--There really aren't many of us flipping English or History. But there's some really innovative teachers out there, and the average English class isn't nearly as far away from being flipped as the average math or science class. And if you are reading this and are flipping English or History, especially in high school, I'd really like to hear from you! Leave a comment or contact me through the contact form. Please?
--Twitter is a really powerful tool to build your Personal Learning Network. Professional development is necessary for all teachers, but I've found so much value in what happens through the interwebs rather than what happens in the few PD days we have left after all the budget cuts.
--The summer is a great opportunity to make it possible to start the first day flipped. There was a lot of discussion on whether to jump into flipping the first day, or whether to work up to it. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I will start by showing some of the videos in class, but the expectation is that students will be doing their own video watching within the first few weeks.
I'm sure I'll think of more later, but that's all I can remember at this moment. I'm super exciting for the #flipclass chat next Monday night! If you're on the Twitter, it happens from 5 PM (PST) - 6 PM. This coming week, I will be participating while travelling to the KQED Do Now Advisory Board for using Twitter! They invited me to participate and learn how to better incorporate Twitter into my classroom. I'm humbled to have been chosen and excited to see what I can learn as a result!
As far as my classes are concerned, there have been some exciting developments. I've started to have them work on compiling quotes for each theme in Night. Across the periods, they are adding to the same list. If students post the same quote, that's fine because it will immediately show which quotes are most important. Students are choosing great quotes - I'm shocked by how much better they are at it this year than in any previous year.
I also had them look at the literary devices they posted and see if they could find any patterns. I had a few in mind (there's a lot of language about wind/breath as well as about violence), but they came up with some amazing stuff. They said that the language went from personal to universal then back to personal when Elie was talking. They said that the natural images went from peaceful to violent. They said that he personified words and speaking a lot (words choked me, my voice was paralysed, etc.). They noticed that there was a lot of language around the heavens and the sky.
I was so impressed with them. My kids rock. I took pictures of the day on my phone, so the next post will just be pictures of them hard at work.