This wasn't planned.

In fact, I'm still not convinced it's an amazing idea.

But this week, I handed gave the reins to my 6th period class....for content, instruction and assessment.

I realise that I may be completely insane.

It started with some collaborative brainstorming on topics, questions, methods, and texts they wanted to study.  Then each student chose a group and topic and started planning their own content to teach their peers.

I didn't even constrain it to humourous topics. But they are so invested in the course themes that the topics they chose were nearly all comedic; they ranged from writing original comedy, stand-comedy techniques, political satire, musical comedy, and improvisation workshops.  Half the class will be producing comedy films and then having the class analyse it closely.

Here were the requirements:
1. Choose a topic/question to cover and choose a group
2. Research and/or create the content/text to be shared
3. Prepare to lead a class discussion (in any format that we've used or practiced)
4. Give students a writing assignment of some kind (in any format)
5. Assess learning
6. Reflect on the effectiveness of their lesson

These units start next Friday.  I can't call them presentations.  A presentation means a bad powerpoint, nervous students, lack of engagement.  These already have a hell of a lot of passion behind them. 

Today I couldn't get the computer lab, so I just said:

This class period is yours.  If you need something from me, I'll be here.  But you guys are in charge.

I expected an argument, or at least a wasted period.  But here's what happened:
They all looked at each other, silently. Then,
Cipriana: Let's watch Workaholics!  It's an hour before Thanksgiving break.
Alexander: No, that's not the best use of our time right now. We need group time to work some stuff out.
Pierre: Wait guys, can we go around and say what we're going to be covering so there's no repeats?  Okay, Chelsea, what are you guys doing, and who is in your group?

They then went around - while the rest of the room was silent - and talked about their concept.  After every group gave their idea, other students expressed how excited they were for the ideas. There was not one group that didn't get a "wow, that sounds cool!" at some point.  The two groups that were a little similar had a quick negotiation to figure out how close their proposals were.  Then they checked in with me about it.

There was one undecided group - they came up and talked to me about their ideas, and with VERY little prompting from me, they came up with a great (slightly scary) question: When it comes to humour about race, where is the line, and why is that the line?  

We talked about how to frame it so it would make the best possible discussion.  And they left really excited.

**

I gave them the keys to the car, then I got in the backseat.  And instead of crashing into a pole, they immediately navigated hairpin turns with dexterity.

I do think they'll run into issues at some point, and will struggle to present their lesson effectively.  But they'll figure it out.  All of us need to make mistakes to learn how to be better.

**

And here's the meta part...or maybe just the uncomfortable part of all of this. 

This week has been overshadowed by a friend of mine being attacked for something she wrote on her blog.  In an entry devoted to asking for help to deal with a frustrating issue common to all of us who teach in a public school - unmotivated students - she was attacked with more logical fallacies than the cable news networks had during the election coverage.

The issue?  Her statement that her students don't know how to learn math.

They don't.  And I think the person most capable of making that judgement - their math teacher - is the one who should make that assessment.  Not some strangers on the internet.

Students DO, however, know how to learn in general, but learning academically and learning in general are different.  We are always learning.  But not everything we try to teach our students is something to which they will connect and in which they are interested.

There are lots of things that I didn't find interesting, but that I'm glad someone pushed me to learn at some point.  Here are a few of those things:

• How to solve for variables in Algebra
• Techniques for creating different effects in painting 
• French vocabulary
• Word derivations/roots/etymology
• Names and locations of every country (and its capital) in the world
• Hundreds of Bible verses 
• Medieval literature and how to analyse the sources that compose a text
• How to actively listen
• How to take notes and make note cards for an essay/presentation

And you know what?  I still know how to do those things.  Even though I wasn't passionate about any of them, because I had the academic ability to learn, I had the skills needed to transfer that knowledge into my memory.

I also have a freakish ability to find something interesting in ANYTHING I study.  My friends in college were absolutely shocked when I gave them the advice I used: Find an angle that is interesting and use that for your essay topics.  They looked at me like I was smoking crack.

That's when I realised that what I do naturally is not what everyone does naturally.

Learning is innate.  But academic learning?  That's acquired.  Some of us are lucky to have acquired it young.  I did.  And I am the exception, not the rule.

We don't go to school to learn how to love playing or eating or sleeping.  Those are things we all can find passion for or joy in.  We go to school to learn how to learn things we wouldn't normally choose to learn.

