Blog Archives

It's all about the students [T-minus 5 and counting]

8/31/2017

Today was the second of our 2 professional days. The first is mainly about the adults: a superintendent message, the re-gathering of colleagues (including at least 1 ice-breaker activity!), a principal-led meeting about new employees and goals and policies. Then you use whatever remaining energy you have to spruce up the classroom.
This second day focuses on students. Each cluster of four core-class teachers sits for about 90 minutes with the guidance counselor and special-education facilitators. We get a brief description of about twenty of our 80-something students -- the brand-new move-ins, the girl whose sister died last spring, and particularly those with IEPs and special-ed support. Within about one hour we feel like:

Then it took about an hour to sort out the support staff situation. I cannot describe the situation in detail on a public blog. Suffice to say there was some disagreement about which students are and are not ready for a mainstreamed Social Studies class; the number determines which teaching aides will come to my room for specific sections. I think we went through five different versions of the plan, and I'm not totally confident that the "final plan" will actually happen. We'll have to see next week!
After lunch, the four core teachers met in my room to make some class roster swaps. Twin sisters should not be in the same section! 14 boys + 8 girls = 1 nightmare!! It's always better to make these changes before the first day, although we can and should make some more switches later in September.
One flipping relevant item from today:

I helped the assistant principal learn to use the Chrome extension Screencastify, so she can produce a 7-minute presentation for teachers to watch about the difference between accommodations & modifications. It only took a few minutes to get up and running and make a test video. She was so happy! I feel hopeful that more school-based announcements and PD can get flipped this year.

An overly leisurely morning [T-minus 6 and counting]

8/30/2017

I never ever ever sleep in! Even when I'm sick, jetlagged, or in the middle of a Disney vacation -- I always wake up by 6AM, typically getting up in the 5 o'clock hour with or without an alarm. But apparently I didn't set one last night and slept all the way to 6:56. That would be fine except my kids had their second day of school. Fortunately they got up on-time and did their routines, because the boy's first class starts at 7:30. I always skip the superintendent message and district gathering on the south side of the city. Too much bother for driving and parking.
So I tried to enjoy my well-rested self in a quiet house for a couple hours before heading to school for the principal's Opening Meeting. I had a few loose ends and small tasks to address:

Revising and preparing the chaperone packet for the field trip we'll take on the 20th, which is two weeks earlier than usual. I started the list of jobs like "make the student groups", "collect cell phone #s from new staff", "decide who gets the medication bags." All the little things that go into a field trip.
Updating my school-hosted website, which I rarely utilize because my students get assignments and notices through Schoology. However, it is the first online introduction for many parents, so I took 15 minutes to spruce it up. I added this video which I made two summers ago. Not terrific, but a decent introduction to my class.

The last to-do item was writing this blog post. Now I'm off to school!

Re-commitment to this blog [T-minus 7 and counting]

8/29/2017

Earlier this summer, I posted here every day for a month. Then I took a few weeks off blogging with merely occasional posts, although I did write something for the FLGlobal site and another piece that will be coming out soon for the FLN newsletter. Oh yeah, I also have a regular job to start prepping for. Yikes! Actually I never really stopped thinking forward about units and systems and skills for students in 2017-18. Since early-July I have filled about 25 notebook pages with scrawlings, charts, incomplete outlines, and messages to myself. Somewhere in the middle of this I had a mild personal freak-out over turning 40, but I didn't buy a convertible or shave my head or anything like that. So far.

Some visual highlights of my August:

Now I have 7 days before students return on September 5. I hereby commit to writing a blog post for the next 10 days, to document my transition from summer through the first four days of the school year.

Today I spent 5 hours at school. Much of that time was spent chatting with colleagues in the hallways. "How was your summer? ... Yeah, I hope it's a good year too ... Have you heard when the lockers will be delivered?" [The 25-year-old student lockers were removed from hallways in July, but have not been replaced and we don't know why or when!]
Some things I got done today:

polished, printed, and copied the annual Letter to Parents (including the field trip notice and permission slip for our Sept 20 visit to Sturbridge Village)
set a digital clock so the kids will sign-out properly at last! (and hung it up)
cut index cards into the right size for nametag badges to use in the first few days
tested a lapel microphone on a camera, laptop, and cellphone in hopes that I can record videos in my classroom without the annoying echo -- today's results show that should work pretty well
went to Staples for a few supplies like a pencil sharpener and hanging-file holder (and of course an iced Dunkin' Donuts coffee!)
decided NOT to put up more posters on the green bulletin board
found out that I will host one of the school's laptop carts this year, which means I had to move some furniture near the door to get a good spot

Tomorrow is the official First Day for teachers, which includes a superintendent's message at the southside high school which I NEVER ATTEND because the parking situation sucks and I can think of hundreds of better ways to spend my time. One year I went golfing :) The best/worst part is that his message to teachers gets recorded and then re-played at the school's staff meeting in the afternoon. Why not flip it completely?!?!?!

