Flipping History Course

Welcome! As I've mentioned in posts below, I no longer update this site as my blog is now hosted at www.pennyuniversitypress.com/blog. However, I did want to make sure that I left the materials here for those that may be interested in flipping their classroom.

I receive a lot of emails asking for help and advice- please keep sending them! I love, love, love, connecting with other teachers. The best way to reach me is elizabeth@pennyuniversitypress.com.

If after exploring the materials here, you are still interested in flipping your classroom, but need a more concrete road map, I have created a self-paced course, "Flipped Classroom 101." This course is available at http://pennyuniversity.teachable.com/ or via my website www.pennyuniversitypress.com.

The cost is $10.00 which includes a PDF copy of my book, Flipping History. I have tried to keep the cost affordable to teachers, while offsetting some of the costs associated with maintaining my blog and website. I really tried to provide a lot of value for you, and lay out exactly how I started flipping my classroom, and some ideas of where to go once you get the basics down.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions! Happy Flipping!

-Liz

Greek Festival

Today was our Greek festival, students displayed the projects they've been working on and brought in food, music, clothes, and games from Ancient Greece. It was a huge success and we had a lot of parents show up. I had a few parents come up and tell me how much they loved the flip. That was really great to hear, it was also great to see the students so proud of the work. That being said it was definitely a long, chaotic afternoon. I've posted a few pictures below from the festival, as well as a picture of the fantastic columns that the students made for the entrance.

A Culmination of Creativity

This has been an odd week for my students. In Massachusetts we have "April Vacation" which starts next week, and we completed our unit on Ancient Greece last Friday, thus I'm in the weird gray area between units. Rather than start Ancient Rome before vacation, I have elected instead to extend our normal one day "culture day" to a whole week.

Culture Day takes place after we finish a civilization, students bring in food, music, fashion, games, and other things from that area of the world both in ancient and modern times. Prior to the flip this was the only time my students got to work in groups and do in class projects. Now we do that on a daily basis. Since each student has 7 projects from the past unit (yes that means I am currently sitting in a pile of 700 student created posters, models, dioramas and maps) I thought it would be nice of their parents could actually have a chance to come in and view their work.

My vice principal was kind enough to let us use the library tomorrow afternoon, so we are having a full "Greek Festival." The kids have been building columns, making signs, togas, laurel wreaths, and generally planning some pretty cool stuff. Their projects will be set up like a science fair, with each student getting table space. I am going to project videos of in class plays that some of the students performed in one corner (the students are setting up a "Greek Theatre", and the "legacy of Greece" powerpoint the students did in another. Two of my students even created a "QR Code" scavenger hunt that will go throughout the fair.

I am excited to have parents come in and see all the hard work the students have done. Furthermore I am hoping it will be a good chance for other teachers to come and see what cool stuff we were able to accomplish when we didn't have to spend class time listening to lectures. Finally the students are excited and enthusiastic, I'm hoping parents and colleagues can see how beneficial this has been for them.

Below is a sample of the "legacy" slides the students put together. Keep in mind it is very "rough" I basically gave them the microphone and let them coordinate their own Screencast. It is simple, each student making a one sentence statement on what they thought Greece's legacy was. Keep in mind this video was done in my inclusion class, so there are students of many levels and abilities...again its rough...but it is theirs.


I'm excited to see how our "festival" goes tomorrow, I will be taking pictures and posting them here.

Ramblings from inside the Flip

We had a delayed opening today due to snow. Only in New England would this be happening March 1st! Normally delayed openings bring a lot of stress. Since I teach five sections of the same subject I try to keep all my classes in one place. Delayed openings and early dismissals always pose a problem. It means that since I only see half my classes, those classes end up a whole day ahead of the others. Since I did not want the classes too far off one another, these days in all honestly used to be "throw away days." I would do something related to the content we were covering, but not something that would make any one class ahead of the others. Usually an episode of something on the history channel, or a fun facts worksheet of sorts. I hated that the day felt like a waste.

I'm excited because since I've flipped the delay doesn't change anything, the kids will come in as usual and continue working on their projects. I'm excited because since everyone works at their own pace, I don't have to worry about anyone being "off." My only concern is the classes I don't see today having time to finish, but all their projects seemed to be coming along fine yesterday.

