(Re-posted from my Flipped Learning Class in response to the question prompt: How will intentional content impact your students' learning?)
Through my years of teaching, I've gradually shifted away from textbooks and lectures to deliver content, and more toward labs, activities, group discussions, and simulations. Figuring out what to do with my class time when I first flipped my classroom wasn't forefront in my mind because I was already using a variety of strategies in class to introduce and reinforce content.
However, two of the presentations at FlipCon13 made me consider that although I have been using many different types of instructional strategies to engage my students, those strategies were always ones that I had chosen or topics that I was most interested in. Musallam's presentation about stimulating student curiosity and Dill's presentation about project-based learning revealed to me that I was the one with all the power in my classroom. I was making the decisions about what interesting side topics we would discuss and how the class would learn about them. The students were simply with me for the ride.
My goal for next year is to introduce every new lesson with a "mystery box" that is broad enough to evoke many questions from the students. I'm also going to give more opportunities for my students to choose what types of assessments they will complete for a unit, whether a written paper, a drawing, a multi-media project, or a song, etc. I am hopeful that these changes will inspire more curiosity and motivation in my students.
Showing posts with label FlipCon13. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FlipCon13. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
5-5-5-5
During Jon and Aaron's FlipCon13 keynote, they challenged the audience to make some personal goals using the 5-5-5-5 format. Here's my first stab at it:
5 Days: In days, I hope to be finally caught up with my FlipCon 13 class! While everybody else was working hard at FlipCon13 - attending sessions, making connections, asking questions, recording reflections - I was relaxing on the beach of a Northern Minnesota lake. Boy, am I paying the price now! This has been a crazy week of playing catch-up in my class, but the intensity has made me focus and prioritize my time. So in the next five days, I'll be working on my new class assignments.
I also hope to contact my school principal and superintendent to schedule a post 4th of July meeting to discuss what I've learned at the conference. My administrators are very excited about the flipped classroom model, and would like to see more teachers in our district adopt it. We all need to have a discussion about how best to present this model to the staff without overwhelming them. I've already singled out a couple of archived sessions from FlipCon13 that I'd like to share with particular staff members to pique their interest.
5 Weeks: Let's see...five weeks will be...August 3...wow...almost time to go back to school! My district starts school during the third week of August and ends in the middle of May, so when the calendar hits August I begin to feel that "pull" to get back in my classroom.
My goal is that by this point I'll have figured out precisely what my face to face time is going to look like, based upon Musallam's Cycles of Learning. I'll have some Google Docs and Google Forms templates ready to go to support that learning in the classroom. Regarding my videos from last year, I'd like to have the first few weeks' worth revised and ready to go for each class. I envision making some videos "on the fly" again next year so that they're related to the questions my students have as they explore various topics. Finally, I've been asked to present about my flipped classroom for some teachers from another district in August, so I'll definitely be using a ton of information that I'm currently processing from FlipCon13.
5 Months: In five months, it will be December, right at the end of our first semester. This would be a perfect time to poll my students and parents regarding their impressions of flipped learning.
I also want to invite fellow teachers to visit my classroom during second semester to see what flipping is all about. If we have iPads for our students during second semester (this a possibility our administration is exploring), I'd like to spend the semester break brainstorming ways for students to use iPads for exploration, collaboration, and presentation. I've already got some ideas on this front, but I'm not going to take the time to flesh them out until those iPads are imminent!
5 Years: This is the vision I have for my classroom in five years:
5 Days: In days, I hope to be finally caught up with my FlipCon 13 class! While everybody else was working hard at FlipCon13 - attending sessions, making connections, asking questions, recording reflections - I was relaxing on the beach of a Northern Minnesota lake. Boy, am I paying the price now! This has been a crazy week of playing catch-up in my class, but the intensity has made me focus and prioritize my time. So in the next five days, I'll be working on my new class assignments.
 |
| This is supposed to be my "thinking" face...I hope I don't look this much in pain when I'm thinking. |
5 Weeks: Let's see...five weeks will be...August 3...wow...almost time to go back to school! My district starts school during the third week of August and ends in the middle of May, so when the calendar hits August I begin to feel that "pull" to get back in my classroom.
 |
| This drawing makes me look like I'm trying to run away from school, but in actuality I'm always excited to get back to a fresh school year! |
5 Months: In five months, it will be December, right at the end of our first semester. This would be a perfect time to poll my students and parents regarding their impressions of flipped learning.
 |
| I'm hoping that most of my students will be loving the flipped learning this year, but I'm sure there will be some who will be uncomfortable, and others who will downright hate it! Learner-centered classrooms can be challenging for students who are used to "playing school" (as Jon B. would say...). |
I also want to invite fellow teachers to visit my classroom during second semester to see what flipping is all about. If we have iPads for our students during second semester (this a possibility our administration is exploring), I'd like to spend the semester break brainstorming ways for students to use iPads for exploration, collaboration, and presentation. I've already got some ideas on this front, but I'm not going to take the time to flesh them out until those iPads are imminent!
