For people who want to flip science or math, there are a wealth of resources available.  While there's no "How-To" binder, you can pretty much pick up another teacher's videos and keep on using the same materials you've been using for years.  

But in English, other than Troy Cockrum and Kate Petty, there aren't many people flipping AND writing about it.  I think it is partially a problem of definition; there aren't many people who can define what English flipping looks like.  So here's my attempt:

Flipping English is about two things: 
1) helping students take responsibility for their own learning by understanding them and their unique skills, abilities, and needs, and 


2) leveraging technology to build a student-centred learning environment that meaningfully engages the cultural context in which our students live.

There are many educators with great intentions who approach flipping English in the same way that math and science teachers flip.  They choose grammar, vocabulary or concrete writing skills because those fit best in the "traditional flip" method.  

That's where I started too, because it didn't make sense to me otherwise.  

As I've continued with flipping, I found that the traditional flip didn't help me all that much.  Yes, it made sub days easier (when I had several conference days in a row, having a video that the sub could show, sure made my life easier) and it was great for test prep before the California High School Exit Exam. 

But the traditional flip didn't fundamentally change my students.  They thought the videos were cool, but they weren't taking any more responsibility for their own learning than they did before I flipped.  They also weren't using much technology in class either.  

So I decided I had to change something.  

I found two carts of netbooks that weren't being used much and put them in my room.  I signed up for Edmodo, and had my students do the same.  I recorded myself using ShowMe, reading the entire novel we were studying, and started using Today's Meet to have live discussions while I played the video in class.  I encouraged and rewarded student curiosity in those discussions, and something amazing happened: 

I actually flipped my class.

And here's the thing:  There is no one who can tell you how to flip your class.  You can get ideas from other people (and you should!), but flipped learning is first and foremost about understanding your students, and meeting their needs.  Therefore, by definition, the teacher has to make their class centred, focused, obsessed, with helping the students in the room in the best way possible.  That's why flipped teaching will never make the teacher obsolete.  The flipped classroom doesn't work without the teacher managing the learning opportunities, and helping students manage their own learning.


*****

I'm lucky to have had lots of support from my administration, my colleagues, and my PLN on Twitter and Edmodo; but most meaningfully, I learned how to fail fast.  When something didn't work, I tried something else.  When that didn't work, I tried something else.

I also was able to use June School to try out a lot of different ideas, like flipped self-paced mastery.  Now, mastery can't look the same as it does in math or science either.  Even standards-based grading in English is much more difficult.  I mean, how do you measure mastery on analysis or word choice?  

Despite that, I do believe in self-pacing and in trying to assess mastery.  I have already seen how it can help students move from where they ARE to where they need to be.  We may not be able to fully quantify mastery, but we can measure how close students have come to the standard we expect (or better yet, whether they can go beyond what we expect).

Part of my summer work is to figure out what mastery in the major English skills looks like, and how to assess it.  I also want to revise some of my videos to make them more like my recent ones (see the bottom of the post for the latest two, about which I'm much happier than my early attempts!).  The most revolutionary thing I figured out in my video production is that I need to include something for students to do/answer/write/think about in the actual video.  I then have them bring their answers (and, hopefully, questions) back to me as evidence of completion.

******

For those of you who need something more concrete, here are some of my ideas for flipping English, beyond the grammar video (though I will start with grammar because that's where most people start):

Grammar
--use DOLs - ideally engaging sentence corrections.  There is very little research around using grammar independently of writing.  Using worksheets where students underline participial phrases and identify the direct object are not best practices and don't transfer to students' writing.  But there is data (both in research and in my own practice) that sentence correction and targeted instruction will transfer and solidify with students.
--give students targeted remediation based on whatever they missed on the DOLs.  I use my own videos, as well as online grammar games and exercises (like Grammar Ninja and Chomp Chomp) to give them practice - even though it's "worksheet"-y, just the fact that it feels like a game gives it more value to my students.  
--after I've assigned specific skills for them a while, I ask students to choose what THEY think they need to work on.  They post a screenshot of their end score as evidence of completion.
--use the same process for issues you see in students' writing.  If they miss apostrophes in their essay, assign them some practice based on that.
--after they have shown mastery on the practice, hold them accountable for it in ALL of their writing.  I've done "greenlining" before, where I will literally draw a green line under a mistake they shouldn't be making and stop reading.  I won't continue until they fix it and resubmit it.
--have students take expert samples of writing and compare them in style and mechanics.  Then come up with some ideas for how it shows the marks of expert writing and students can apply those lessons to their own writing.  We all know that reading more is powerful, so reading excellent examples can only help.
--have students make presentations/videos of themselves explaining a grammar concept.

