Tightening up the reigns...to some degree

A few weeks ago I was venting here about my students not getting their work done, and I posed the question, "Do my students have too much freedom?"  I decided the answer was, yes...and no!  It totally depends on the kid (as is true in every classroom, huh).  So here is the solution I came up with.  On Monday, the students & I went through and set up a calendar for the entire unit.  I told them they are allowed to work ahead of me, but they cannot get behind.

I love that the students have been able to quiz out of certain aspects of a unit, and it is a big point of pride for the kids who are successful in quizzing out.  I didn't want to lose that, but I wasn't sure how to make it work with the newly, more rigid schedule.  I mentioned this to the students because I'm all about being transparent, and quite frankly they have really good ideas!  Once again, I wasn't disappointed.  One child said to me, "Mrs. Bush, why don't we just skip that section and do whatever we have next?"  Another child responds, "Or we can make our student made videos during that time."  And yet another chimes in with, "Or we could help other kids."  In my head I'm thinking, oh...you mean just like I had you doing before?  DUH!

Sometimes it's easy to get stuck on the fact that if one thing isn't working, then everything needs an overhaul, and that isn't so.  In this case, my kids who are responsible & on schedule still have the same options they've always had.

And so the week began with our new plan in place.  On Monday, we all watched the first video together (it is agonizing to watch yourself on video btw).  I made the decision to watch it together b/c I thought we could all use a little refresher on what's expected when we watch the video & complete our WSQ.  Also, we had a few new students and I wanted them to get a clear idea of what is to be expected.  In addition NO ONE passed out of our first learning goal, so I knew that everyone needed to see the video.

The next day, it was magical!  Everyone had their work done (b/c we did it together), and was ready to move on (as a side note...yes I realize it was only magical b/c we did everything together in a group, but let me just bask in my moment of happiness, ok?)  I was able to get to everyone and help with a very difficult concept.  The fact that I was able to get around to everyone also helped me realize how difficult this concept was, and therefore led me to our next day's activity...angle bootcamp!

As luck would have it, on Tuesday I had some visitors in my classroom.  I was just getting ready to send the students off to work & I mentioned how they were really lucky that day because there were 3 adults in the room to help (myself, my parapro & a parent helper).  One of my students raises their hand & says "Mrs. Bush, there are a lot more than 3 adults."  At which point I turn around & see our curriculum director standing there with a consultant from Alaska.  Then in walks my superintendant with another consultant from Alaska (long story on the consultant part...but they are experts at mastery teaching helping out our district).  I took a second to introduce myself to the consultants, then I was off & running.  What I found really exciting was that they (all 4 of them) went around the classroom for 5-10 minutes talking to students.  Asking them what they were working on, how the classroom runs, how they manage their work, etc.  I don't know what the students said, but I do know that they all seemed impressed when they left...YEAH!

Of course on Wednesday there were several students who hadn't done their homework the night before.  Being a woman of my word, those students stayed in for recess that very same day to finish up their work.  By Friday they were pretty much all caught up again.  While I am NOT a fan of making kids miss all their recess, I do think they need to realize what their priorities need to be.

Do my students have too much freedom?

This year I've been dabbling in some mastery/self pacing with my math class.  I've both loved and been discouraged by what I've found so far.  I found out early on this year, that when you are the only person in the building who is attempting any sort of "mastery" teaching, holding students accountable to only moving on once they master a concept is not realistic.  My report cards are not standard's based, the students are graded by unit.  Again, making mastery teaching unrealistic.

So how have I loved my attempt so far?  I have seen a large number of students blossoming this year.  They have the freedom to skip out of lessons they already know, and move on to more challenging material that they might not get to otherwise.  I see other students who see their peers moving ahead, and work really hard to keep up with them.  It's been a beautiful thing...and for those kids (who are also uber responsible and always come prepared), it's working.

That brings me to the other chunk of my students (which is a lot larger than I'd like) who struggle to get any work done in class or out of class.  This group of students gets to the end of a unit and still has several videos yet to be watched.  Taking the test becomes pretty difficult when you don't do all the lessons!  So what do I do for those kids?  I feel like I have done so much hand holding already, do I really want to do more...aren't I trying to teach some time management skills this year too?  Some independence maybe???

I ask these questions not because I actually expect anyone to answer, but because they have been weighing on my mind lately.

As of now, we all set up a schedule together at the beginning of a unit.  I give them the time frame for the unit.  Our last unit we had 3 weeks to work on...there were 8 learning goals to be mastered.  That worked out to be about 1 video every other night...not even every night.  Not to mention our in class time.  If a student actually works the whole math period, they could get everything done without ever having homework. To me, this seems fair.  I'm not assigning homework every night.  I even let them work with each other to help each other out.  So why is it that I have students who (3 weeks later) only have 4 of the 8 learning goals done?  Have they been absent?  No.  Is access to the technology the problem? Again, no.  So what gives?  I don't know if it's that they don't know where to begin, am I possibly giving them too much control over when they learn things.  Is there such a thing as too much control?  Apparently I have a LOT of rhetorical questions this week!