This week brought its own set of challenges. The physical space of my classroom continues to be an issue, its a small room and having kids bustling around, grabbing books and sharing supplies has led to organized chaos. Next week I'm going to try to have a more organized set up, dividing the room into more defined areas (ie: Research, construction, study, lecture catch up). I also need to figure out some better storage solutions for their projects.

Observations this week:
Cons: Many students are still not listening to the lectures. I'm not sure if there is a disconnect between how that will impact their grade or not, I'm hoping to rectify that for the coming weeks. This tends to be the same group of students that didn't do homework before. I would say that there are not as many students blowing off lectures as there were blowing off homework, but its still a number I'm not comfortable with. Also, there are still a few (very few) students who are not utilizing class time efficiently.

Pros: I let students pick where they sit, this week less people sat with friends, and more students sat with people working on similar projects. I also noticed far less "Ms. Miller!!" questions and more questions directed at their peers, students really started to help each other out.

How do those flipping classes highlight the importance of mastering the content? Does this realization come with maturity? Or is it something that students have to learn the hard way (ie: not finish the units to get the A)?

Day 3

Overall things have been going great, a lot of kids went home and watched the videos so far, hopefully the majority finish their lecture assignments by Friday. The projects have also been coming along, today we saw the turning point from research to putting things together.

There were a few hiccups, I still have two students who have produced nothing this week. I'm hoping after our chat today that they turn it around for the last two days of the week. Since it is February vacation here next week the projects are going to be due tomorrow since we are having an all day movie day Friday with the other teachers on the team. Most students seem to be in good shape to get things done.

I've posted a few pictures below to showcase some of the in class projects:

I'm actually happy we have February vacation next week as it will give me a chance to assess this first week and make adjustments.

I will update tomorrow with how the finished projects work out.

Day 1

Well today was the day, we flipped. I was incredibly nervous about how the kids would be when they came in the room, if they would remember their supplies and so on.

I was pleasantly surprised. A few kids forgot of course, but they used today for research. I divided my desks into pods of 4 and in addition to the desks to work at created a "research corner" where my reference books were, a "reading corner" with mythology books and chapter books and finally I created a "quiet corner" for students to go and sit and quietly work when the group was distracting them. I also allowed them to chose their own seats.

So the question is, how did Day 1 go? Well I like to start with the cons, I don't know why it makes me feel better about the positives I guess, so here goes:

Cons: Some students did forget materials and while that was ok today, tomorrow it may be a problem. A few students took advantage of the time negatively and used it as an excuse to walk around the room and get into trouble. A few students could not get started without a lot of input from me. I emphasize a "few" on all of these items, perhaps 2-3 out of 90 students.

Pros: I saw many many students working together and staying on task, helping each other out with the research. I saw one girl who rarely does anything in my class take advantage of the quiet corner and go and sit and do work...that was probably my most thrilling moment of the day. Finally I felt like I really got to walk around and get to know their learning styles a bit more, and really help them come up with ideas for their projects. I saw them getting enthusiastic, and asking questions, and actually CARING. I haven't seen this  in a long long time from my students.

Overall I was incredibly happy with today, I know its a honey moon phase and their are still kinks to be worked out, but for at least today I'm exhausted but incredibly happy with how things went.

On a side note, a colleague of mine introduced me to the concept of making QR codes for the kids, I'm playing around with it and there's definitely potential for some really cool things. Has anyone else used QR with their students, I'm interested to hear of others projects.

Woah there..slow down!

I've been working hard the last few days to organize and write out instructions for each project students will complete during the course of the unit (1 per week). I have decided to make an "Informational Binder" for my classroom. The binder will be divided into the following:

Tab 1: Research on Flipped Classrooms
Tab 2: Overview and Grading
Tab 3: Project descriptions and Rubrics
Tab 4: Copy of Interactive Notebook
Tab 5: Paper copies of Quizzes and Tests
Tab 6: Additional info

My primary motive in creating the binder was to keep visitors to my classroom informed of what we're doing, but also to make my communication with the SPED teachers in my room easier. I teach on a team, and our team currently has two SPED inclusion programs, additionally we have some ELL students. I wanted a central source of information where teachers and paraprofessional's in my room could access all of the information whenever they need it.