Writing
--make videos about specific skills, like Showing, Not Telling.  Then give students lots of ways to practice with it.
--make videos of the instructions for a writing task and have them watch it at home and come up with questions, then use class time to have them write and edit/revise.
--have students make videos editing/revising their own writing, or use voice-thread for them to make comments for each other.  
--use Notability to annotate student work and help them revise/give comments
--use the writer's workshop model (Troy Cockrum is the flipped guru on this one - look him up for more info)
--leverage the power of Twitter and Facebook when students are finishing writing outside of the class.  Although I believe in letting students compose in class, often students just wanted more time than we had available.  So I had them tweet questions to me, and helped them immediately when they got stuck
--connect with other classes, either in your school, your community, or outside of the country.  Have students interact with each other and critique the writing of other students.  Have them publish blogs together, or compile a digital anthology.  The possibilities are endless!

Reading
Note: This is where I have fewest answers.  I'd love to hear from people who have good ideas in this area, because it's the hardest one to figure out.  What I DO NOT see as flipped instruction is when teachers have students read at home and discuss in class.  That's just traditional teaching.  It can be good, but I really don't see it as flipping.

--make a video where you annotate one page of the reading to look for a particular element (like foreshadowing).  Then either have them read or (better yet) have them listen to YOU read on video for a few more pages.  Then have students find more examples on their own in that last section and bring them to class.
--use videos of yourself reading in class while simultaneously having live discussions on Edmodo, Today's Meet, or Cover It Live.  Focus on asking/answering questions and having students google for definitions, historical information, etc.
--model reading skills on video and have students apply that in their own section of reading.
--do a video with another English or History teacher where you discuss a text or big idea.  You can use the teacher/student dynamic that Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams often adopt, or just have a roundtable-style discussion (note: if this interests you, contact me.  It's in the works with a collection of ELA/SS teachers through Twitter)
--have students blog about their reading and/or respond to other blogs
--preview the reading on video, either historically, with vocabulary/major concepts, or thematically.  It can help build excitement for class and allow students to make connections with the text.
--have students make their own videos or voice threads of their thoughts on the reading, and then respond to other students' videos/VTs.
--have students rewrite scenes as Twitter/Facebook dialogues, either by themselves or with a partner
--use videos that thematically connect with the reading, and engage the students using live response (Twitter, Today's Meet, etc.)


******
So even though there is no How-To binder, there are TONS of options for how to flip English.  

The way you know you've flipped is:
--your students are excited about learning, and their curiosity drives the learning, and possibly even the content
--you use technology when/where appropriate to do direct instruction
--you change how you structure class time so that students can work with the expert (the teacher) in the room
--you help students see real-world connections between what you're doing in class and what they're doing outside of class, and what they will need for their future
--you find that you know your students better because of the increased amount of meaningful contact you have with each student

I'm sure there are more, but that's my list.  It is only my opinion, so take it for what it's worth. :-)


So where and how do you start?

Here are some questions that have helped me think through what flipped English is in my classroom:
1. What skills do your students need?  (ideally, base this on the common core)
2. How can you tell that they've mastered those skills?
3. What tools do they need from you?  
4. What should they be figuring out on their own?  What are they capable of figuring out on their own RIGHT NOW?  How can you encourage independence in students?
5. Which skills can be taught via video?  Which ones can't/shouldn't be taught on video?
6. What classroom activities can help reinforce the skills you can teach on video?
7. How can you bring inquiry and project-based-learning into your class?
8. What technology is available to you, and what is available to your students? 
9. What technology is comfortable to you, and what is comfortable to your students?  How will you bridge that gap?
10. How much time do you spend talking to the whole class?  How can you reduce that?  How can you increase the time spent talking to your students individually?
11. How can I build a culture where revision is not encouraged, but accepted?  How can I shift students' focus away from points/grades and towards pursuing learning?

When you honestly answer those questions, you can come to an understanding of how YOU can flip English.  

******

Okay.  So that's it for now.  I hope to hear more ideas from all of you, because this is nowhere near an exhaustive list.  As we move towards an understanding of the role English plays in the Flipped Classroom movement, I know the definition I offer will shift and change, just like the technology we utilise in class.  


As promised earlier in the post, here are my most recent ShowMe videos.  I'm not saying they are perfect, but they are MUCH better than what I was producing early on.