When I began this blog, I planned on using it as a place to reflect, and plan changes.  Right now I need to figure out something to change to make this run more smoothly.  I don't want to take away the potential for students to test out of learning goals...But I feel like my kiddos need more structure.  So here is my solution...at least for the time being.  For our next unit, we will again set up a schedule.  I will continue to give students 2 days per learning goal.  This time, however, I am going to mandate which video is to be watched.  If they don't need to do that video, they can either have the night off, or they can move on to the next learning goal.

I like this idea because it allows me to give them a little more guidance on where they should be.  But what about those kids who still don't do the work?  Let's face it, there are still going to be kids that don't do the work.  What do I do with them?  I have a couple of ideas floating around in my head:
1)  Keep them in from all recesses (I already do that with limited success).
2)  Have them call home (again, I've done...success is short lived)
3)  Keep them in from all other additional stuff (assemblies, etc.)
4)  They miss their specials until the work is done.
5)  Keep them after school & require their parents to pick them up.

I really, really, really hate to hold all those options over their heads, but quite frankly I am at a loss of what else to do.  I have very good relationships with almost all of my kids, they just don't do the work.  I don't understand their sense of apathy.  It's hard for me to relate because I was never that kid.

So I guess I put it out there to you all...what do you do with the kids who don't ever do their work?

How am I making this work?

In the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to talk to a few groups about my flipped classroom.  First, I spoke at our "Fired Up" conference, which is a conference for all the student teachers in the area.  It was a great experience, and they asked a lot of great questions.  Many of them revolved around how I am actually getting this whole thing to work.

About 2 weeks after that, I attended EdCamp GR, where I led a session on the flipped classroom (with the help of another teacher from the area...thanks @davidfouch).  That session also went well, and a lot of questions revolved around how the flipped classroom looks different to every teacher.  Personally, I think that is one of the best (and most challenging) parts to a flipped classroom.  You can make it your own.  That, however, is also one of the most difficult parts to explaining a flipped classroom because there isn't a one size fits all approach.  That being said, I think it really helps to see examples of how it could be done, to give you a starting point.  Therefore, I'm dedicating this post to how I actually organize/run my math time.

Before I even get into the system I use, I want to mention that I have been working hard on having "I can" statements that go with every unit.  I refer to those statements throughout the videos, discussions, etc.  They are also always posted on my classroom wall.

To start out, the students all go home with a calendar that we have filled in together that maps out when each student should do each video.  They can certainly move faster than our schedule, but not slower.  They also get a cover sheet that has our guiding questions, required videos and required problems on it.

Each night (or every other night) the students come to class having completed their WSQ's.  Basically, they Watch the video (and take notes), Summarize the video (answer the guiding questions) and write an example Question...get it, WSQ.  We host our videos on our Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/kh5thgrademath  Here's one example of a video for those of you interested in checking them out.  We try to add humor into our videos...if at all possible.  I found that throwing in little songs at the end & not being afraid to be goofy helps a lot (for an example, tune in to 8 min 40 sec).

Here is an example of what the guiding questions looks like to the students.  I try to make the guiding questions some of the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

After they have their WSQ's done, they sign up to meet with me.  I typically meet with a group of 4-5 students.  The first thing they do is check each other's answers from the video.  If anyone got something different from the group, it's their job to help them figure out what they did wrong, and why it was wrong.  This is also a great way for me to tell who was just writing down what I write, and not really doing any practice.  After they do that, they call me over to discuss the guiding questions.  This has helped me a lot in regards to time management, otherwise I'd spend all my time in discussions, and no time working on practice problems.

Once they get the all clear from me, they work on their practice problems (these are what used to be homework).  They self correct their answers and then can quiz on the learning goals.  I keep track of this is a couple of ways.  First, I have my master copy of who's done what (if I ever lost this I would be in major trouble!).  The date of the discussion is marked on the chart.  Once they take a quiz, it is either marked with pink or green (pink means they didn't pass, green means they did).  

Each child also has a file folder where I keep all their quizzes.  At the end of a unit I send it all home for them to study from.  I also have a file for each learning goal, so the students can access the quizzes when they need them.

I think the last organizational tid-bit I have for you is my folder system.  I have a folder where I keep my master highlighted page, as well as all the answer keys to the quizzes.  I've found that having an answer key easily accesible makes getting the students immediate feedback much more doable.

I realize this is a lengthy post, hopefully it is helpful too!

