Reflection brings about change

Last week I spent some time reflecting on how the year has been going, and some of the data I've gotten.  This week I want to talk about some changes I'd like to make.

I've been struggling with a couple things in my classroom, & I think it'll be easiest to just list them out here:

• Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).
• Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.
• While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.
• Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.

So what am I going to do about it?  I'll take these one at a time & work through them...as always, I would love to hear any recommendations you have.

Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).

I have literature circles in my reading class that requires each student to have a "job" in their group.  I would like to start putting students into groups that I assign (until they get a little bit better at choosing their own groups), and assigning them jobs.  I think I'll open up the discussion of jobs to the class & see what type of jobs they come up with.  I'm thinking groups will have 3-4 students in them.  

You know what, I might just share this whole problem with the class & see what they come up with.  I can always recommend the assigned groups idea if no else comes up with it.

Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.

I think that if I end up putting the students into groups, this might help alleviate this issue.  On the flip side, it might breed another issue (students just copying their group's papers).  Perhaps a contract of some sort might help.  Something along the lines of "I swear to help everyone in my group understand the questions and answers."  In my dream world, I would love it if everyone in the group took it upon themselves to make sure that everyone understood the math.  Since the students have to pass one quiz to move on to another, maybe the group can't move on until everyone understands.  I think that could go 1 of 2 ways: First, students hate it because they can't move ahead when they know what they're doing.  Second, students become great collaborators & see the value in helping others.

While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.

Perhaps taking a step back from the discussions & letting the students lead them would help here...but I do find that I can easily help troubleshoot issues before they become issues when I'm there for discussions.  To be continued, I guess, I'd love some feedback on this.

Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.

As of now, here are the options when my students finish their work...

• start the next lesson - this works out really well for students who hate having homework, or for students who don't have access at home
• play some on-line math games - my honest opinion on this is, meh (imagine with a shoulder shrug)...it does allow students to get some additional practice, but it's usually practice on what they already know
• create videos using Educreations - I actually really like this one, but I need to do a better job teaching students what must be included in their videos...some get a little sidetracked trying to make them funny & entertaining, and lose the math along the way

I need/want more meaningful activities that are going to make the kids WANT to finish early.  Say what?!? Yup, I want the kids to want to finish early because the extra activities are THAT awesome.  An idea I have now become just a tiny bit obsessed with is Video Story Problems.  I haven't done anything with Video Story Problems yet, and I really really really want to try.  Has anyone out there tried these with their class?  If so, please let me know how it went, what you did, etc.  I found a really informative video by Ben Rimes that explains Video Story Problems better than I could...check it out if you're interested.

Where do I go from here?

It has been a year and a half since I flipped my classroom, and I feel like I'm in need of some time to reflect.

2010-2011 School Year (my first year teaching 5th grade)
Number of students: 22
Style: Traditional
Beginning of the year RIT: 202.3
End of the year RIT: 212.5
Growth: 10.2
Average on in class assignments: 82.92%

2011-2012 School Year

Number of students: 28
Style: Flipped 101
Beginning of the year RIT: 208.1
End of the year RIT: 215.2
Growth: 7.1
Average on in class assignments: 84.55%

2012-2013 School Year (thus far)

Number of students: 30
Style: Flipped Mastery (sort of...self paced within the unit)
Beginning of the year RIT: 203.8
Middle of the year RIT: 210.9
Growth so far: 7.1
Average on in class assignments: 86.67%

So what do I notice when I look at the numbers?
#1 My class keeps getting bigger!
#2 The average on in-class assessments continues to improve.
#3 My students did not show as much growth on the MAP test in my first year of flipping as they did the year I taught traditional...interesting...I need to come back to that one.
#4 This year is looking really positive, as they have already met the growth (mid-way through the year) that my class made last year as a whole.

Hmmmm....
I want to go back to #3 on the list above.  I was quite surprised to see that the growth for those students was lower than my traditional group.  Besides the flipped classroom, what was the difference?  Well, there were far fewer students, for starters.  In addition, my flipclass group started higher, which makes it more difficult to show as much growth.  It's not an excuse, just one possible factor.  Another factor might be behavior.  The class in my first flipped group had a video a night...but it also had a large group that didn't do their homework.  That led to some of the changes I made for this year.  But looking back at the numbers, I feel like I might have let my high kids down a little by making them follow my pace.  I look at this year's class and I see my high students being able to skip lessons they already know and given a chance to stretch their knowledge.  I also have implemented math inquiry projects at the beginning/end of each unit.  The students absolutely love these projects.  This year's class also has to do a lot of writing within math.

So where do I go from here?
I definitely want to develop more inquiry projects, and more time to do real-world & hands on activities in the classroom.  I think the issue I'm having is trying to figure out the most useful way to handle in-class time.  Keep in mind, I flip math, so one of the things I want my students to be able to do is during class is practice solving math problems.  The issue I'm running into is that I spend most of my in class time doing discussions in small groups on the board, which leaves me with very little time monitoring the students who are working.