I just had my first "first day of school" idea.

Now, it's slightly stolen from Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann, but what isn't in my classroom these days?  In their excellent plenary session at the recent Flipped Conference in Chicago (henceforth FlipCon12) they ended with this:

A blank slide.

The point?  In the flipped model, no one has the answers.  It's about making our classrooms student-centred and inquiry driven.  It's about using technology to do what we couldn't do before - get customised content to our students, no matter where they are.  It's about collaboration - regardless of boundaries...California, Canada, Australia, South Africa, rural, urban, suburban, rich, poor, middle-class, whatever, wherever, whenever.  It's about engaging our students' curiosity, or reigniting what curiosity traditional education has beaten out of them.

Think for a minute what it's like to be a teenager entering high school in today's educational climate.  Right now, the students about to be freshmen were in first grade when I started my career.  So that means that their ENTIRE LIFE has been in the wake of high-stakes testing, NCLB "accountability," textbooks, pacing guides, direct instruction, double-math/double-english/no science or history, rote learning.  Little kids ask more questions than even the most patient parent can answer.  Yet ask a high schooler to come up with a question, and most of them will write "idk" (I don't know, for those who don't codeswitch into teenager).  

What I learned in credential school (and spent most of my career propagating) was that there was an ideal lesson structure, and that needed to start and end with assessment.  The structure, although not inherently evil, is rigid: diagnose, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, assessment, reteach, reassess.  That's it.  Rarely does that include any inquiry, projects, creativity, or most importantly, release of responsibility for content.  It is a highly teacher-centred model.  And you know what?  I'm pretty freaking good at it.  I can get my students to comprehend something and show that knowledge on a test.  

But that is no longer good enough.  For my students, or for me.

When I started flipping in January, I had no idea that my model would change so much.  I am firmly in the "classroom community" camp of classroom management.  I build relationships with my students, show interest in them as people, and try to teach them to get along with me and other students.  But when it came to the work, I used highly structured lessons and activities, with opportunity for student interaction, but on my terms.  There were few group or partner activities of substance.  I talked.  A lot.  Like, to the point that I regularly lose my voice several times during the year...but I keep talking anyway, because class doesn't work without me in the middle of it.

So the flip started as a way of getting some of my lectures on video, and using class time to practice those skills - etymology, grammar, writing, etc.  - albiet still in a very structured, teacher-centred way.  

But then two things happened simultaneously: I got invited to be on a Twitter advisory panel for KQED's Do Now curriculum, and I found Edmodo.  So between encouragement from Edmodo teachers who are on Twitter (like @Mr_Driscoll and @CrystalKirch) and the impending advisory panel, I figured that I needed to get more involved in my Twitter account.  To be honest, I was in the "I don't get this Twitter thing, and I'm pretty sure it's stupid...who wants to know what I ate for breakfast or where I am currently waiting in line?!?!" camp, and swore that I'd never get on Twitter...until our AWESOME district Ed Tech coordinator, Jessica Lucio (@jessietechie) showed us some educational uses of Twitter.  So I created an account, and didn't use it at all for about six weeks.

But so many people were talking about the #flipclass chat on Monday nights that I decided it was time to figure Twitter out.

That was when I realised that I was doing it all wrong.  One of the first #flipclass chats was about how to make our students more accountable for learning. I started to realise that even though I was technically "flipped" I hadn't done the most important thing: flipping the responsibility for learning happening from me to my students.

So I stopped talking so much.  I stopped answering their questions immediately, and even stopped presenting myself as having the answers to everything (as hard as I find that!).  I started to try and engage their natural curiosity that had been beaten out of them for so many years of "traditional" education.

I only got one quarter to flip my students.  But it was enough for most.  Now the real challenge became apparent: if I started when they walked in my classroom for the first time, how long would it take to "de-program" them?

So I ran an experiment on curiosity. I asked my June School students to write a question each day as part of their exit ticket.  For the first week, I got a few questions about assignments or grades (How do I do x assignment?  What does y mean? What can I do to raise my grade?), a few random questions (Do you teach 11th grade? How does flex time work? How old are you?  When is summer school over?), and a few genuinely interesting questions that were about the content of the course, amoung them:

--Why did Hitler hate the Jews?
--Were women treated differently during the Holocaust?
--Why did Otto Frank survive, when no one else from the Secret Annexe did?
--Why do we need to know how to research information?
--How can I make my writing more showing and less telling?