And we do that because there are some things that are valuable enough to ask everyone to learn them.  That's why the Common Core Standards movement is so important - it cannonises the knowledge we as a culture think is essential for all students to learn.

So what happens when the school system is broken?

You get students who are in 10th grade and have acquired the ability to learn in an academic context.  Students who may master video games, but struggle to write a coherent sentence.  And some people would say use the video game to teach sentence structure, or just don't teach the sentence structure and hope they'll just "get it" over time.

But is that really serving my students well to not teach sentence structure - at least holistically?  Is it a good use of my face-to-face time with my students to use video games to teach sentence structure?  Why would I spend time having them learn something with me that they could do on their own?  Why would I not give them individualised instruction that meets them where they are and them pushes them forward?  And I think that doing that kind of instruction well - where you infuse passion into subjects that aren't natural pairings - is time-consuming and rarely effective.  It just ends up being a little condescending to try and squeeze the names of Pokemon characters into paragraphs that have students practice sentence revision.

I also come from a pretty unique background.  I was homeschooled for 7 years, spanning the late 80's and early 90's, which was the Unit Study era in homeschooling.  We did one on the Pilgrims.  I remember planting a garden, making corn cakes, and creating a replica of the Mayflower.  

And that's it.  I didn't take out of that unit any more knowledge about gardening, cooking, or history than I brought into it.  And I fell years behind in math because math "never fit" with the unit studies, and I wasn't motivated to learn it on my own.  That is one of my biggest regrets.  

Am I saying that it's impossible to do that kind of curriculum well?

Obviously not.  The project my students have started would indicate otherwise.  I believe that student-driven content can be very powerful.

But there are reasons that my project will be successful.  And a lot of it has to do with what we've already learned (not all of which they found interesting), and a lot has to do with what they brought into the course from previous learning.  

This will be successful because my students:

• can research information and find reliable sources
• synthesise and analyse information with depth and clarity
• use technology to compile, organise and present information effectively
• have academic conversations that they run without my help
• can stay on task and focused on the end product

And most importantly, they:

• KNOW HOW TO LEARN

Now, because I have kids at the top of their educational game who are highly skilled and motivated, this wouldn't work with every class.  And it wouldn't even work in some of my other classes.  They don't have the skills they need.  And some of them don't want to build those skills.  They want the grade.  They want to just "get it over with" so they can move on.

So it makes me uncomfortable to, on one hand, turn over a class to a group of students capable of making it a success, and also to acknowledge that they are pretty unique.  For the past eight years, I've worked in schools where this never would have worked.  And yes, I tried.  And it's always been a massive failure.

This is what I think:

Passion + low skills = low effort and/or low quality

Passion + low skills + motivation = variable results (see: Freedom Writers Effect)

Passion + skill + motivation = high effort and high quality

The harsh reality of the state of public education is that not all students come to us prepared or motivated.  Can we help those students?  Absolutely.  That is what my friend wanted: help figuring out how.  And instead of help, she was bullied, harassed, and attacked.  So she is taking her passion and skill and hiding it so she can avoid being attacked further.

One of the meta-lessons of this issue is that passion doesn't make up for a total deficit of skill.  The people attacking her have no lack of passion.  But they also don't seem to understand how to have a respectful dialogue, nor engage in a discussion of the issues and avoid going after her personally.

I sincerely hope that, eventually, everyone will be taught the skills they need to be able to pursue their passion.  And I hope that eventually, every person could be like the students in my 6th period: skilled, motivated, self-directed, responsible, and extremely passionate.

If the world was filled with people like that, it would be a pretty amazing place to live.  It's certainly a pretty amazing place to learn.

I have developed a metaphor for what it's like to work at my current school.

We are all swimming, desperately trying to keep up with the pace of the water, until that crest is almost within reach...so we swim faster, try to keep our head up, barely a breath away from drowning.  Students, teachers, administrators, staff members...all of us, together.

But although it feels like the ocean, when we look up, we realise that we're in a wave pool, not the ocean.  And we're the ones controlling the waves.

So we complain about being exhausted, frantic, unable to keep up, while we dial up the intensity of the waves in the pool.  Worse yet, we look around at our colleagues and see them swimming faster than us, so we turn up the intensity a little bit more just so we don't fall behind them too.

But the end result is that we all drown.  Or we wish that we HAD drowned so we could stop grading papers, get a few more hours of sleep, just BE with our friends and family without thinking about all the prep left to do.