Hmmm, something's not totally working right now...

For the past few weeks I've been thinking about my Flipped Class and how it's going.  I haven't been totally satisfied, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why.  I think it was a sense of feeling like my math classes were fairly chaotic and that I was spending that whole time making sure kids were on task, rather than checking how their math was going.  I also didn't like that even though I was have discussions about math every day, I didn't feel like I could tell whether they could actually solve a math problem!  Knowing the why is great, but kids have to know how to actually solve the problems too!

All our discussions revolved around the how, but they kids never really solved problems until they went off to practice.  The problem was, that I was so busy having discussions that I couldn't watch them solve their practice problems.

Last year, all I did was watch them solve their practice problems (minus the discussion).  I think that now, after having reflected upon the process, I realize that I need both.  So here's a little comparison of the before and after renovation of my math class.

Before
Students would complete a WSQ:

• Watch the video, and take notes...often being prompted to "stop and solve"
• Summarize the video (intro sentence, vocab sentence, answer guiding questions & give an example)
• Question (what questions did you have, or could you pose to your classmates)

Then they would meet with me & we'd discuss all that

Practice problems come next (done and checked independently)

Once the kids practice the required problems & understand them, they quiz to show mastery

What didn't work

• I never got around to checking the "stop & solve" problems from the videos
• The summaries were not great...the intro & vocab were good, but not really as important
• The guiding questions were a great discussion point, but often students forgot to do them.
• The questions were terrible.  The kids were just making something up because they "didn't have a question" and coming up with a question for their peers was "too difficult".

After

Students complete a WSQ:

• Watch the video, and take notes...often being prompted to "stop and solve"
• Summarize the video - students are now asked to answer the guiding questions only (but they better make them good)
• Question (give me an example problem that is similar to the problems from the video)

What I like so far

• I am checking their "stop & solve questions during our discussion time
• I am making them solve a practice problem with me before I let them go to their desk to work independently
• Students are getting more comfortable making student made videos, and it is starting to motivate the others.

Hopefully with these changes, the students and I will finally start to get into a rhythm during class!

Skyping in School!

In my quest to include more writing in math, I've been trying to figure out a way to make it something fun...not an easy task.  Enter Todd Nesloney (@techninjatodd) and John Fritzky (@johnfritzky) and our tri-blog project.  I connected with these two on Twitter & was asked to do a quad-blog with them.  We were unsuccessful at finding a 4th person, so our quad-blog became a tri-blog.  The premis of our blogging will revolve around math (as we are all flipping our math classes to some extent).

Each week, one of our classes will be the "bloggers", where the students write blog posts.  We haven't totally worked out what the posts will be about...specific math content, what we're learning currently, reflections on how flipped math is going, etc. are all some ideas I've been thinking about.  The other 2 classes will be the "commenters".  They will read the blog posts and will then respond to them.  Our hope is that students not only think more critically about math (and are able to verbalize it), but also that they are more careful with their writing...after all, someone will be reading it.

This week the students got to "meet" each other via Skype.  The process of getting Skype to work in all of our buildings (mostly mine) was a bit of a process.  Luckily, my tech team came through with about 20 minutes to spare!  The whole day my students were asking questions and watching the clock.  A few of my kids were literally shaking with excitement.  Me?  I was more concerned about making a good impression & getting the tech to work!  Once the Skype calls came through, the kids did great.  They were asking some really good questions, and it did what we (the teachers) hoped it would do...got the kids excited about writing!

In all honesty, this activity was one of the coolest things I've ever done with a class, and I am very excited to see how it plays out this year.

Things are starting to click

This week we have been very interrupted by the MEAP test (our statewide assessment), so I feared that I wouldn't get into the rhythm that I so much desired for another few weeks...Luckily, I was dead wrong!  To give you perspective, I think I need to back up to the beginning of the week.

On Monday, the kids followed the same MO that they've been following since we started truly flipping (only a few weeks), and barely turned in their homework.  It is one thing if a student doesn't have access to a computer, but it's completely another if they just don't feel like doing the work.  By Monday I had students who hadn't turned in a single WSQ for unit 2 (and we had 3 days of in class to work on them).  After another excellent #flipclass chat on Monday night, I decided to send out progress reports.  So the next day I got everything in order, and everyone who wasn't through at least the first 3 WSQ's, practice problems and quizzes received one.  Students were not happy about it...parents were even less happy (thankfully most parents were unhappy with their kids, and not me).  The following 2 days of math were like a different class.  My students were on task (with a few exceptions), and most of the kids were caught up by Friday.  I also had a handful of students who, by the end of the week, were done with all the learning goals, so I got to try something I'd been wanting to try all year...student made videos!

