It's More Than Just the Videos

Watching Videos

I know I keep stressing out about making these videos.  But flipping the class is not just about finding and making videos for your students to watch at night.  How will "flipping my class" be different from what I did last year?  When I think about it, I had some content videos linked on my class website last year, still do. I often reminded my students, "you know, you can watch these at home" or "If you need to review, you can go online during independent reading and watch that video".  The closer we got to our end-of-the-year assessment, I found myself encouraging my students to watch the content videos whenever they had time; especially the students who needed review or who were absent during instruction for whatever reason: illness, small group pull-out, or whatever. 

I am beginning to understand what Brett Wilie meant when he said: "Flipping is not just about the videos"!  I had videos last year. One way my flipped class will be different this year is that I will make some, eventually most, of the videos I post for my students to watch. (See "Why it Has to Be Me").  But I think the biggest difference will be that I will have more in-class time for the students to practice with supervision, to put what they are learning into action through games, projects, solving problems, etc. and I will have more time to work with individual students and small groups. Not a bad trade-off, wouldn't you say?

"Order Up" Game Board

 
"Order Up"

Each student wrote a 3 digit decimal number between 2 and 3 on an index card.  Their cards are then placed in random order on the side of a strip of adding machine tape. Their task was to arrange the cards in order from least to greeted by moving only 1 card at a time.  They can only move 1 card to the empty space on the board (see the smiley sticker). They could not talk while playing the game. Can you see the student covering their mouth to keep from talking in the picture? Too cute!