Those questions make me excited to be their teacher.  The first three became options for their research inquiry (which is part of their final assignments/exams for the term).  Even though the work is sequential, I had a few students ask to skip forward so they could start that one right away.  How cool is that?!

*****

Okay, when I started writing this it was to share my idea for the first day of school at my new high school.

I'm going to give them a blank piece of paper.


Okay, hear me out.  I am not going to give them my syllabus.  I'm not going to talk too much.  I'm going to ask them to fill the page - one side with information about themselves.  Whatever they think is relevant and important for me to know.  The other side I'm asking them to fill with questions.  It doesn't matter what questions they come up with - any question on any topic.  They can work with someone else - hell, they can steal someone else's question if they want.  The only rule is that they genuinely have to be interested in finding the answer.

******

Now, of course I'm not going 100% constructivist and refusing to give them any information.  I'll have to do the whole dog-and-pony show explaining the flip, both to students and parents.  And I'll have rules, obviously.  But if my entire philosophy is about student-centred education and the flipped model, can I really spend the first few days lecturing at them and telling them about me?

I'd like to hear from some of you about how you start the year in an inquiry/PBL/student-centred/flipped class.  Any brilliant ideas?  I'm sure my idea isn't revolutionary, and it may not even be a good idea.  Feel free to tell me that.

Parts of this post were also inspired by the brilliant Shelley Wright, and the equally brilliant Mumford and Sons (from whom I stole the title of this post).  Thanks to both for their inspiration.

ETA:

David Fouch (@davidfouch) on Twitter gave me an idea!  What if a ton of us using #flipclass had out students do this, and we compiled them?  We could Wordle them, have students make videos, blog...and then interact with other classes!  Interested?  Find me on Twitter or comment here!

I also see the irony in using a mostly-paperless classroom using a piece of paper on the first day. -__-

This week was the half-way point for June School.  After 2:10 today, there are only four days left.  And a lot of my students have earned enough minutes to finish a few days/hours early.  That's worked out really well, and students seemed to really feel a sense of ownership when they could choose when to do their time.  They really wanted me to come in at 6:30 every day, and there were always a few who wanted to stay until 3:30 (usually different kids...the most time any student completed in one day was a little over 9 hours...with no breaks.  Crazy).  Because of early starts and the intensity of #flipcon I'm struggling a little bit with tiredness, and residual sadness at leaving a job I love and in which I have invested so much.

Part of the craziness of FlipCon12 was that I spent one day teaching and doing virtual attendance.  Here's what it looked like:

Twitter+Flipcon Streaming+Posting the DOL=epic #multitasking.  Notice that my RSS reading (I always read my Google Reader feed with my kids each day) was an AskMetafilter (my other internet obsession) forum question about using a skin graft as a wedding ring (i.e. each person has skin taken from the ring finger and grafted onto their spouse's ring finger).  Never a dull moment in my RSS feed.

Here I'm also monitoring their Edmodo assignments.

Leo thought it was funny to post that he was bored.  He wouldn't have been if he had been watching Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann's plenary session. 

And here you can see that the kids are still turning in work, even while I was at FlipCon.

Last one:

I BROKE THE TWITTERZ! :-)

I'll post my thoughts on Bergmann/Sams' Plenary and the sessions I attended later.

****

Anyway, we're at the point in the Skills assignments that they are planning or working on their finals. 

Here is what I gave them for their finals:

Vocab/Speaking Final: Research this question and prepare a presentation to teach your chosen strategy to other students: "What strategies can you use to help you understand the meaning of words you don't know?"

Research Skills/Essay Final: Research one of the questions we developed together (about the Holocaust) and write up what you found into a research essay.

Show Not Tell/Creative Writing/Grammar Final: (recycled from Resilience Project) Write an original short story with the theme of resilience.  Must use show-not-tell language and proper grammar/conventions.

Theme/Reading Final: Read a section of Rena's Promise, write an objective summary, and find evidence of a theme.  Write a one paragraph objective summary, then write a claim paragraph defending your choice of theme with evidence from the text.

Grammar Final: Get a DOL perfect.

Those are all the major skills in my summer school class, so I feel pretty good about the amount and quality of work they are producing.  And giving them a week to work on the finals (or for some of them, two days...since they've banked so many minutes so far) feels about right. 

Other than the research essay, I've been pretty flexible with how they can show me mastery (i.e. what the final product is).  I'll post some of the results when they finish.

