we visited.  We saw many former students and parents of students along the way. 

What a great message to send from our administration about what is important to our school. 
Our community knows that we are all about service.  We are all about giving back to the community for what they do for us.  That is powerful and more important than any speaker.  When people see teachers, bus drivers, custodians etc.  all together giving back, that speaks volumes by itself. 
I live in the community and am less than 5 minutes drive time from every place we visited.  All of those people now see me differently.  I am not "just a teacher" but someone who genuinely cares and likes to be a part of the community. 

I think if EVERY school did this, the negative messages sent about public education would vanish.  If every school in Michigan sent their staff out into the community to thank them and ask what else they could do, people would WANT their kids to be a part of that kind of society. 

Failure?

This past year I (as I blogged below) took flipped class to the extreme and had a portion of my AP class as online only.  We met approximately 66% of the days and they had to work on the other days.  Result????

worst AP scores EVER! 

I had as many 5's as normal but far fewer passing than ever and the lowest AP scores as a group that I have had..   After self-flagellation and inward thinking, here is what I have come up with.

Reasons for these results:

1. Unable to DRIVE the students to work harder by not seeing them every day.
2. CLass time was more meaningful when we met but not meaningful enough.
3. Online quizzes do not encourage deep study or motivation to study
4. Group was the laziest I have ever had, many seniors who basically did enough to get by with a passing grade.
5. I did not give them enough work to do which led to a feeling that they had done enough.
6. Not grading homework or allowing work to be turned in late with no penalty DOES NOT WORK for students who are not self-motivated.
7. I did not have my students WRITE their thoughts enough, rather used mc quizzing as the main means of formative assessment.

Too often in education we are afraid to try new things because of the possiblity of what happened to my class this year. I realize that these scores may have been this way even if we met every day (or they may have been worse :) 

 I DO think blending online and face to face instruction is still a valuable option and I am going to continue to pursue it.  I will this year still allow my students to work at home some days but it will be far fewer days and it will be on days where all they would be doing in class is working anyway.  We will not do online quizzing except in a formative manner.  All graded quizzes will be done in class and WRITTEN! 

In conclusion, blending instruction in this way MAY be better for elective classes like my anatomy class where there is no summative, competitive exam at the end; however, I must try it again with a few changes before any assumptions can be made.  As a scientist, I know that one trial does not an experiment make so I will continue with another set of students with a few changes listed above.  As an educator, I know that nothing is perfect but I have to continue to try to find the best way to educate my students in the 21st century.

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!