Here's why I will never tackle a student onto the gym floor

8/26/2017

"What problem(s) did flipping solve for you?"
[topic for the week of August 30]

I am slightly cheating this week, because most of this response will appear soon on the FLGlobal Initiative blog. I wrote this more like a report, less like a reflection.... but I'm also in the midst of start-of-the-year & end-of-the-summer turmoils, so my next reflective blog piece needs a different topic! [More like last August's mea culpa]

UPDATE (2 hours later): Okay, never mind. It seems lame to just copy and paste one blog post into another. Instead I will write a much shorter response here about another problem that The Flip helped solve for me: calming my conscience.

I teach a very heterogeneous student population in a widely diverse suburban community. I have actually had a kid who lives in a mansion sitting next to someone residing in a homeless shelter. Some students are gifted, worldly-wise, and all ready for high school ... others read at a 3rd-grade level. They are all my students. I need a class structure, grading system, and curriculum that can make all these children grow and learn. That is extremely difficult, and I struggled in vain for about ten years.
Sometimes I knew that I was going too slow, holding back dozens of kids with my pacing, and watering down expectations ... just to make sure that nobody failed. I was an ELA teacher, and we read books at half the speed that many could have handled. While I tried to differentiate writing skills, I could not figure out a good way for direct instruction. Workstations, interactive lectures, lengthy handout packets, buying new books, staying after school....I tried them all. My systems worked okay, eventually, kind of, I guess.
Other times, I'm sure that I went too fast. If you missed a certain 20-minute portion of the class lecture, well that was too bad for you! "Get notes from a friend" because we're moving on to the Super-Cool Project, which my higher-achieving kids often enjoyed but left others in the dust. You can see it in their face on Presentation Day, or while working in a 'cooperative learning group': a glazed-eye combo of panic and apathy.
At the "moving-on" (AKA graduation) ceremony in June, each student walks alone across the gymnasium half-court to collect a certificate of completion (AKA diploma ... remember, this is 8th grade). I can vividly remember watching about a dozen kids each year stride in front of my row, and I'm thinking "I did nothing for you. I just passed you along, but you gained nothing." I always resisted the urge to tackle him or her onto the gym floor, shout "NOOOOO!! We're not done yet! Come back upstairs to room 203 right now!" That would probably not work well for me.

Anyway, I never feel that way anymore during the 'moving on'/graduation ceremony. Even the challenging girl I wrote about last month -- she made some progress early in the year, even though circumstances declined by June. Flipping for mastery has removed barriers and blame like

my after-school availability
the pace of my class
speed of my lecturing
appearance of note-taking sheets
clarity of the textbook
level of quality/cooperation of peers

You can watch and re-watch my direct-instruction video lessons until you "get it." Then hopefully we have time to build on that understanding with interactions and Super-Cool Projects. If not, that's too bad and hopefully we'll get there next time. But now I know that you know what you really need to know, ya know?

UPDATE 2: Well, this turned out longer than I expected, but it only took about 30 minutes to write on this Saturday afternoon. Best of all, it helped to re-visit the story of my pre-flipping life, while I sit surrounded by lists of things-to-do like videos to record. Today I have reminded myself why I bother. Thank you, #flipblogs!!

The merits of a flipping status quo

8/12/2017

"What flipping changes are you planning or considering for the new school year?"

For teachers, summer is the season of renewal and rebirth ... not spring! The spring months are usually about operating on survival-mode, squishing in the last couple of units, freezing or baking in the classroom, and trying to achieve meaningful closure. June, July, August are prime time to reflect, seek & absorb new skills or ideas, design new systems, and gather enough courage to start all over again.

In the past 5 summers, I have made major changes to my practice:
2012: switching voluntarily from ELA to Social Studies
2013: figuring out how to flip my classroom (while also campaigning unsuccessfully for a position on the School Committee)
2014: starting this blog, renovating my grading system to accommodate the flip, changing the first unit on colonial regions (while also renovating the house we'd just bought)
2015: overhauling the style and content of my video lessons with green-screen and OfficeMix (and also designing/implementing a 3-day workshop to introduce flipped learning)
2016: re-designing our curriculum workflow with better integration of summative assessments (with more home-improvement jobs and a local-history research project)

2017? Meh. Nothing that major. I re-visited some unit objectives, especially to remove some content from the pre-Revolution period. (Buh-bye, most of the French & Indian War!) That will give us some breathing room later in the school year, so we don't feel so squished in the spring. I've had some mini-epiphanies about things like Bloom's Taxonomy, and got some ideas for introducing the flip to students -- thanks to fellow #flipblogs posts and Jon Bergmann's certification program. That's about it. The most revolutionary flipping thing about my summer has been expanding connections with other flippers -- through the FLN SlackChat, on Twitter, and exchanging emails with some terrific educators like Jon Bergmann and Peter Paccone.