Three additional thoughts occurred to me about "flipping" my class:

1. It will make better use of my "co-taught" classes. As mentioned I have two SPED programs on my team. In an idealistic world these classes are co-taught between the SPED teacher and myself, with additional classes having a paraprofessional assisting. Due to the current structure of the traditional classroom this almost never happens, yet it has always been a hope of mine. I think this set up will make co-teaching a natural and daily occurrence since neither of us will be the "central source" of information. Rather all students can access either of us during the course of class. I think it will make better use of the strengths and knowledge that the SPED teachers bring to my room, and allow them to share that with my regular ed students in addition to their own.

2. This is lofty and far too forward thinking since I don't even know if this whole "flipping" concept will even work, but I think flipping would allow me to present different "courses" within the same room. Its not something I will do this year, but maybe in the future if it works. For example, if a student takes a US history class in college (and some high schools) their class is presented using the teacher's "lens." In other words some teachers may present the Revolutionary War from an economic point of view, or from a women's history point of view, or a military history point of view. Since the content in a flipped classroom is being delivered via screen cast to students, in theory you could record the material using these different lenses and essentially allow students to chose which "course" they want to take, following the video lectures for that course. The possibilities of individualizing learning with this model are fantastic, I'm excited to explore them.

3. Although for this Unit all students will be listening to the same video lectures, in the future (again if this whole thing works) I think I will make various "levels" of videos and allow students to follow that lecture path, even further differentiating for them.

I think the one thing I need to remind myself of here is that this may not work. I am wary of becoming so consumed with this project that I push it to succeed when maybe it won't. What can I say? I'm excited. I do need to remind myself once in a while though to slow down, lest I get too ahead of myself. I wonder if it is better to do a "full flip" as I am or if others have had more success just doing "partial flips"? I'm definitely curious to see how it will go.

I found this great picture at usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com (thanks for the inspiration)! I think it really sums up the flipped class:

As a final thought, I just realized that if each student does 1 project per week for 7 weeks I'm going to have roughly 700 projects in my room...good thing I have a big closet I guess!

The story of how I flipped...

As stated above I'm a 7th grade history teacher. I teach just north of Boston and have a geeky obsession with technology. I'm always looking for ways to shift my classroom and have it be more student centered. One night I had been toying with how to go "paperless" in the classroom. While I was searching, I kept finding links to blogs on "flipping." Aside from real estate I had never heard the term used before and became curious. This was a Friday night.

Cut to Sunday, and I had poured through every webpage, scholarly article and blog I could find about the subject. I became infatuated, my hunger for a student centered classroom was finally being satiated. Flipping! What is it you ask? Well its simple really (in theory...not sure about practice yet). Flipping involves taking the traditional model of teaching (lecturing to kids and then having them go home to complete an assignment that applies that concept) and reversing it. Students would watch lectures and home, and do the application part in class. Over the next few weeks I gathered every piece of related literature that I could find.

Much of the current research and information on the subject focuses on its use in the maths and sciences...could it work for me in history? Well by Sunday night I was convinced and started the process of flipping my class. No waiting until next year, this was going to happen now.

Of course once I stepped back I realized that it couldn't be such an immediate process and so here I am laying the foundation work. I already have my kids complete their homework online via Schoology.com so I don't think having them listen to lectures is a huge stretch. Some questions that have been running through my head...

1. What kind of software should I use..What will work best for me? Should I video tape myself lecturing, or lecture over my current PowerPoints with only voice? What will convert between my Mac at home and my PC at school? What if I look or sound like a total dork?

2. How will kids react to switching halfway through the year? I'm going to ease them in, one or two lectures this unit before fully flipping the next...is that enough prep?

3. How will parents react? Will they think I'm just being lazy...I'm not! I just want more individualized attention time for your students.

4. How will administration react? I am constantly being told that our principal wants to shift away from lecture based classes...but how will it look when I'm walking around my class instead of standing in front of it? Will it seem like I'm lazy having student driven projects?

5. What if the technology doesn't work? I have found many great websites that simply don't work on our servers...what if this turns out to not work either?

6. Finally my biggest concern...What if the kids don't like it? What if they don't listen to the lectures? What if they lose interest? What if I fail to teach them anything? What will I do with all the class time I have now?

These are big concerns I have that I'm planning to address. As I said I already assign online homework so the issues of computer ownership of students has already been resolved for the most part. I am hoping to gain the administration's support on this as I move forward. Its either going to work or it won't right?



Time will tell....