Actually flipping the social studies class!

I have just started flipping my social studies classroom, and am already finding some issues., in that I don't feel that I am being successful. I've had 2 or 3 students say to me that they don't understand why they have to do the learning themselves at home and they learn much more from me standing at the front lecturing them (which I've never done, so I'm not sure where that has come from!), students not doing the homework which means them taking an ipad or mac (depending on which I have available) and going outside to do it. As we are an international school, I have a multitude of different cultures, with different educational viewpoints, in one class. I guess I will always have some pushback with the lecturing thing.

Before I started flipping the class, my MYP coordinator and myself developed a rubric, but I hadn't introduced it to the students. Now I have shown it to 1 group and I'm hoping that now they see that the effort they put in (which includes doing their homework!) will have an impact on their grade at the end of the semester, they might buck their ideas up a bit.

I think, ultimately, myself and our ICT director were more ready than the students were. They weren't introduced to the concept and the expectations in enough detail, and they're sticking to the traditional model.
 
The majority of my students are not being responsible and active learners, and I think that is partially down to their age (12-13) where they haven't developed the maturity to deal with the freedom they have been given. However, saying that not much has changed in reality for them, they even have to do less! Before I started flipping the class, the students did the research/knowledge gathering themselves...the MYP should be a student-lead programme, and so now I am marrying the concepts of the MYP with those of the flipped class in order to free up class time for the activities which allow them to collaborate, engage and consolidate the learning they have done via video (or website...whatever) at home.

I was reading Crystal Kirch's latest blog post, where she was discussing some problems she feels that she is having with her flipped class at the moment, and commented with my thoughts on some struggles she is having with her internal teaching philosophy:

1 - No retake vs retake: I only let my students retake if they get below a 3 on an assignment (it is out of 8). Then it is up to them to get it done and turn it in. If they don't, within a reasonable time frame, they are stuck with that grade. Parents are also informed.

2 - Non-acceptance/marking of late work vs acceptance/marking of late work: Our policy is that it is up to each individual teacher. Personally this is mine: a 2 week cut off, and unless students have informed me and we have come to an agreement, work is expected on the deadline. If it is not handed in on the deadline and without prior agreement, parents are informed.

3 - No homework or homework: The homework is the video, and previously I didn't really give homework as we had time in class to do the activities and assignments. They were allowed to work on their graded assignments at home (and they were expected to). Again, it is different with you being math and me social studies. Flipping the class has meant many changes to the lesson structure I had previously, which I guess was more of a blended learning style.

4 - Don't push the limits, just hide away and be "normal" vs challenge, experiment, and try new things that you think will help students learn: I honestly think that as an educator, you should always challenge, experiment and try new things but it also depends greatly on where you work, and openness to this. Where I worked before, it was all about grades so you stuck to knowledge driven, regurgitating of exemplar work etc. Where I am now, creativity and experimentation is embraced.

The first video

It's been a few weeks since I last posted, I wanted to try and do one a week but it was winter break and...gasp shock horror...I didn't do any work!

I finally bit the bullet and added a voice over to the prezi I created, giving my students an overview of their new unit of work. I found that you can add voice over to each step in the Prezi, in this case I have 15 steps so...that was a lot of stop-start work. I think it looks and sounds pretty good though, so hopefully I am on the right track! I have also found Garageband to be great for the voice overs, this isn't one you see mentioned a lot. Below is the link to the Prezi!

http://prezi.com/grvum0hcsskh/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Other than that, not much has been going on in my #flipclass world, I've been burying my head in the sand and panicking a lot but now I have one video created and uploaded onto the school Moodle site, I am feeling more confident. I also completed my sophia.org flipped class certification, and although I already knew a lot of the points covered from my own research and reading other blogs, it was certainly very helpful in reinforcing and of course, finding out things I didn't know :) I really like the sophia platform for posting tutorials and lessons for students, it's pretty clear and straightforward however we already have Moodle and Managebac so having yet another platform seems a bit overkill. I'm also planning on developing a specific website for my courses, just to keep everything together in a format that suits me and my teaching style. I started one with Wix but then discovered that the students couldn't have their own editable pages on it so...back to the drawing board there! If anyone has any ideas feel free to comment!