The first test...how it all played out

This past week was pretty exciting in my math class.  We started off by taking our first math test, which I will talk more about later in the post.  This week also marked the beginning of flipping with the other 5th grade class (as I mentioned in past posts, for the first unit I am only flipping my 5th grade class, and I am teaching math the traditional way to the other 5th grade class).  Finally, through a Professional Learning Network I belong to on edmodo, I found a new way to post videos that makes it easier for students to view and enlarge.

So, starting from the first event...test #1.  I want to preface this post by stating that I am hesitant to share my student's test data because I don't feel that I was able to truly run my flipped classroom as intended.  Rather than being able to go around and help one-on-one with student homework, I was spending a substantial amount of time trouble shooting technology problems.  That being said, I can tell you that I had several students comment that they re-watched some of the videos while they were studying for their test.  As far as my data goes...I started the unit with a pretest and ended with our district wide assessment.  Class A (flipped class) averaged a 45% on the pretest, while Class B (traditional) averaged a 43%.  After our first test, Class A's average growth from the pretest to the actual test was 44% (meaning, the average test score was close to 90%).  Class B's average growth from the pretest to the actual test was 38% (their average test score was an 82%).  Is this substantial...I'm not sure yet, but my gut tells me that it is.  I am really looking forward to when I am actually able to spend my time not worrying about tech problems (we're getting there).

The second major event this week was Class B began flipping as well.  With the exception of the large number of students who don't have access to a computer, they did very well!  The kids who couldn't view the videos at home came in as soon as they got off the bus & watched them.  I felt like I was finally starting to be able to do the flipped classroom as intended!

Finally, posting my videos online has been a bit of a struggle because they always showed up very small, and they took a long time to load.  I have been using i-movie to create the videos, then turning that into a quicktime movie & posting it on our class edmodo site.  I had a member of my P.L.N. suggest that I use schooltube, and it has been working great!  The videos have been loading faster (although our old student computers keep them from loading as quickly as I'd like), and the kids can enlarge as much as they need too.

I want to end with my highlight of the week:  I was walking around helping kids with their homework when I noticed that a student (who already had the video & notes done at home) was watching the video again.  I asked her why she was watching it again (curiosity got the best of me), and she replied, "I forgot how to find the perimeter, so I thought I'd watch it again to help remind me".  I almost did a happy dance right then and there!