So, to ask my buddy's favourite question, who are we really serving here?

I had two kids burst into tears (unrelated to my class) on Tuesday.  Neither wanted to talk about it.  Neither wanted to ask for anything special - not even a pass to the restroom.  They wanted to tough it out, be strong, keep on going.  

Why?  Because they assume that THEY are the problem.  They assume that everyone else can just handle the load - everyone else can stay up until 4 AM doing homework every night for weeks, participate in sports and extracurriculars, stay awake and engaged in school, make it through the minefield that is high school social life.  

They assume that real life is what happens after high school.  They are there to "pay their dues" before they go on to do what they really love.  They've been told "Be Awesome in Everything OR YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH."

And when they can't be awesome in everything, the only thing left is the belief that they aren't good enough.  And when we don't replace that erroneous narrative, it only embeds itself more fully into their psyche.  When they believe that they are nothing more than a letter on a report card - a letter that is never, ever good enough - how can we possibly expect them to act as responsible, rational, creative, independent learners?

Because when students have always defined themselves based on what they do (and often, what they fail to do), they have no idea how to work in a class that asks them to somehow engage out of who they are.

All the things we flipclass'er believe in creating in our classroom: an emphasis on higher order thinking, self-directed learners who have a choice about content and product, students who value their education and work towards mastery of a concept instead of engaging the prevalent tendency towards point prostitution*...

...all those things are impossible when our students are fighting the pace of the waves that threaten to drown all of us.

And you know what?  We can't be the kind of teachers we want when we live at that pace either.  

Okay, here's my mea culpa: I am not the kind of teacher I want to be right now.  I got scared.  I bought into the culture of fear - when enough people tell you you're going to drown just like them, you eventually sigh in resignation, then try to push your tired arms into sprinting for just a few more lengths.

Like every other story I write on this blog, part of the answer is having someone to stand on the shore, waving a giant handmade sign that both encourages me to keep swimming, and reminds me that the power to turn down the wave is in my control.  

Someone who reminds me that who I am is good enough, even when I feel like I'm barely mustering a C.  Someone who burns my report card because what we're trying to do is not something that is measured in letters.  

No.  What we're doing is measured more in the number of students for whom an hour a day in my room is more of a refuge than a deluge.  It's measured in visible improvement in writing.  It's measured in academic conversations that take on a life of their own.  It's measured in the students who stop asking about their grade, and stop defining themselves by the letter that appears on their report card.

It's measured in transformation.  

And there's not a standardised test in transformation.

But nothing and no one can be transformed when the wave pool is drowning us all.

So for now, I'm turning down the speed and inviting my students to do the same.  Some people probably think they'll start floating and take advantage of it, or without me to push them, they'll just abdicate responsibility for swimming and they'll drown.  

But you know what?  I think that who they are is good enough.  

And I hope that who I am, and who we are, is good enough to help them when they forget that they are not defined by a letters: the ones that appear on a report card or ones that arrive in the mail from their dream school, their safety school, their last chance school.  

And maybe someday, we will all finally decide to leave the false safety of the wave pool for good, and head to the Real Ocean.  

The Real Ocean is where Real Life happens, and the waves can't be controlled.  

It's where our students will try to swim on their own, probably for the first time.   Where letters don't matter.  

And where Who They Are is all there is.

I'm ready.  

Who is with me?


*thanks to my flipclass friend, GS Arnold, who coined the term in a recent #flipclass chat 

Well, week one is over.  And I have so many thoughts to sort.  I mean, I've had about 18 hours of class time since I last posted.  Crazy.

To organise this a little bit, I decided to put it in sections with bold titles.  Feel free to skip around - this is not really a linear post because of how much I have to write about!

Student Responsibility
Here's the big lesson I learned this week:  When you give students some authentic responsibility, they become more responsible.  I've put the responsibility on them for figuring out how to earn their credit hours (for more information see the Flex Time section).  Not only is it teaching them the real-world skill of managing their own attendance with a time-card system, but it gives them a freedom they've never had before.

The coordinator for the program walked in and noticed how many "trouble kids" I had in my room and how engaged they were, how exciting the atmosphere was, and how HAPPY the kids seemed.  I had three of "those" trouble kids playing a grammar game on ChompChomp today, and they actually played three more games than I required (with the sound turned up to accompany their own sound effects of pleasure when they got their prizes for right answers).  They thought they would get in trouble for "doing too many games" so they kept pretending they "accidentally started it over" because they were A) having so much fun, and B) learning a lot.  That moment was pretty freaking cool.

