Strips of paper entertained and educated my students for 50 minutes

I have to admit that I pride myself on being a technologically advanced teacher.  I try to incorporate technology into just about everything that I do.  The AP Government test is essentially a vocabulary test, so I have students create quizlet sets, we look at online current events to find vocabulary words, but I still find that students struggle with vocabulary comprehension.  I thought for a long time about how we could use our 1:1 Ipad technology to help with this comprehension, but couldn't come up with anything great.  So, I went old school!

I typed out a list of all of the important vocabulary words we have covered to date, cut them into strips and put them into envelopes for each table group.  Then, we played several games with these vocabulary words. My room was more alive and energetic than ever before.  Students were telling me this was one of the best activities we had done in class and it literally involved no technology at all!  Here are a few of the games variations that I used, feel free to add more!

1. One students from the group tries to describe the word and the others try to guess.  Groups compete to see how many words they can get through.
2. Two students have to describe the word to the others in their group but each student can only say one word at a time.
3. Students have to draw a  visual representation of the word for others to guess
4. students have to act out the representation of the word for others (this was not super successful, but it was fun!)

Evolution of the Flipped Class in Algebra 1 and 2

Yesterday, I read Crystal Kirch's blog post about her evolution of flipped class in Algebra 1 and found that though her and I are on opposite sides of the country, our flipped Algebra classes have seemed to evolve in a similar fashion!  She and I are both regulars on the "#flipclass chat on Monday nights and this sharing of ideas obviously is leading great results, showing that we are truly #bettertogether!

In Charlotte, our evolution started with our Advanced Algebra 2A and 2B teacher.  He knew that much of the first part of Adv Algebra 2A was a review of Algebra 1, so he decided to allow the kids a couple of days to do the chapter review, watch videos and prepare for a "pre-test."  After the standards based pre-test, the students go back through any lessons that they did poorly on.  They are required to watch the videos, do the book work, and ask for help when needed to prepare for the re-take.  As an unintended consequence of this new system, the students worked quickly through the chapters in the first term and he has a good 1-2 weeks for test prep, remediation, or extension activities.

I co-teach an Algebra 1 class and we had flipped the class for the first term, however, we noticed that students were simply not watching the videos at night.  This, of course, broke down the lesson plans for class that day.  We decided to mimic what the Advanced Algebra 2A and 2B teacher did starting in the second term and the results have been great so far.  I will admit though, that having 2 teachers has been extremely helpful in reaching every kid every day! 

We are just about half way through the 2nd term and we have 10 A's, 11 B's, 3 C's, 4 D's, and NO E's (insert happy dance!).  Halfway through the first term we had 10 A's, 6 B's, 1 C, 5 D's, and 2 E's.

I plan to give a student survey today to give student perceptions on this new way of learning, but what I am seeing as a teacher is that students are motivated to do well on the pre-test to be done with some standards.  After the pre-test, they know exactly where they stand and what they need to do to improve.  They also know what the re-take test is going to look like (just like the original test with different numbers).  They know that they don't have to watch specific videos at night if they are busy, but if they choose not to do work at home, they have to work efficiently in class to make up that time. 

Of the students I pull out to work with, two are juniors who have not yet passed algebra 1 and are quite credit deficient.  One of these students received a D the first term, after having to do some credit recovery into the second term.  He is now at a B!  The other had already passed the first term, but is now in the second term because he has failed it several times and is at an A- and well ahead of the class.