Change can become addictive; it self-perpetuates if you're not careful; we revise so much and so fast that we don't know if it worked. I know this is the Summer of "SHIFT THIS!", and I plan to read that book eventually, but some changes need time to sink in. I didn't get a chance to fully implement the workflow changes last year, for many reasons that I blogged about in June. (The presidential campaign was one major distraction!)
In many ways, I feel like September 2017 will be the month that I hoped and worked for last summer. Does that make sense??

Finally, I flipping figured out how to use Bloom's!!

8/3/2017

I believe in Bloom's Taxonomy, despite some critical skepticism out there which I don't consider compelling. The general concept certainly seems relevant for history classes: you need to know some facts (like when & why "The New Colossus" was written) before you can make analytical or judgmental claims (like whether or not that poem expresses the message of the Statue of Liberty).
History matters, people.

However, I just figured out exactly how to connect the concept with my flipping practice -- how to consistently 'climb the ladder' for each curriculum unit. It's a long post, but let me try to walk you through an example from Unit 1 of the year.
I expect that all students will be able to contrast several areas of daily life in the 1750s with daily life in the 2010s. That’s part of our “America Before the Revolution” unit. If I asked them to respond in the first week of school, their answers would be generally on-target: “People didn’t have cars so they had to walk everywhere … They were dirty … Colonists wore dresses and suits and hats…” These statements are true but not well-informed, and missing some key elements of colonial life that help explain the Revolutionary period.
In terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy, this objective asks students to ANALYZE the daily life of a historical period – to distinguish multiple aspects of 1750s life and note differences with their life today (which can rely on their prior knowledge). Why can’t they do this analysis right away? Because we skipped some steps.

However, this will not be effective unless students have some basic knowledge about specific details of ‘lifestyles in the past’, or else how will they recognize them in the primary sources? Also, they need to know enough about aspects of 1750s life so they can accurately contrast it with the present-day

These understandings can be expanded and made more memorable with discussions and class activities. The last one in particular is a deep concept that can be understood in shallow or deep ways. They should be internally maintained (in the students’ brain) to improve fluency with the APPLY objectives. We should formally assess the accuracy and depth students’ understanding, to ensure it is proficient to move forward. These mastery assessments can and should be retaken until proficiency is achieved.
The italicized vocabulary is the most basic level of understanding. Some students might already know these terms. They are essential terms that will appear in later activities, sources, etc. in this unit and perhaps some later ones too. These terms could be externally maintained (on a word wall, a reference sheet, etc.) or we might expect them to be internal (memorized). We could place these on the lowest Bloom’s Taxonomy level:

Now let’s view these levels in a different way: left-to-right in the order students will experience them.

After experiencing this process for several days, some students are ready for the top of the Bloom’s Taxonomy ‘pyramid’: CREATE and EVALUATE. Others will need more time to correct their misunderstandings at the ANALYZE level, and they should revise their responses for accuracy, detail, appropriateness, or another major area.
The creators and evaluators can spend 1 or 2 class periods on a self-selected task. These are more independent, more unique, more “fun” for students. The quality is almost guaranteed to be high, because they have already successfully analyzed and understood the topic. We’re not throwing them into the deep end to make a skit or build a model about something they barely understand. These projects might be a continuation of an earlier class activity, such as writing a possible next-day diary entry of the primary source we looked at in class, or a based-on-real-life skit/comic conversation that includes historical details in a humorous way.
It’s tempting to leap ahead into this exploratory zone, because it’s more fun and engaging and kids seem to be learning. However, if we skip the UNDERSTAND, APPLY, ANALYZE steps (and the two levels of assessment along the way), then we have set up many students to fail. Even the best and brightest will not get as much out of these cool projects, or they will get exhausted and needlessly frustrated by researching details. The teacher is also likely to get irritated and bothered by questions during the workshop time, or sifting through a stack of projects with widely-varying quality.

Effective flipping for social studies should follow the Bloom’s Taxonomy levels by:

giving multiple convenient opportunities for students to gain essential “low-order” understandings (usually from video lessons)
expanding & clarifying those understandings with in-class discussions & brief activities (ex. short comic, tweetstorm) that students are prepared to join
opening up class time to practice skills by applying them in structured and informally-assessed activities AND learn more from primary or secondary sources by applying prior knowledge to find examples, counter-arguments, etc.
giving multiple opportunities to analyze the issue at a deep level, which all prior activities and lessons have been connected to and preparing for!
offering proficient students some class time to explore even more deeply by creating and/or evaluating the issue in some way

Thoughts? Complaints? Adulation? Rotten tomatoes?

It's all about the students [T-minus 5 and counting]

An overly leisurely morning [T-minus 6 and counting]

Re-commitment to this blog [T-minus 7 and counting]

Here's why I will never tackle a student onto the gym floor

The merits of a flipping status quo

Finally, I flipping figured out how to use Bloom's!!

Who is this flipping guy?!

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