It's also been cool to see older students respond to some of the mainstays of my FlipClass.  We used Today's Meet for live response while we watched Anne Frank: The Whole Story (on YouTube! all of it! three and a half hours!).  They loved being able to ask questions.  And with firm rules up-front (I've learned the necessity of that), they did really well with it.  Their questions were awesome.  Their engagement was awesome.  They still felt the power of the film while slightly distracted.  And again, their questions often showed how wide the holes in their understanding really were.  We discussed history, vocabulary, plot, philosophy, pretty much everything.  It scares me to think how much they don't understand if we don't do things this way.  And it's fun to see what's in the kids' heads while we watch something.

Self-Paced Flipped Mastery Model
This program is designed to be credit recovery, based on the needs of the students.  Instead of doing busy-work, they are doing skill building assignments with specific feedback for where they need improvement.  I've divided all the assignments for this first unit (focusing on diagnosing and building specific skills) into two different tracks: Skill Track and Daily Work Track.

The DW track is built on four areas: 
1. grammar (see the DOL/grammar section for more details)
2. silent reading (see the RSS as SSR section for more details) 
3. effective research techniques (we use A Google A Day...yeah, just see the Google a Day section...)
4. checks for understanding (daily exit tickets through Edmodo)

Then there is the skill track.  I went through the Common Core Standards for California and identified some important skills they needed to master:
1. Choose evidence from a text and use it in analysis
2. Determine a theme/central idea and analyse it
3. Discuss how the author uses techniques and what effect it creates 
4. Determine meaning of new words through various techniques
5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language and the nuance/complexity of a text
6. Write an objective summary of a text
7. Use descriptive, sensory, show-not-tell language in writing
8. Explain a concept in writing in a clear and effective way
9. Persuade an audience in an appropriate way using claim/counterclaims
10. Speak in a variety of settings in genres/purposes appropriate to the setting

So I built assignments that cover each of those main skills.  The first assignments assessed, then built on those skills.  I made videos where appropriate, and used sections of Rena's Promise, a memoir from a Holocaust survivor.  Here are some of the assignments and what they assessed:

1. Read this section of Rena's Promise, write an objective summary, and find three quotes to fit a theme.

2. Find a pattern in the text and move the black circles over every word in that pattern.  Then explain how the pattern shapes or affects the text.

3. Take this section of Rena's Promise and re-write it from a different perspective using show not tell language.

4. Research what "resilience" means and find three people who show resilience in some way.  Write it up into an essay in a standard expository format.

etc.

Now, while students do the daily work all at the same time, they work on the skill assignments at their own pace.  As long as they complete a certain set of skills by the end and can show mastery of those skills, they pass.  For the kids who work at a slower pace, the mantra I keep giving them is "Quality over speed or quantity."  It's amazing how much better their work got once they realised that they didn't need to rush to finish it at the pace their classmates were going.  So some kids are on S3, and some are on S13.  It's pretty cool too, because the kids who have higher skills get to do it on their own, then help their friends when they get to that same assignment.

It's working out really well so far.  It also allows me to quickly identify the students who really need my help to build their skills, and which students just need practice on their own.

I know someone will ask about grading, so this is the best answer I can give: the daily assignments are worth less than the skill assignments.  I only grade completed skill assignments so the ones they don't get to don't even factor into their final grades.  I will give them mastery finals for whatever skills they have worked on and that will determine a larger part of their grade than the skill assignments or daily assignments.  So it's points-based, but not entirely points-driven.

Grammar & DOL
Looking at the DOLs I used this past year, I realised that there were a few problems with it.  I've been using the Caught'yas that have Shakespeare plays as the source of the daily sentence corrections.  I've written about it in previous posts already, so I won't rehash it all here.

But the problems I noticed were: 
1. students didn't get targeted help in their weak areas
2. students lost track of the story when it was so spread out
3. we didn't apply it to their writing right away, so it wasn't quite as effective
4. some students said (in their final course reflection) that they would just wait until we went over it together and then submit it on Edmodo so they "didn't have to try that hard"
5. it was a lot of the same with the capitals, punctuation, etc. with not enough emphasis on more difficult skills (who vs. whom, numbers, etc.)

So I made some changes.  Here's what we're doing:
On Monday, we're watching a short clip of the part of the play covered that week.  Most are available on YouTube.  After that, I have them do the DOL on their own and submit it. 