5 Years: This is the vision I have for my classroom in five years:
There are a few details about the drawing above that I'd like to point out...First of all, I am in a corner, available for help (and happy!), but the students are busy doing the work of learning. Secondly, some students are working on their own, some are with partners, and some are in groups. There are a variety of activities that the students are working on, but they are all essential to the nature of science: inquiry, support of claims, communication, and problem-solving. My 5-year goal is that my students are learning in a differentiated, standards-based, flipped classroom that emphasizes the universal and changing nature of science. I want students to leave my classroom with the ability to make informed, thoughtful choices in their adult lives. As a teacher, this ideal has always been in my mind. FlipCon13, including all of the energetic and forward-thinking individuals I have met as a result of being involved with the conference and my class, has brought this ideal back to the forefront of my teaching philosophy.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Miyagi and Me
Before watching Jon, Aaron, and Ramsey give their keynote speeches for FlipCon13, I was entering this summer with the goal that I would improve the videos I have created so that students would be more motivated to watch them. I flipped all of my classes (Biology, Ecology, College Biology) for the first time last year, and although the students were initially excited about and appreciative of the the new learning format, by the end of the year the novelty had worn off and some stopped watching the videos all together. I had this idea in my mind that if I could make really exciting, funny, engaging videos, all of my students would be glued to my lessons and learn everything they needed to know. I guess I was channeling Field of Dreams...
My thoughts were, "If you make those videos really, really awesome, those students will WANT to sit down at their computer, iPad, or phone and watch them every night." But I couldn't fit that on my picture above.
Then I watched Keynote #1 of FlipCon13 (via the archive), and I started to get an inkling that flipping my classroom wasn't all about the quality of my videos. Jon and Aaron's presentation focused mostly on their evolution of thought through their years of flipping. They too simply started with videos, which then became more professional, which gave them more flexible time in class and started them thinking about mastery learning, and now their focus is tying differentiated learning into the flipped mastery classroom. I am starting to realize that videos are simply a tool to open more time in your classroom, at which point you can really start making headway with your students' learning by incorporating various learner-centered strategies. The videos themselves aren't meant to get your students excited about your class content - your class time can now be used to get your students excited about your class content. Imagine that!
During the presentation, Aaron did a short demonstration that really resonated with me. He pulled out his phone and asked Siri (or something similar) to find the electron configuration of oxygen. In seconds, he had it available on his phone. He explained that once this would have been a question he'd ask students on a test, but questioned if this type of information should be the focus of education anymore since "facts" are now so widely accessible. My own classes have already been slowly evolving away from the memorization of facts to an emphasis on the process of science. However, this part of the presentation brought things back into focus for me. How can I balance the expectations of standardized testing, which are predominantly based on discrete facts, with a need for my students to be problem-solvers in the unknown future in which they will find themselves? As Jon and Aaron stressed, we are giving our students tools that can be applied to a variety of situations - not training them for a specific job.
More foreign to me was Jon and Aaron's discussion of mastery learning. I've tried to incorporate mastery learning into my classes in the past, but it hasn't been very successful. Mostly this has been due to low student motivation. Jon and Aaron reminded me of the power that these strategies can have if implemented successfully. They described how their classrooms revolve around standards-based objectives, and students show their mastery of these objectives according to a rubric. I think I'm only a few steps away from a mastery approach for my classes. I already rely heavily on formative assessment in my classroom. Also, students don't get a grade on a science notebook assignment until they have reached 100% correct, and all students are required to make corrections on their quizzes and tests. Finally, all the teachers in my district (including me!) have created learning objectives for each of the units that they teach. I order to fully implement a mastery classroom, however, I just need a little more help with the organization of the process. I remembered that I own Jon and Aaron's book and should probably reread it this summer to help with this!
Because I have been "attending" FlipCon13 by watching the archived sessions, I was able to watch Ramsey Musallam's presentation immediately after Jon and Aaron's. This is when my thoughts on flipped learning were transformed the most. Ramsey delved into the murky world of student motivation, which I realized has been the missing piece from my classes over the years. He challenged teachers to think of our content as a "mystery box" that has the potential to excite our students as they uncover its secrets. Ramsey played a TED clip of J.J. Abrams describing how all great movies hold back secrets at the very beginning and slowly reveal them to the audience as the movie progresses. Ramsey suggested that this is should be a model for student learning. At that moment, everything clicked in my mind. I don't need to make amazing videos to engage my students in the content; rather, I need to facilitate student access of the content as they develop their own questions in regard to these "mysteries." I am fortunate as a science teacher to work with content that naturally lends itself to "discovery learning."