Looking forward to the weekend, but more than that, I'm looking forward to having a Google+ hangout with fellow English-flipper Troy Cockrum (Twitter: @tcockrum) tomorrow morning.  He's so much farther down the garden path than I am that I'm excited to see what I can learn from him.

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.

This post is not just any post.  I took some rough video of my classes in action.  When I say rough, I mean rough.  It's me walking around with my cell phone camera filming what class ACTUALLY looks like when students are all working on different tasks. 

This self-pacing is pretty new to my kids.  I've taught for 8 years where most of the time, all my students are doing the same thing with me all at the same time.  That's how this year started.

But I wanted you to see what it REALLY looks like, warts and all.  I'm not saying it was a good class period or that it's exemplary of the flipped model.  It is what it is.  And I wanted that to be out there and say that I'm NOT perfect, and probably not even GOOD a lot of the time, but I believe that self-reflection is the KEY to every successful educators.  I need others speaking into my classroom and my instruction so that I can get better.  So if you have advice for me, or think I could improve somehow, I'd REALLY like to know.

I filmed most of the period, so here are the videos, in order.  I didn't edit anything.  The only thing I did was stop periodically so that the files were small enough to upload to YouTube.  Sorry about the shakiness and weird angle (I cut off heads a lot of the time).  Again, it is what it is.

***

To really understand these videos in context, you need to know what I wanted to accomplish in this class.  The objectives for this class period were different, based on where they started:

For kids absent for the mastery Night test:
1. To take the test, then go on to the next priority/activity so they can catch up

For kids who didn't achieve mastery on the test they took the previous day:
1. To have them identify the holes in their recall of Night
2. To review the chapters/skills on which they didn't show mastery
3. For students who REALLY struggled on the test, I wanted them to get a bigger picture review using Sparknotes.  This will be controversial with other English teachers, I'm sure.  However, here's my thinking:  I know they all read the book, because we did it together.  They will not be able to re-read the entire book, and that's not the best use of their time anyway.  As an English major, I used Sparknotes for review before class (I rarely ever failed to do the reading, and even if I did, Sparknotes wasn't enough to save me in a discussion class).  I also want them to know where to go for help when they need a quick review.

For the kids who DID show mastery:
1. Students will brainstorm SOAPS elements to start their own fictional story on the theme of resilience.

The overall objective was, as usual:
1. Students will take responsibility for their own learning by completing tasks to best move them towards mastery of the content, with my help as needed.

***

I started filming after going over the instructions with them for what needed to be accomplished during the period (this was a 45 minute period on a late-start/common-planning-time day). 

Here is the Edmodo note I posted with instructions:

When the video starts, we've just gone over those instructions.  It starts about 90 seconds into the period.  You'll see me clarifying instructions, circulating amoung students, fixing technical problems, grading quizzes, and helping students prioritise how to begin their review for their mastery test.

Sorry that the video is messed up in the next one.  I didn't notice it was upside down until about 10 seconds before I stopped recording it.  But there's only about 10 seconds between the next two clips.

Here is the end of class.  For added fun, a kid tries to start a fight in the classroom across the way at about 7:00.  Sorry for the swearing.

That's it.  I'm a little nervous putting it out there like that.  It's raw, and it's real and it's reflective of a normal day in class.  So, yeah.

***

If you're curious about the assignments, here are the review and Short Story Task 1.


Reviewing for the Night Mastery Test

Here is the breakdown of questions.  Erase any question numbers that you got RIGHT.  That will leave you with a clear idea of what you need to review:

Questions by Chapter:

Chapter 1:    1          2          3          5          6

Chapter 2:    4          7

Chapter 3:    8          9          10       11

Chapter 4:    12       13       14       15       16       17       18       19       20

Chapter 5:    21       23

Chapter 6-7:            22       24       25

Chapter 8-9:            26       27       28

For any chapter that you got less than 70% on, you should complete the following activity.  Use the chapters or Sparknotes to complete it.

Chapter ____:_______________________________________________

Important Events:

Questions:

How can you connect events, people, or ideas in this chapter to what occurred historically?  In other words, how does the historical fiction relate to an event or phase in the actual time of the Holocaust?

 
Questions by Skill:

Literary Devices:     7          16       19       25      28       29

Irony:             22       23

Theme:          5          10       15       24       27

If you need a review, there is a video about the literary devices you can watch on your phone (it’s at www.showme.com/cherylmorris).  If you need to work on a specific skill (metaphor, personification, simile, irony, theme, symbolism, etc.) ask me and I’ll give you an assignment.