On Tuesday, they check their DOL from Monday, where I've posted a comment with whatever skill I think they most need to work on.  Then they have a few minutes to go play a grammar game based on that skill and post the results on Edmodo in Tuesday's grammar activity.  After that, we either correct Monday's DOL together or I give them a new one.  If I give them a new one, I have them do it on their own first and submit it.  Then they click "Resubmit this assignment" and we do it together.  

I use Word to revise the DOL on the overhead, and I've started using "Track Changes" to make it easier for students to follow, due to my student teacher's excellent suggestion (thanks Samantha!). The kids correct it in Edmodo and make sure to take all the notes before they submit it again.  That way, I can see how they did on their own, then keep consistent with the Caught'ya method of making all the corrections together.  It's working pretty well.

On Wednesday, we do the same thing as Tuesday, only they submit the DOL on their own, then I give them an immediate grammar game to work on before we go over it together.

The final DOL of the week is on their own to see what they've learned.  I only assess them on what they've worked on in their grammar games that week.  I think I might add some questions about the plot from the week's DOLs to assess if they're following the story.

Here is a screen shot of what it looks like (the first one is the one the student did on her own, and the second is the one with our notes/corrections together):

A Google A Day
In our #flipclass chat a few weeks ago, we talked about teaching students tech skills, but particularly research skills.  I was pretty intimidated by this, because I've never taught kids how to Google.  I just assumed they knew how...until I saw them do it.  

Yeah, they need help.  Desperately.  That's were Google a Day comes in.  Every day they get a new question that requires careful googling to find the answer.  I will post a tip each day (explaining how to use phrases in quotation marks, using google as a calculator, dictionary, or translater, using +/- in searches, etc.) and then they play.  Sadly, the school network blocks Google+ so kids just have to play the "regular" game and write down their time and their answer.  

The kids really enjoy it and I've seen them use some of the advanced search tools I've taught them already.

I'm still working on the next steps for these skills.  If you have ideas or lessons, let me know!


RSS vs. SSR
I stole the idea of using RSS feeds for SSR from The Tech Classroom (the blogger is another English flipper...a rare breed of English teacher!)  She wrote about the idea a few months ago, and I thought it wouldn't work for my kids.  Until I figured out that we could use Google Reader instead of an app (Pulse) for kids without smartphones (because strangely, unlike my regular-year classes, my students right now don't all have smartphones).

Setting up the Google Reader was easier than I expected.  I set two requirements: 
1. They needed at least one news site (I recommended BBCNews or CNN)
2. They needed at least one science or technology site (I recommended Wired, National Geographic, or KQED's science/technology pages)

No one pushed back at all to those requirements.  And just to make sure they got how to do it, I left my RSS feed on the screen so they could see how I used it during reading time.  I, of course, added I Can Has Cheezeburger? to mine, and when I heard them laughing a little, coinciding with when my scrolling revealed a new LOLCat, I reminded them that they could add anything they wanted to their feeds.  

They LOVE RSS time.  It was by far the biggest vote getter in the week one survey question "What is your favourite daily activity from class?"  Here are some of their responses:

"rss is my favorite because we get to have a quiet time to read what we want"

"Rss is my favorite because I usually read news and updates on what is going on today, or at the moment in our society and i feel well informed."

"RSS because I like to read about what's going on in the world"

"I like RSS because I actually read and it was things that I WANTED TO READ not what someone told me to read. And I was able to read things I found interesting."

and my favourite response:
"RSS is the best because I get to see what kind of new news is going on the world...like the article I read today on Pulse that Titan might have life."

How cool is that?  On top of loving RSS, they were so excited about what they had read six hours before that they had to put it in their answer!  Love it.

Need more proof that they love it?  Here's a video I took yesterday during RSS time.

Flex Time
When I started writing this post, the school day was "over," but I still had one student working long after the bell announced the end of the week at 2:10.  What could have possessed a 17 year old boy to stay an hour and a half after summer school was over for the week to read a few articles and write summaries of them?  It was the flex time system I talked about a little in my last post.

Want to see the best visual proof you can get for the efficacy of using Flex Time?  School starts at 8:20.  These videos tell a pretty amazing story.

The details of the Flex Time system:
1. When students come in, I record their time on a Google Doc.  I also record when they go to lunch, come back from lunch, and leave for the day.  

