This week we are at Valley Forge!

Flipping is not really about the videos or technology -- it's about what you can do in the classroom.

This week I spent 3 days previewing and then reviewing several documents (by the DBQ Project) related to the question "Would you quit Washington's army?" That's all we did from Monday to Wednesday; today was for planning/prewriting their multi-paragraph responses. Some started their paragraphs today, others will do that tomorrow. I will assess the work they did by the end of tomorrow's class.

MEANWHILE, they had a homework assignment to watch and comprehend a 10-minute video about the American military's strengths, weaknesses, and main strategies. (The presenter is a colleague at my middle school with expertise on the topic. We filmed and produced the video last December.) They will take an assessment on that quiz tomorrow for about 10 minutes, before resuming work on the Valley Forge DBQ essay.

I think this is a great example of the flexibility that flipped instruction can provide. My students have absorbed essential material/content on their own time at their own pace and convenience. I devoted consecutive days of class time to skill-building and assessment -- which are both difficult to do fairly outside the classroom.

QUIZ RESULTS UPDATE:

• 82 students took this quiz on Friday December 12, which took about fifteen minutes of class time.
• 72 showed solid understanding the first time they took the quiz. That seems pretty darned good to me!
• 8 other students gave some accurate answers but had some omissions or mistakes or were too light on specific detail. Within a few days they re-attempted the necessary question(s), which led to a score of 85% (B) in my grading policy.
• 1 student needed two re-attempts at the quiz because she was really unprepared the first time.
• Another student never did try to retake this quiz, so his grade is still a failing score of 50%.