My students finally realized why I'm asking them to write practice problems in their WSQ's...so they have something ready when they make their own videos.  Many of my studentes were in the hallway when they were making their videos, and one of our intervention specialists was eavesdropping as he walked back to his classroom.  He commented to me later, "They're really talking about math...their conversations are right on target!."

Below are a few pictures that show my students working during math.

Making student made videos on the iPad.

Sharing the iPod touch to complete their WSQ.

Creating a video together.

Teaching each other math during our discussions.

In addition to math starting to finally click, we also got a chance to Skype with two other 5th grade teachers.  I'll be creating an entirely separate post on that topic...but in short, it was one of the coolest things I ever done with a class.

Once we got through Monday, the week was full of wonderful thinking, learning, creating and talking about math!

That was chaotic...and pretty cool too!

This week was a week of firsts.  We had our first assessment, our first front-loaded inquiry project, our first chance at watching videos & completing WSQ's independently, and our first chance to quiz out of a learning goal to prove mastery.

Let's take these firsts one at a time:

This week my students took their first assessment of the year.  Last year (my first year of flipping), my class average on test 1 was a 90% (after the students had a chance to take the retest).  This year my class average was an 83% (no retest yet).  While this is not as high as last year, I also need to consider how my classes compare in their baseline scores.  Last year's class averaged a 206 on the NWEA MAP test.  This year's class averaged a 204.  Slightly lower, but not a significant amount.  What I'm finding is that so far this year's class is performing close (or slightly lower) than last year's class.  So what was different?  One major difference was that I didn't let the kids do any of the videos independently during the first unit (last year I did).  While I find this necessary, I do believe that had they had a chance to watch them independently they probably would have done better.  Secondly, these are different kids.  I always find it difficult to compare one group of kids to another when personalities can vary so much.

After their first test, we attempted our first inquiry project.  You can find more information about it here.  During the inquiry project I had a chance to walk around and look at the students misconceptions that they already have.  As I asked them question after question, it was clear (even to them) that they didn't know how to solve the problem correctly.  That being said, I did have one group that were definitely headed in the right direction.

Upon completion of our attempted inquiry, the students were then assigned the first video in unit 2.  This was the first time that they were able to watch the video & complete the WSQ on their own.  There are definitely some kinks to work through, but overall it went pretty well.  When they came to class the next day I found that most (definitely not all) students had done the work & were ready to have a discussion.  That's when I ran into the problem of there being only one of me & a lot of them that needed to talk.  We developed a sign up sheet & I got around as quickly as possible.  One thing I found that helped speed up the process was letting the first person read their summary completely, then having the rest answer the guiding questions that were supposed to be in the summary.  My student's summaries must include the following:

• Introduction sentence - what was the learning goal
• Vocabulary sentence(s) - in your own words, define the key vocabulary
• Main points (5-7 sentences) - answer the guiding questions (these are HOTS questions)
• Example - come up with your own example of a question that is like what we learned about

I'm not sure what I expected out of the discussions, but I was able to clear up some misconceptions as we talked (mostly confusion about perimeter and area).  

One thing I want to adjust next week is finding a better way to manage the quizzing procedure.  I spent a lot of time giving/checking quizzes for students because they wanted to move on to the next lesson.  What I found was that barely any of time was spent actually working through problems with kids, it was all talking with them about math.  I feel that was beneficial, but I still need to find a way to get around and check in on the kids as they're solving their practice problems.

I also am noticing a potential problem brewing.  I have a few students who have a lack of motivation to do anything at home.  This could be solved if they use their class time wisely because I'm not requiring a video every night.  However, they also are the students who accomplish very little during class.  With me doing mastery teaching, they are going to HAVE to take some responsibility in their work or they will not get very far.  I'd love some advice on that particular issue from anyone who has had the problem in the past.

After math that day (because we only had one day of that this week) I felt many things:  energized AND exhausted, excited AND frustrated...it's amazing how one person can feel so many emotions in the span of an hour!  Luckily it was much more energized and exciting than the latter."

Our final first of the week was the students being able to quiz out of certain learning goals.  As I mentioned in my post last week, I had the students take a pretest and mentioned that if they did well, they could potentially "quiz out" of certain learning goals (because they already know how to do them).  This week those students had a chance to take those quizzes, and many of them did, in fact, quiz out of certain aspects of the unit.  So as of now, I have 60 total students who are doing a variety of different things that span four of the five learning goals in our 2nd unit.  It is exciting to see the students excited about the fact that they can learn at their pace.  While this benefits everyone, I think this really benefits the "high" kids who (in my humble opinion) are often left to fend for themselves because they "already get it".  I could write an entire blog post on that topic, but this is not the time or place for me to get open up that particular can of worms!

That being said, the week was full of exciting, organized chaos...and I loved it!