The First 3 Days in My Flipped Classroom

While entering my 3rd year of flipped learning, I wanted to plan out my first 3 days for students in my flipped classroom.  What were the most important things to address in the first week of school?   Here is what I did to begin this school year . . .

Day 1

As students entered the room I got them seated and welcomed them to the class.  A few remarked how the room was different than other classrooms.  I pointed out that my desk was in the back of the room and explained to them why I moved it (I don't lecture anymore).  

I began the day by telling them I wanted to teach them something that I could not teach any other students in my 22 years of teaching.  My goal was to make them feel special on this first day, and, well, they should feel special!  I shared with them the first EVER images of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from July 2015.  Many of them had not seen the images and I was happy to give them their first exposure to the new discoveries made about Pluto.

New Horizons image of Pluto, 2015 (pluto.jhuapl.edu)

I then gave them some information on the flipped classroom,  made some short remarks on Digital Citizenship, and away we went with distributing the class set of iPads.  

Once students had iPad in hand, they each signed up for Edmodo and responded to a post:

"What is something you learned this summer?"

As students shared what they had learned, I began choosing students to share more about their response.   As one student replied that she learned how to deal with people better, I asked her in what context.  She said she was a cashier for a local supermarket.  I then asked her, "How did you learn to do that?"  Each successive interaction ended with that question and I recorded the "How?" of learning on the white board.  (This would be saved for a future discussion about Learn Like a Pirate!)

How did you learn?

Lastly, I assigned their first homework of the year - for each student to create their own blog.   The last 2 years I used student blogs as a way to document their Genius Hour journeys, but this year was going to be bigger -- blogs for assignments, problem solving, and a way to respond to physics misconceptions.  

Creating a Blog on Blogger (video lesson)

Day 2

This was really the most fun day of the 3!  From the previous 2 years of flipped learning, I have seen students make mistakes in how they interact with my video lessons.  I wanted to find a way to teach students how to learn from a video, but how?  As I attended FlipCon15, Aaron Sams (@chemicalsams) remarked one day that his son learned card tricks from YouTube.  Light bulb!!!  I tweeted at Aaron and asked him if he could share which YouTube channel his son learned card tricks from (it is MisMag822's channel).  With that in hand, I tried out a few simple card tricks.  If I can learn card trick from a video, anyone can!   I took a trip to the Dollar Store and purchased 12 decks of playing cards (2 for $1 actually).  This was enough for 1 deck per pair of students.  I thought of having a deck per student, but wanted to encourage collaboration and have students teach each other.  

Elise & Siena learning a card trick

Shawn learns the agony of defeat . . . almost there!

Once each group had learned their trick, they then had to perform it for others.  As you can see from the video above, it doesn't always go as planned!  This activity was fun for the students and allowed me time to get to know them through an informal non-physics activity.  It definitely turned out to be an ice-breaker!

At the end of the class I asked students to comment on how they learned the card trick from the video.  Here are some responses from a post on Edmodo:

The responses hit on the basic things to keep in mind while learning from a video:

     1.  Watch the video multiple times.
     2.  Pause the video (to catch up or write down notes).
     3.  Rewind the video for clarification.

It is my hope that my students will interact with my physics video lessons in the same manner to learn physics concepts.



Day 3

As I am in my 3rd year of flipped learning, the word is out amongst students in my school.  Some are excited for it, while others have concerns.  I started making Student Testimonials videos after my first year and they prove effective.  That first year a girl in the video (then a junior, but a senior to the students who watched the video), was contacted by a current student.  The student shared his/her concerns with her and she was able to encourage the student to stick with my class.  Below is the second of these videos that I showed during class to my 2015-16 physics classes:

Student Testimonials Video 2015

 I proceeded to revisit Digital Citizenship which I had briefly mentioned the first day of school.  I was going to search out some good scenarios online, but after 2 years of having iPads in my classroom I had plenty to choose from.  Each of the scenarios really did happen (#icantmakethisstuffup).  Here are the 5 scenarios I created for students (in groups of 4) to discuss and share their thoughts on:

My Digital Citizenship scenarios (of course all correct answers are "D!")

From there each student signed off on the poster from Edmodo's Digital Citizenship Starter Kit.  I then post these in my room as a reminder to be good digital citizens.

Finally after being in the class for 3 days, I asked my students to create their first blog post.

It was kind of a last minute idea for me, but it worked out very well as I got to know my students better and get a pulse on how each is feeling about flipped learning.

Thank you for reading my blog!  What activities do you do in your classroom to begin the year?  How do you introduce flipped learning to your students?  Please leave comments below.