Flipped Learning

After two years of teaching traditionally, I was not happy with the way I was teaching.  We would spend the first 30 to 45 minutes going over homework from the previous day.  Most of the students were bored during this time because either they understood it and were ready to move on or they copied their homework off their friend and therefore didn't want to ask a question in the fear that I might find out that they copied.  I would then lecture for 45 to 60 minutes with breaks of practice.  I lectured this long because I wanted to go slowly through the material.  Many students have complained that other teachers went too fast, so I go slow.  Again about half of my students were bored.  The top quarter were bored because I was going too slow and the bottom quarter was lost.  I couldn't meet their needs because I was stuck in the front of the classroom.  I would then send them home to apply these ideas and know that many of them wouldn't get it, so they would copy off a friend.

Flipped Geometry
This year I have "flipped" my Geometry class.  I recorded 15 minute videos for each lesson and posted them on a youtube channel, a class website, and our school's intranet site.  I was surprised that the lessons only took about 15 minutes, which means that around 30 minutes of my class was spent in silence waiting for students to write down what is on the board.  The students were asked to watch the video, take notes, and then try some problems from the textbook.  Then watch the next video, take notes and so forth.  They could do this at home or in class, but they need to keep up with the pace of the class.

I am not using mastery, which is something that many teachers who flip do.  I saw my students procrastinating their math too much to go to mastery.  I decided to have all of my students test on the same day, and eventually even quiz on the same day.  Therefore there were deadlines every few days that they needed to keep up with their math.

The Results
There have been pros and cons with flipping my class.  I love that almost all of my students are engaged and active during class.  They are either working on practice problems with a friend or watching a video and taking notes.  I have to keep them on task, but they are all engaged, which I love!

It has been much easier to differentiate my teaching.  I can have my lower students simply skip some sections so they can focus on the more important concepts.  The more advanced students don't do any math at home, they breeze through the work and ask for more.  And I have more time to sit one-on-one with my struggling students and help them.

One of the changes that I am not proud of is how many students don't pass my tests.  I decided to let my students retake tests and quizzes if they aren't happy with their grade.  So I didn't curve my tests like I did the previous year.  The average grade tends to be around 68 or 70 percent, which is lower than it should be.  In the future I will be making my tests easier or curving them a little bit so I can raise this percentage.

There are also a vocal minority of students who hate the flipped learning style.  I would ask them to articulate what they don't like about it or how we can adapt it to meet their needs.  And they wouldn't have an answer to either question.  I'll address this more in my next post.

I'm Back - Styles of Teaching

I'm back.  I have been busy with teaching and I haven't kept this blog up to date.  I am the kind of teacher who works until about 5:00, comes home and spends a few hours with my kids, and then once they are in bed, I continue working.

I am currently in the middle of my third year at Kinnick High School.  My teaching continues to change.  This change is what I want to discuss:

Student Teaching:

My student teaching was with Travis Lemon.  A amazing math teacher in American Fork, Utah.  Travis taught with a hands on, constructivist style.  This was the style that was taught and praised in my undergraduate studies, so I adapted and learned this style.  

The problem was I didn't fully believe it.  It is hard to change after I had been taught for 16 successful years in the traditional style.  Plus I saw lots of students who were struggling in this style and naively thought that the traditional method would be better.

As an undergraduate student, I observed traditional teachers classrooms and were critical of them.  For some reason, I thought that I could teach traditionally and be better.  I was blinded by pride.

Student Teaching:

After graduating from college and moving to Texas, I wasn't able to secure a teaching position.  So I decided to begin substitute teaching.  This was a great opportunity for me to practice my classroom management skills. I learned that knowing student's names was powerful and physically moving around the room was powerful.  These are things that were taught to me in my classroom management.

First Semester of Teaching:

After one semester of substitute teaching, I was hired to teach at Celeste High School, in Celeste Texas.  It was a school of 160 students, 40 in each grade.  I taught all of the Juniors and many of the seniors.  The students were very weak in mathematics.  I was teaching "Algebra 2" and the students were clearly at the Algebra 1 level.  They also wouldn't do homework, so I adjusted to meet their needs and had a great experience.

Since I was far away from BYU and I could truly teach how I wanted, I taught very traditionally.  This is what the students were used to, and they enjoyed it.

The principal told me to help the students pass the TAKS tests.  So we spent a lot of time preparing for that test.  While I was there, all of the juniors passed all content areas of the TAKS tests.  This had never happened before in the history of the school!

This positive experience solidified by belief that I can teach in the traditional style and be successful.

Kinnick High School

Following that one semester of teaching, I was offered my dream job; to teach for the Department of Defense in Japan.  These students were much different.  They were more where they were academically prepared for Algebra 1 and Geometry.

Again I taught traditionally, but this time my students really struggled.  In Celeste the students were low, but they were all low together.  They had been in the same classes with the same teachers and knew the same material.  There were only a few students who had transferred in later and they were my stringers students.  At Kinnick, I needed to differentiate much more, but I was unprepared to.  Differentiating instruction is something that you can learn in theory, but you can't understand without having actual students to work with.  It is also to Differentiate as a new teacher because you are creating every lessons, homework assignment, quiz and test for all of your students, there isn't time to make individual adaptations.  At least this is my perspective.

My second year at Kinnick, I went to a day of professional development and went to a session by Dan Galvin, a teacher at Yokota High School.  He mentioned that he was starting to use video in his lessons.  He explained the idea of the flipped classroom.  I latched onto the idea and decided that I would try it the next year.

This blog post is already long enough, I will talk more about flipped learning in my next post.