What I need to review before taking the test again on Friday:

How I am planning to do that:


***


And here's the short story task:

The Resilience Project

You are to write a 750-1000 word short story that explores the concept ‘resilience’. To help you plan, draft and publish a story that is engaging and shows your development as a writer, this task features FOUR separate parts.

TASK 1:  The plan

In your plan you need to show that you have thought about what you will write about in your story and how you will use language and structure to create an engaging story. To help you plan your story, answer the following questions. You may want to type up your answers into a word document or as an edmodo note. 

1.     What is the purpose of your story?

·        to entertain/inform/educate/enlighten/confront/move

2.     Who is your audience?

·        young adults/children/adults/educated/outsiders

3.     What do you want to say about resilience?

4.     Who will be your characters? (protagonist and antagonist)

5.     Where will your story be set?

·        country/city/culture/time period

6.     What style of genre will your story be?

·        realism/Science Fiction/Gothic/comedy/action/fantasy/romance

7.     How will it begin? How will it end?

8.     What crisis or obstacle must be overcome?

9.     What research do you need to do to help create a believable story?

·        Research: settings/genre/characters/ concept ‘resilience’.

10.     What skills do you need to master to create an effective and engaging story?

·        narrative structure/dialogue/figurative language/building tension

DUE DATE: Task 1 must be submitted to your teacher via edmodo or on paper by FRIDAY.


***

Well folks, that's it.  Please tell me what you think!  I hope it is a little more real to you now that you can see what it's really like in my classroom.

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.
___________


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.

____________

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!

A few thoughts about the AMAZING #flipclass chat last night:

1. Best topic of the three chats I've done.  The opening topic was "What classroom projects/assignments are you doing with #flipclass?"  There was a lot of talk about the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, which I'm still pondering.

Another question asked what changed most in my classroom...

2. The thing that has changed the most in my classroom has been the grading and feedback students get.  They sometimes get work graded in the same period it's turned in.  Instead of collecting DOL notebooks (and carting 120 home every other weekend....ugh), I can grade them through Edmodo in SECONDS.

3. Another change is that I've relaxed my rules about using non-academic English.  It's still encouraged, but when we're using backchannels, I don't push them to make it published quality.  The emphasis is on quality of response, NOT conventions of English.

4. Yet another change in terms of grading, is the issue of mastery vs. standard points.  Even today, when I told students that they needed to show mastery to pass the unit, they asked, "But how many points is this worth?"  I explained mastery again, and they seemed to get it, but it's slow going.  They are used to getting points based on effort (which I did to encourage my students, most of whom struggle academically and have not been successful in previous English classes) and now they don't.  It's a slow process.

5. I found a few more English flippers.  That's exciting!  I could be wrong, but it really feels like there are fewer than 15 of us flipping HS English in the US.  I would love to be proved wrong, and find a ton of flippers who just aren't active on Edmodo or Twitter.  If you aren't connected with me on one of those two places (@guster4lovers on Twitter, edmodo profile at edmodo.com/morrisflipsenglish) please get connected - I'd love to meet you.

6. The English flippers are planning to do some summer collaboration, particularly on videos.  More info when we figure it out! :-)

I've been thinking a lot about moving towards a system of mastery, rather than just a typical flipped model.  What I keep seeing is that some students are falling behind and aren't mastering one skill by the time we're ready to move on.  For some of them, it's missing the instruction (be it on the video or the reading we do in class) because of absences.  For some, it's simply lack of effort/desire to work.  For some, they are genuinely so low-skilled that they struggle no matter what the task is.  Regardless of the reason, letting any student fail is unacceptable to me on an ethical level.  I know that some kids actively try to fail, but I don't want to have to question whether I did enough to help.

With that thought in mind (since those students are my target audience for this), I am teaching a credit recovery summer school that will be entirely built on a flipped mastery model.  I will have students from all four grades (9th-12th) in the same room for five hours a day.  We can't use any of the books that are normally taught in the regular year, so we're confined to things we can get digitally for free (did you know that there are lots of Kindle editions of classic books that you can download for free?!) or books that are no longer taught (Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird are two, so that's cool).

I've asked my department for help deciding what skills need to be mastered to get a student ready to enter the next grade up, so that should help.  But it seems a little overwhelming right now to come up with tasks in reading, writing, conventions, and speaking for four grade levels in a mastery-based model.  I asked for 10 hours of planning time, and it looks like I'm going to need that and then some.

Have any of you done something like this?  Helpful tips/comments?  Bueller?