“We teach ourselves at home and have no homework”

The support of flipped learning is gaining tremendous speed as more research points to its positive impact on student achievement.  Quite frankly, the accounts of success using the model are inspiring and encouraging (@TechNinjaTodd – toddnesloney.com, is a most follow on this topic).  I knew I wanted to give it a shot, so I did some research — I educated myself on the why’s and how’s of flipped learning.  In doing so, however, I kept coming back to one issue.  I was pretty confident I could pull it off, and I was fairly certain my students would respond well, but what about their parents?

This is the conversation I envisioned in my head:

Mom:  “How was your day today?  Did you like your new teachers?”

Student:  “Yeah, they’re pretty cool.”

Mom:  “Do you have any homework”

Student: “A few things.  But you know what’s really cool?!?!?  I will NEVER have any homework in math.”

Mom:  “What do you mean you will NEVER have any homework in math???”

Student:  “Yeah…instead of my teacher teaching us in class, we go home and teach ourselves (which kinda sucks) but at least that means we don’t have to do any homework”

Mom: “Soooo what is your teacher (who is supposed to be teaching you) doing all day then?

Student:  “I don’t know … giving us worksheets or somethin…”

I am an educator familiar with the concept of flipped learning, so I wouldn’t be too concerned if my child came home and told me their teacher was using this model.  But what about the parent who is unfamiliar?  Then I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a resource I could provide to parents to educate them about flipped learning. So, that’s exactly what I did.

I didn’t think a flier or anything in print could properly convey the information I wanted parents to read so I decided to design a website instead.  It’s pretty basic, but I think it does a good job of giving parents a birds eye view of flipped learning in action as well as offering research backed statements pertaining to the benefit of flipped learning on student achievement and motivation.

While I haven’t flipped my own classroom yet, I am planning on trying it with one block of students soon and am interested to see whether providing this resource to parents will prove helpful.  Please feel free to share and use for your own purposes.

Flipping Amazing:  An Educational Resource for Parents

Backless is Better!

Backless picture frames or picture frames of any kind are great to create a fully customizable office space.  I stumbled upon a BYGO sale at Michaels while shopping for chalkboard paint to make a chore chart for my kiddos (my biological ones).  I had a room in the house that I wanted to convert to an office/workspace for my family (I call it our Family Command Center).  Originally, I was going to do the entire thing with chalkboard and magnetic paint.  I quickly realized, after doing one very small project with chalkboard paint, doing so would be tedious, time consuming and expensive.

This particular picture shows two areas I created using two backless picture frames (16 x 20), a dry erase calendar (16 x 20), borderless corkboard (16 x 20) and 3M Command Picture Hanging Strips (I used the Damage Free Hanging strips that hold up to 16 lbs).  It did require a bit of measuring to center the calendar and board above the desk, but the result was well worth it!  BTW — Each board required 8 command strips (4 to attach the workspace to the wall and 4 to anchor the frame around the board).

I could easily see this transferring to the classroom, although I have not done it yet.

          

Site Title Change

I have spent a lot of time over the last few days scouring the web for resources — math resources, ed tech resources, general ed resources — in preparation for really getting involved in the amazing conversations going on around me.   I’ve found a lot of awesome stuff!  During my search, however, I came across a blog by a fellow math teacher titled “Musings of a Math Teacher.”  In an effort to retain our unique identities on the web, I made the decision to change the title of my blog.  I know this isn’t big news, but I felt it warranted explaining.  Look for more soon!

Drumroll please …

Welcome to the metaphorical ribbon cutting ceremony for my blog.  I’m super excited to get started and am working on compiling some great resources on implementing Interactive Notebooks (INBs) in a math classroom.  My goal is to start using these this semester, but it’s completely uncharted territory for me … lots to learn and plan in a very little amount of time.  In the meantime, if you have any content relating to INBs you’d like to share, let’s hook up on Twitter and share!