2. My IWE adds up the minutes they've earned every day, and I pass those along by posting a list on Edmodo twice a week.  In the Exit Tickets they do on those days, I ask them to tell me their plan so I know they're thinking about it.

3. If they want to come in early or stay late, I ask them to request that a day in advance so I can plan for it.  The really crazy part is that there are always five or six kids who are standing outside my room waiting for me when I get there at 7:30.  We "start" at 8:20.

4. If they decide to work through their breaks or lunch, they have to be on-task, just as they would be normally.  If it veers into socialising, I give them one warning, and then move them away from each other.  I've only had to move one student on one day.  The next day, he moved back and was fine.

5. They get two 10-minute breaks during the day.  If they don't take them, they can "bank" the minutes.  It's so awesome for this main reason: I don't have to write passes.  If they need to use the restroom, get water, take a call, change clothes, get some food, or whatever, they just tell me that they're taking their break.  Because they are self-paced, they can choose the time that works best for them in their workflow.  And honestly, only about half of my students have ever taken even a single break this week.

6. When they've earned their credit hours, they are done with the course.  The only caveat is that they have to have mastered their final assessments before they are done.  I have kids who have banked a full day's worth of minutes already because they have soccer practice, a doctor's appointment, or a family obligation at some point this summer and they're already planning for it.


*******


Still reading?  I think that's it.  If you have questions, let me know!  Thanks for reading.  It's crazy that even though I am properly exhausted (for issues unrelated to teaching or school), I am still super excited about teaching.  And I can't WAIT to get back to work in August.

The even better news is that my current school offered me all the sections of Green English 11 there are.  That means that I'd get to keep my students from this past year.  I won't have to teach them how to do Flipped Class...they already know.  They have Edmodo.  They have Twitter.  They get me.  They like me.  I like them.

Pretty freaking awesome.  This could take flipping to the next level for me.  It's new content for me, but I'll also have an English 10 so I can perfect that curriculum over another year.

There is so much to be excited about....including the fact that my school is paying for my virtual registration for FlipCon12, AND paying me to "attend" with a few of my favourite colleagues.  And they're buying us copies of Flip Your Class too.  

School just doesn't get much better than that.

Well, day one is over.  I learned a lot about Flipped Classrooms today.  Here are a few:
1. Kids take to the flip much more easily when you start with it.
2. Teaching tech skills up front make a huge difference.
3. True self-pacing is really cool.  Some kids finished three assignments, some finished seven.
4. In-class feedback and giving differentiated lessons ad hoc is really fun, and caused a lot of important skill building
5. I didn't plan enough for my top students.  And I didn't plan for how low my low students are.
6. I really prefer the Flipped Classroom model to traditional.  
7. Instead of counting tardies/absences, I gave them a simple system: you need 20 hours each week.  When you've reached 20 hours, so long as you've worked consistently and followed my directions, you're done.  It was amazing how much more responsible they became when they had control.
8. Self-pacing makes for far fewer complaints than usual in summer school.


I decided to make the theme of summer school Resilience, to carry through the project we were doing at the end of the year.  So the first unit will be all of us doing all the assignments.  I'm also aiming towards the common core standards here - everything we do is aligned with the CCS, but also with the assessments that are coming down the pipe.  So here are the first assignments in the skill sequence (there were other assignments about mechanics, grammar, and getting to know them):


1. Essay on resilience including research on people who show resilient (Write to examine and convey complex ideas through selection, organisation and analysis of content; conduct short research project to answer a question or solve a problem)

2. Reading on resilience (Determine central idea of a text and analyse its development over the course of the text)

3. Reading from Holocaust survivor's narrative (Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyse how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose)

4. Re-writing that narrative from another perspective (Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences)

5. Revising narrative after getting feedback (Use technology to produce, publish, and update writing products)

Now I need to figure out what to do next.  :-)  With those skills in focus, I think I know the general direction at least.

One of the primary things I took away from this week's #flipclass chat was that I needed to be more explicit about how my classroom looks so that other English flippers can both learn/steal from me AND so I can get feedback to make it better!

To start class, we do one of the following:
1. A DOL from The Chortling Bard - Caught'ya! Grammar With a Giggle for High School.  In my 10th grade class, we're using the storyline of Twelfth Night.  In my 10th grade support class, we're using Much Ado About Nothing.  It breaks up the story into daily sentence corrections with etymology and vocabulary development built in.  I post it as an assignment on Edmodo, then they get three minutes to correct it on their own.  I random call or take volunteers to correct it, then they turn it in.  To grade it, I choose one/two focus points and if they got those right, they get credit.  If not, they get reduced credit.