I think next year I might begin having somewhat assigned groups, where each student has a "role", so-to-speak, that way they can get their discussion started, and I can come over when it's time to try some problems.

So what else?  I'd love to have all my quizzes on the computer, but until our county updates to the newest version of Moodle, and I get some training in it, I won't be able to do that either.

Finally...and most important (in my opinion), are the inquiry projects.  I'd like to integrate these throughout my different lessons, rather than just the end, just the beginning, or both.  Honestly, I'm running into a bit of a wall trying to come up with them.  This is where my #pln needs to help me out.  As I mentioned in a previous post, John Fritszky & I created a google doc that has all the ccss for 5th grade math in it.  We are trying to compile good inquiries to go with all the standards.  This is a massive undertaking, but you know what they say, we're better together, so please, if you teach 5th grade, or know someone who teaches 5th grade, share this document.  Ask (or beg if you must) for them to share what the math projects they have done.  We need to stop working in isolation and sharing out what we know is good teaching.

Some things are starting to come together

This week was a good week...looking back on some recent posts, I've noticed they were a touch on the negative side, and I need to make up for that.  So here's the skinny on some really excellent things that were happening in my class this week.

Monday
On Monday I got to speak at the "Fired Up" Conference for local student teachers.  I love talking to educators about #flipclass.  Especially excited, energetic student teachers who want to soak it all in!  If you're interested in any of the information/resources I shared, please check out this document.

Monday night I joined the #flipclass twitter chat, which I've been missing lately due to life/kids/work/kids/exercise/etc...you get the point.  I'm so glad I was able to join in because I got to connect with @JohnFritzky.  Independently, we've both been trying to come up with math investigations that are more than solving problems.  We're talking real world application where the kids have to do the thinking.  Rather than try to do it all on our own, John put together a google doc with all the 5th grade ccss on it, & we're slowly filling it in with projects.  So far we have projects involving Bungee Jumping Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake recipe disasters.  If you want have any projects you can add...or you just want to check out what we've got, go here.

Tuesday
My students took their fractions test...I'm not going to lie, I was afraid...very afraid.  One kind of cool thing I did on this unit was have the students write story problems before the test.  I picked a few, and made them our extra credit problems.  The students LOVED this (especially when theirs got chosen).

So I took the tests home, and low-and-behold, the two classes combined to average a 92%...I'll say it again 92% ON A FRACTIONS TEST!!  Whoop, whoop!  I was so ridiculously proud of them that I did a happy dance for all to see.  One of my students mentioned that he'd rather see my breakdancing than happy dance.  I told him they'd have to something even more amazing for me to breakdance ;)

Wednesday
Students worked on an inquiry project applying their newly acquired knowledge of fractions.  The overview of the activity was the students were to make strawberry shortcake with a given recipe, but their dog ate all the measuring cups they were going to use & they had to recreate the recipe with the ones they had left.  Then they had to advertise the grand opening of their bakery.

Thursday
Earlier in the week I had a few of my students ask me about our next inquiry (they're really starting to like the projects), and I told them the truth...I don't have it done yet.  Then they asked me if they could make it.  Ummm, let me think about it...YES!  I gave them the learning goals for the next unit, very little instruction and said, "Good luck!"  Our next unit is on volume, standard & metric measurements & converting those measurements.  They came back to me with a project that would require the students to measure the volume of given buildings (which they created on the computer).  They also worked in problems the builders were having that would require the students to use standard and metric measurements.  Wow.  That's all I can say about that.

Friday
During math the students all got to present their advertisements.  I had students who don't normally have an opportunity to shine, get up and blow the rest of the class away with a full on commercial.  I had a pair of students actually bring in strawberry shortcake.  I had yet another set of students create a webpage to go with their advertisement.  I was impressed.

It may seem like I talk a lot about math, because that is the subject I flip.  That being said, I work in an elementary school, so I also teach reading and writing (my partner teaches science/social studies).  In reading we are finishing up a study of the fantasy genre.  Friday I took the kids to the lab, gave them a rubric of what they needed to have on their fantasy projects & said, "Have fun."  As of now, I have the following projects in the works: keynotes, websites, posters, video book reviews and dioramas.  But the most exciting thing of the whole week happened when I was searching around the computer and found an application I forgot we had, called "Comic Life".  Basically, it allows you to make comics using pics you have.  I mentioned it to the class & I had a few students say they wanted to try.  In this group of students included one child who shows very little motivation in class.  He gets very little work done, and his work isn't always his personal best.  He latched on to this comic strip with a passion that I haven't seen in him all year.  He even asked if he could work through recess (his most cherished time of the day).  While our projects aren't done yet, I am really looking forward to what I find next week.

So, like I said, this week was a good week, and it's important to remember that things like this happen every day.  The important thing is to not let the bad things trump the good.