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Almost time to end the year -- with a flipping bang!

6/1/2015

 
     We still have almost 4 weeks left to go until the students' last day on June 24th. Many colleagues and friends in Georgia, Colorado, and elsewhere are ending their school year in May, but I still have 15 more teaching days (not including 8th grade graduation ceremony & rehearsal, the theme park field trip, and Step-Up Day).  Worst of all, they already had their year-end trip (3 days in New York City) before Memorial Day, so academics were interrupted for a week. Who wants to do school for another month?!

      So for the 3rd year, I'm ending the year with a TLAP-style Civil War unit. This was inspired by the Interact Simulations "Civil War" booklet, but we ditched some elements and revised some others for a flipping awesome ending to the year.
       Every student wears a badge with the name of a real-life Civil War soldier. Half of them represent men from a unit that mustered in our school's city: Newton Massachusetts. The other names match a regiment that enlisted near Newton Alabama. (Yeah, this took a long time to research, but I will definitely recycle this unit in future years!) So we have "Union soldiers" and "Confederate soldiers," but in class I avoid substantive conflict between the students' characters. The Alabama kids will never be asked to support slavery, and I discourage any attempts to speak with a Southern drawl.
      At first, each student's character has the rank of "Private." (I am and always shall be a Lieutenant General.) One of my secondary learning objectives is military rank hierarchy -- an area of general knowledge.  I also need to keep them engaged on these warm June days!  So they are always working for promotion to a higher rank:
       The "Combat Cards" that were mentioned in the Promotion Checklist is a simple card game like War, except instead of aces and jacks they have military term like musket and mortar, or platoon and brigade.* Students get to play several times a week, and the faster they learn the values of each term, the faster they play the game, and the more quickly they can win cards!  I will also have them work in small groups sometimes to quiz other groups on Civil War knowledge; that's how they gain Morale Points.

       Also, the promotions help to power the flipping element of the Civil War unit. There are three sets of essential understandings that I expect all students to gain:
  • describe several causes of the war (not just slavery!)
  • disprove several myths about the war (like "Lincoln freed all the slaves")
  • explain how 5 events were turning points (including Gettysburg and Sherman's March)
That is what the videos are for. These will be my last 3 assessments of the year, and I will use the same system of quizzes and retakes for accountability (related post). The one little twist is that I'm going to try asynchronous flipping:  Students can take the quiz whenever they feel ready -- no assigned due-dates. I plan to provide 15-20 minutes of quiet time every class period for students to take an assessment OR prepare for their next quiz OR for independent research.  I trust that the desire for rank promotion will spur many students forward.  If this is a terrible disaster then I can assign official quiz dates for the last week of school, but I really want to give it a shot.  
        I will keep you posted!

* The Combat Cards come directly from the 
Interact Simulations "Civil War" unit, so I must give full credit to its authors.

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    Who is this flipping guy?!

       Andrew Swan is in year 20  of teaching middle school (currently grade 8 US Civics/Government in a Boston suburb). Previously he taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English, US History, geography, and ancient history in Massachusetts and Maine. 
      For the past 6 years, Andrew has flipped nearly all his direct instruction so we have more class time for simulations, deep discussions, analyzing primary sources, etc. ... and also to promote mastery for students at all levels.
      His wonderful wife and his 2 high school-age children indulge Andrew's blogging, tweeting, & other behaviors. These include co-moderating the #sschat Twitter sessions and Facebook page. 
      ​
    Andrew does not always refer to himself in the third-person. 

    Twitter @flipping_A_tchr
    Instagram @swanversations

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