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.
No comments:
Post a Comment