Flipping Part 2 From Yesterday and Today

I had several interesting experiences yesterday in the course of my flipping.  Firstly, Edmodo didn't allow the students to watch their video, so I had to resort to the "old" way of teaching.  It was back to the old way of people not paying attention, talking to each other, and generally not being interested.  While I could take offense to that, I am generally certain people/teens usually enjoy listening to my lectures.  I can often get students involved in the lectures.  However, yesterday, they were not listening.  We were talking about "Inverses" and it is a difficult topic. I understood that students would not be interested and generally tend to be less interested the more difficult the topic is, it was jarring to see my normally (since flipping) good classes go downhill so fast. I was motivated to teach, but they were not motivated to learn.

Then, in 4th block, two students, upon learning we would be doing things the "old" way, asked if they could take some computers into the hallway to attempt to watch the video again and learn on their own.  Because I know they would have been nothing but trouble in the classroom (back to their "old" ways), I consented.  They kept periodically coming back into the classroom to ask questions.  They found other videos to watch and took detailed notes on that video. They asked intelligent questions about the video and compared it to what I was asking of them on the videos.  It was remarkable and exactly what I would like to see with all of my students.

Then, today, following my second unit of flipping with my Algebra 1 class, I decided to see how THEY thought things were going and was pleasantly surprised.  I administered a survey and had a good long chat with them about some things they thought about Khan.  They liked being able to learn at their own pace.  They liked having help from the website to figure things out on their own and only needing to ask me when they simply couldn't understand.  They said they had learned more in two units with this class than they had learned all last year.  They said that math didn't seem so difficult with Khan.  They said that they had regained confidence in math that they lost in middle school.  They said that while Khan was not "fun", it did keep them wanting to do the math and was way better than doing on a piece of paper.  The comments in favor of keeping the Khan Academy in the classroom was overwhelming. 

My main struggle now, is convincing my colleagues that this is a good idea for my other Algebra 1 class to begin.  I have options, but the kids in my flipped classes are so much more engaged and learning a lot more than the kids in my other classes.  I wonder now, how that will translate to long-term learning on their part and, eventually, enhanced performance in math.

I have been getting comments about how hard I push kids in math.  Some colleagues think that I ask too much of them and that they should take things a little slower.  However, the community and school board want higher ACT scores from these kids.  How am I going to do that if we don't push them to learn more and learn it better.  If I can use things like Khan to engage them so THEY want to learn more and it is easier for them to learn more, why not?!  If I don't have engaged students, then students aren't learning.  My students are engaged in my flipped classes...I have no questions about that.  Even though they may not always watch the videos, they are even more engaged in my non-Khan flipped class than my regular class.  Evidence of this was when I couldn't flip for a day.  They were lost and frustrated and showed it by not paying attention to me.  Hence, they did not learn.

What do I want from my classes?  I want them all to be as engaged as those two students yesterday.  I want them to want to learn and seek out things to help them learn from wherever they need to.  I want to have students enjoy the work in my class and have that translate to them learning more from all their hard work.

The Fog and Friction of Flipping

So, my students couldn't access the video for some weird reason.  However, it was widespread.  So, I resorted to teaching the "unflipped" way.  Engagement was WAY down.  Way, Way Down...I was very frustrated with how little they seemed to want to pay attention.  Students that typically have problems with math were talking amongst themselves and paying very little attention to the lesson, thereby compounding their problems but providing a temporary "out" to the situation. 

Flipping...end of the 2nd Algebra 1 Unit

So, I got my results back from the 2nd unit of flipped Algebra 1 and the corresponding control group.  After inputting, I discovered a tempered result as compared to the first unit.  However, the experimental group still learned an average of about 5% more than the control group.  Keep in mind the scores on the pretest for both sections were fairly high.  However, this aids me in seeing that the flipping is really helping students.  I look forward to seeing how my Algebra 2 students do with flipping.

Sometimes Things Don't Work as You Planned...

So things were going as swimmingly as could be expected with my Algebra 2 classes.  My flipped class without Khan went pretty well.  The flipped class with Khan was a different story.  I had tried a couple problems in the section for the day on Khan, but not the whole thing.  The exercise was so incredibly difficult I didn't have the heart to give it to them.  So, I gave them the worksheet from my other classes.  That was difficult enough.  I actually made it more difficult to give them practice with Algebra concepts (multiplying variables, monomials, binomials, etc).  They do not remember what little they learned of that in Algebra 1. 


So...I will always try the sections of Khan from now on...

I had a girl complain that she didn't like the "flipped" format today.  She wanted to switch to a different section.  Another girl told her to watch the videos a couple of times and take notes while doing it and she wouldn't be having so many problems.  She hadn't watched the videos at all and was really struggling. 

I saw many students helping each other, sometimes with varying degrees of success, but they were all busy in the classes.  I was very pleased with them.  I started my flipped classes with a little refresher on the video after our quiz and then went straight to the worksheet.  I had 6 students come in for help during seminar.  They were very motivated to get the concepts understood and the worksheet completed.

Flipping this week...

