Over the weekend, I was twitter-surfing (is that a thing? If I made it up, then I guess it's a thing now) and happened across an idea of how to use Today's Meet to frontload concepts in a novel to prepare students to discuss the next day in class. That gave me an idea.
I created two rooms for the first two chapters of Night - one for literary devices, and one for theme. I gave them an example of each and posted instructions in each room. Then I divided up the class and had them either search in the text for examples of literary devices or quotes that showed theme. In the literary device room, they had to post the quote, then someone else named it (so if one student posted "awkward as a clown" another student would have to identify that it was a simile).
With the exception of a few off-task comments at the start of the period (including one that gave me the opportunity to remind them of the rules regarding using your real name and not using hate language!), they were engaged and focused the whole time. It was pretty cool to look around and see them digging into the text and rushing to post so no one else "stole" their quote. I let them self-select into the two groups, and once they got the assignment, they split it up quickly and easily and got to work. Even though they were technically "competing" to find quotes, they were replying to and questioning each other cooperatively.
I don't know this for sure, but I think if I had given them a piece of paper with the exact guidelines (find quotes and identify the LD/theme) they wouldn't have been nearly so engaged. Also, when they go to write their essay on theme, they can really easily look back and find lots of quotes that will work for their theme.
For everyone who says that flipping is more the domain of math and science, I would point to today as a counter-argument. Yes, it requires more creativity and there are fewer pre-made resources, but getting students to fight over who gets to post their illustration of a metaphor first is totally worth it.
I created two rooms for the first two chapters of Night - one for literary devices, and one for theme. I gave them an example of each and posted instructions in each room. Then I divided up the class and had them either search in the text for examples of literary devices or quotes that showed theme. In the literary device room, they had to post the quote, then someone else named it (so if one student posted "awkward as a clown" another student would have to identify that it was a simile).
With the exception of a few off-task comments at the start of the period (including one that gave me the opportunity to remind them of the rules regarding using your real name and not using hate language!), they were engaged and focused the whole time. It was pretty cool to look around and see them digging into the text and rushing to post so no one else "stole" their quote. I let them self-select into the two groups, and once they got the assignment, they split it up quickly and easily and got to work. Even though they were technically "competing" to find quotes, they were replying to and questioning each other cooperatively.
I don't know this for sure, but I think if I had given them a piece of paper with the exact guidelines (find quotes and identify the LD/theme) they wouldn't have been nearly so engaged. Also, when they go to write their essay on theme, they can really easily look back and find lots of quotes that will work for their theme.
For everyone who says that flipping is more the domain of math and science, I would point to today as a counter-argument. Yes, it requires more creativity and there are fewer pre-made resources, but getting students to fight over who gets to post their illustration of a metaphor first is totally worth it.
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