2. A review of what we did in a previous lesson.  Today, I posted a timeline activity students completed in class or at home yesterday and they went through and reviewed the work of their peers.  It helped them all review the book we're reading (Night, by Elie Wiesel) and gave me a good indication of who had mastered the material and who hadn't.

After that activity, I usually assign the main work for the day or have them continue where they left off the previous day.  I am moving from a VERY traditional method of assigning points and grading to a mastery approach, so this is a work in progress. 

I'll use today as an example.  There were two tasks that they were working on:

For students who were ready, they had their first attempt at the Reading Comprehension Mastery Test for Night.  There were 29 multiple choice and 2 short answer questions, of which most were questions developed by my collaborative grade-level team and are used by all the 10th grade teachers.  I added a few more to make sure that I could show mastery in each area.  If they passed, they obtained mastery and moved on to the next activity. 

The students who were not ready, either reviewed some of our previous assignments, or started the short story they are writing in conjunction with Davidson High School in Australia.  The story is about resilience, and they have a pre-writing task to complete.  Some did it on computer, some did it on paper (there are so many non-functional computers that we're short about 3 of a full class set in my largest section).

Tomorrow, the students will either take the test or work on their short story.  They will be writing it on computer, and submitting it on Edmodo.  Then we'll be swapping with the Davidson students, and they will be doing some peer-editing and reviewing with us.

At the end of class, I'll often have a final task that they complete to show me what they've accomplished or learned.  If we're using TodaysMeet, I'll ask it there and they'll answer it there.  If not, it will be on Edmodo, posted as a note.
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Now, when we're reading the novel or watching a movie, class is a little different.  For both occasions, I create a room through TodaysMeet (TM) and they all sign in.  Then they post questions, comments, reflections, etc. live as we read or watch.  I will also ask them questions and have them respond in the thread.

For essay preparation, I have them find quotes that match a theme and post it to a specific TM room dedicated to that theme.  Same with finding literary devices.  Those were the two focus themes for this unit.

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Now about the mastery grading.  I'm still working this out, so if I get something wrong, let me know.

There are certain skills for each unit that they need to master.  For this one: identifying and explaining significance of literary devices, finding evidence to fit a theme, understanding historical context/importance of Night/Holocaust, writing an interpretive essay, writing a short story that shows a particular theme (resilience), and writing an essay that uses a properly developed thesis, supporting evidence, compelling commentary, and correct conventions of grammar/spelling/etc. 

For each skill, there is an assessment task and several formative assignments.  They complete a diagnostic assessment, which tells me what they need to learn.   Then they complete activities that help them develop their skills.  Then they take the mastery test, and if they don't achieve mastery, they go back and review, then try again.

I'll write in my next post an example of what that actually looks like for a single strand.

Hope that's helpful for some of you!

So I got an exciting opportunity recently.  I made contact through Edmodo (in the Project Based Learning community) with an Australian English teacher, Bianca Hewes, who runs this blog.  Like me, she's been teaching for eight years.  Also like me, she's having her students use technology in meaningful, real-world ways. 

For their unit on Catcher in the Rye, she is having them think about the theme of resilience.  She had them make a video in response to some questions about resiliency and how teens become resilient. 

Here's the video her students made:

My students were really excited about making a response video.  The first class to be filmed was 5th period.  Here is their response video (edited through YouTube's video editor).  The sound isn't great, but I did put in a subtitle track to help you when the volume was really bad.  It doesn't work that well for the part where it's really needed, but if you listen with headphones on full volume, you can JUST ABOUT make out what is being said.

Anyway, check it out:

Here is the video first period made:

Here is the video that same class made to explain some of the slang

Here is the 6th period video

I'm pretty proud of them for what they've done thus far.

I have two more classes to compile before we can do the next step, but this part was so much fun that it makes me wonder why I haven't had students make video before.  I mean, with my iPhone and iPad, taking the video was super easy, and then uploading it to YouTube was literally only a click away.

I can't wait to start the next part!  Ms. Hewes has agreed to have her students make another video in response to ours this week.  Then we'll be writing short stories and essays about resilience and our students will edit/review each others' work.  This takes project-based learning to a new level and it is one of the coolest things I've ever done in my career.

You can follow the project on Twitter at #resilience12, or you can read about it here or on Bianca Hewes' blog.