I'm flipping so many classes, it's difficult to keep things straight.  I do notice that students come to class with a lot of questions after the videos.  Sometimes they complain that they just don't understand the videos.  I need to work on making them more interactive and getting the students to actually contemplate what they are watching instead of just letting it speed by them.  I've noticed some teachers who flip have different formats that they require their students to fill out that force them to process the videos and think through things they are supposed to be learning.  I end up giving a lot of mini lectures in class over material they should have processed more overnight.  I also get a lot of complaints like "I just don't understand ANY of this". 

On the flip side, students who engage fully in the process seem to be grasping things a lot better in my Khan-flipped Algebra 2 class.  I was able to get at least two students fully proficient in domain and range.  That is more than my other Algebra 2 classes, in which no students got fully proficient in either domain or range.

The problem is with the Algebra 2 curriculum.  Students are not proficient enough with Algebra 1 concepts to be in Algebra 2.  They don't know how to factor, multiply binomials or other basic skills because the courses do not get to these topics in Algebra 1.  Then, the Algebra 2 book assumes they have learned these concepts and presents topics that build on them.  The students, rightfully, are confused, frustrated and ready to quit.  Most of these students are not model or stellar students. They are just trying to graduate high school.  The last time they truly used Algebra 1 was a year and a half ago and the concepts have to be retaught/reinforced at the very least.

I digress...I used Khan with my Statistics class today.  It was a good challenge for them, but they truly learned not only how to calculate standard deviation, but learned to calculate it for both populations and samples (and learned how to differentiate between the two).  They then learned about variance.  It was a great experience for them.  I am glad to see them doing so well with it.  I want to teach them to do this on excel as well, but figured a day doing it by hand would help them learn to use Excel more efficiently.  We shall see. 

My non-flipped control class was really struggling yesterday.  I ended up spending a lot of time with all my classes doing roving one-on-one teaching as they worked on assignments in class.  They simply do not know enough to be able to do the work on their own.  It is frustrating to wonder if this unit is even keeping the methodologies clean enough to count as data.

Weekend Post

My weekend is about to begin.  What this means for a first-year "flipper" is that I prepare lesson plans, grade from last week what is left and make movies for my students to watch.  I have one extra day to plan for because I will be gone from school next Monday.  However, I will be gone on a day that I have a lot of "flipping" going on.  Hopefully this means my students won't miss out on too much.  They won't have me there to explain things, though.  That could be problematic. 

Things were tough this week.  I am not going to put it any other way.  My Algebra 2 classes struggled to understand domain, range, and what functions are.  I gave an extra day to all my classes and revamped my non-flipped Algebra 2 lesson to accommodate for the difficulties.  As a teacher I still try to find ways to teach things better, but I really struggle with how rigorous I can make the lesson and still have the students get anything out of it.  I want math to be understandable for them, but feel that part of making it understandable means letting them learn more about it.  Too much struggle gets students discouraged, though.

Flipping was challenging.  I had one lesson for Algebra 1 that Khan did not cover, so I flipped without Khan.  Also, the Khan exercises for my Algebra 2 class were so challenging that they had a difficult time doing them.  I was tired at the end of each flipped day.  I flip all my classes on my B-days and one of the three on my A-days.  Khan is great, except when it's not.  I couldn't get my normal stats from it this week either.  That was frustrating and I've never seen that happen.  Maybe next week will be better.  However, students did stay engaged.

What About When Khan Fails...

We were studying Absolute Value Equations today. I needed more simple ones than Khan provided.  So, I had to put aside Khan for a while to play an online video game with simpler problems.  It was at http://www.math-play.com/Absolute-Value-Equations/Absolute-Value-Equations.html and it worked very well to help students be familiar with the simpler equations before going on to the more difficult Khan equations.  Again, I need to make sure my rigor is identical for the students.  Khan expects more out of the than the book does. 

New Flipping Adventures

My flipping experience for the first unit of Algebra 1 was fantastic.  Flipping with Khan Academy produced excellent results.  However, the results were so excellent, I wanted to find out if it was flipping or Khan that created the biggest difference.  So, I am flipping two more classes. I have three sections of Algebra 2. One will be the control, one flipped with book assignments and one flipped with Kahn.  Yesterday was the first day of that experiment.  The flipped with book class went well.  Students stayed on task, but not nearly as on task as with Khan Academy.  Khan was more rigorous, actually, than the book assignments I had given out.  I need to make sure everyone has the same rigor for all assignments in all three classes.

I was highly impressed with my Khan flipped Algebra 2 class.  The class typically has a lot of behavior problems due to the personalities of the students in the class and the fact that it is the last class of the day.  Students often miss the class as well.  This helps them stay caught up.  Today, I was able to give out the links to the videos to a student who would miss my Algebra 2 class that was unflipped today.  It was nice to know he would not get behind simply because he couldn't be at school.

The bad side of flipping...I am very tired.  It takes a lot out of me physically and mentally to switch between problems for individual students as I roam the room.  It takes more energy to roam the room and keep track of students who need to progress and those who need more practice.  I am constantly moving during a flipped class.  I guess it will help with my fitness level.  Man, I have no energy today, though.