I especially connected with the example that Ramsey gave from The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi allowed Daniel to flounder for awhile before jumping to his aid. He provided Daniel with some instruction in karate after the need had become apparent to Daniel, and then Daniel took those tools and transformed them into something all his own. Ramsey described this cycle of learning in his own classroom as "Explore, Flip, Apply." I need to be a Mr. Miyagi in my classroom, instead of a Kevin Costner (another reference to Field of Dreams...just in case I lost you there). I'm going to put a lot of thought this summer into what "Explore, Flip, Apply" is going to look like in my classroom. Maybe I'll even tape a copy of this photo by my desk to remind me where my focus needs to be...
My thoughts were, "If you make those videos really, really awesome, those students will WANT to sit down at their computer, iPad, or phone and watch them every night." But I couldn't fit that on my picture above.
Then I watched Keynote #1 of FlipCon13 (via the archive), and I started to get an inkling that flipping my classroom wasn't all about the quality of my videos. Jon and Aaron's presentation focused mostly on their evolution of thought through their years of flipping. They too simply started with videos, which then became more professional, which gave them more flexible time in class and started them thinking about mastery learning, and now their focus is tying differentiated learning into the flipped mastery classroom. I am starting to realize that videos are simply a tool to open more time in your classroom, at which point you can really start making headway with your students' learning by incorporating various learner-centered strategies. The videos themselves aren't meant to get your students excited about your class content - your class time can now be used to get your students excited about your class content. Imagine that!
During the presentation, Aaron did a short demonstration that really resonated with me. He pulled out his phone and asked Siri (or something similar) to find the electron configuration of oxygen. In seconds, he had it available on his phone. He explained that once this would have been a question he'd ask students on a test, but questioned if this type of information should be the focus of education anymore since "facts" are now so widely accessible. My own classes have already been slowly evolving away from the memorization of facts to an emphasis on the process of science. However, this part of the presentation brought things back into focus for me. How can I balance the expectations of standardized testing, which are predominantly based on discrete facts, with a need for my students to be problem-solvers in the unknown future in which they will find themselves? As Jon and Aaron stressed, we are giving our students tools that can be applied to a variety of situations - not training them for a specific job.
More foreign to me was Jon and Aaron's discussion of mastery learning. I've tried to incorporate mastery learning into my classes in the past, but it hasn't been very successful. Mostly this has been due to low student motivation. Jon and Aaron reminded me of the power that these strategies can have if implemented successfully. They described how their classrooms revolve around standards-based objectives, and students show their mastery of these objectives according to a rubric. I think I'm only a few steps away from a mastery approach for my classes. I already rely heavily on formative assessment in my classroom. Also, students don't get a grade on a science notebook assignment until they have reached 100% correct, and all students are required to make corrections on their quizzes and tests. Finally, all the teachers in my district (including me!) have created learning objectives for each of the units that they teach. I order to fully implement a mastery classroom, however, I just need a little more help with the organization of the process. I remembered that I own Jon and Aaron's book and should probably reread it this summer to help with this!
Because I have been "attending" FlipCon13 by watching the archived sessions, I was able to watch Ramsey Musallam's presentation immediately after Jon and Aaron's. This is when my thoughts on flipped learning were transformed the most. Ramsey delved into the murky world of student motivation, which I realized has been the missing piece from my classes over the years. He challenged teachers to think of our content as a "mystery box" that has the potential to excite our students as they uncover its secrets. Ramsey played a TED clip of J.J. Abrams describing how all great movies hold back secrets at the very beginning and slowly reveal them to the audience as the movie progresses. Ramsey suggested that this is should be a model for student learning. At that moment, everything clicked in my mind. I don't need to make amazing videos to engage my students in the content; rather, I need to facilitate student access of the content as they develop their own questions in regard to these "mysteries." I am fortunate as a science teacher to work with content that naturally lends itself to "discovery learning."
I especially connected with the example that Ramsey gave from The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi allowed Daniel to flounder for awhile before jumping to his aid. He provided Daniel with some instruction in karate after the need had become apparent to Daniel, and then Daniel took those tools and transformed them into something all his own. Ramsey described this cycle of learning in his own classroom as "Explore, Flip, Apply." I need to be a Mr. Miyagi in my classroom, instead of a Kevin Costner (another reference to Field of Dreams...just in case I lost you there). I'm going to put a lot of thought this summer into what "Explore, Flip, Apply" is going to look like in my classroom. Maybe I'll even tape a copy of this photo by my desk to remind me where my focus needs to be...
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