This week I have been monitoring my progress toward the goals
in my GAME plan and have extremely fortunate to be working with a well versed
media specialist. This week we have
working on facilitating wiki’s and web forums so that I can provide my students
with constructive and timely feedback.
One of the challenges I am facing is a lack of student
participation. Although their
participation is factored into a grade, there is not enough incentive for them
to actively engage and collaborate. In
my attempt to gather additional information and materials I came upon Flip Your
Classroom, which details how to create a digital instructional setting. In this environment, students receive the
majority of their instruction through video and online presentations outside of
school (Bergmann & Sams, 2012).
Class time is then spent on the application of skills and mastery of content
(Bergmann & Sams, 2012). . Through
reviewing the information form the book I was able to gather new ideas and
tools I could implement into my lesson and further my GAME plan. Beyond these insights, Flip Your Classroom
has opened a new arena of teaching which I had not envisioned before. Their concept of mastery is so intended with
my pedagogy, that I now have a blue print to execute a flipped classroom.
Although my GAME plan goals do not necessarily reflect a need to integrate
technology into my instruction, the flipped process aligns seamlessly with my
goals of meeting diverse learning needs and creating reflective and
collaborative environment for my students. I was concerned that initially I
would have to completely rework my plan, but I found that the flipped process
was easy to implement and my students have been more willing to engage in the
virtual collaboration and instruction.
As I reflect
further I have come to realize that I need to be more patient and allow the
process time to work. Because of the time
of the year, I was hoping for more instantaneous result and an increase in
engagement. It was disappointing that
the student initial response and level of enthusiasm did not match my own, but
I needed to take a step back and evaluate what changes needed to take place to benefit
students. Once I made adjustments, and
gave the students time to explore the process, I found that engagement
increased along with student enthusiasm. There is always going to be a small
population of students who do not buy into the instruction and there is no
silver bullet to remediate this behavior. With this new instructional approach tough, I
am able to focus more on the individual needs of the students and provide added
support (Bergmann & Sams, 2012).
In the coming
weeks I will be able to better determine the overall benefits my students have
been able to reap from this activity, but I need to begin to explore addition
professional development opportunities and resource. In order to do this I will need to seek out
resource outside my school district, but I am unsure of what is available and
will be useful. This uncertainty is what
will drive my subsequent questions and alterations to my instructional
practices.
References
Bergmann, J.,
& Sams, A. (2012). Flip your classroom: reach every student in every
class every day. Eugene, Or.: International Society for Technology in
Education
International Society for Technology in Education. (2013,
March 10). NETS. Retrieved from International Society for Technology in
Education: http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Hi Jaime,
ReplyDeleteI have often gotten very excited about trying a new project and the students reaction is less than impressive. Usually once they get started they get into it but it is a real let down. Hopefully they will reflect back on your lesson and remember the effort and skills that they learned.
Good luck!
Melissa A.
Melissa:
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. It is devastating when have spent all this time carefully planning and developing activities and then students tell you it was lame or stupid. I equate it with my kids telling me we never do anything fun after spending all day at the zoo. What I have come to realize though is that in general when students make these type of comments it is do to an underlying issue rather than my lesson. I think this is why I like flip your classroom. It allows me the freedom to investigate where the student is struggling and determine how I can intervene.
Jaime,
ReplyDeleteI have heard so much about flip your classroom but I have never heard from any teacher directly who has tried it. I am so happy that you took the risk to try something different. I have wondered how flip your classroom would work. I think it sounds great because you can get so much more in depth during class. However, I think I would have the same difficulties as you. I do not think my students would be as interested as I am. I also have a handful of students who do not have internet access at home so would be unable to take part in some of the lessons. In addition, I have a hard time getting my students to actually do work at home. They do not find it important. How do you deal with these situations?
Thanks for sharing!
Tanya
Digital instructional setting is an environment that I feel most students would feel comfortable working in within the classroom. Benefits will be felt when each students learning is personalized. Your strategy to try and keep students engaged by Flipping Your Classroom seems to be the best approach. It involved technology in the classroom setting which impacts differentiated instruction.
ReplyDeleteVerna
Jaime,
ReplyDeleteClassroom participation can be detrimental to your classroom learning. I teach middle school connections or exploratory classrooms and the student participation level isn't quite were it needs to be in order to take students to a whole new level of learning. You did mention that with it being a certain part of the year, this does have a factor in increasing class participation. If students were not engaged on day 1 of class, then it will be hard trying to get them to come into class with a new concept.
Flip your classroom sounds like a wonderful too to use for digital instruction. I'm not sure what grade level you teach, but how has your student involvement outside of the classroom been. I can't always rely on my students to bee able to complete work using technology outside of the classroom and proves it authenticity. At my school, it would be a challenge for all of the students to watch the videos at home. Has this been a challenge for you?
Nakeia