Flipping a classroom~ Mrs. Cowell

I wanted to try something new this week that had a lasting effect with my students by connecting our use on the iPads with the nightly homework assignments. Here is one way we accomplished this... all in a 4 day week!

MATH
Task: create a video/ lesson explaining how to solve a problem using the metric conversion system
Apps: explain everything or Notability
Time: 2 periods of 40 minutes
Results: here is a remarkable example of how one student demonstrated his knowledge in several ways...

Next steps: students had a note taking worksheet that corresponded to the video/ lesson which they completed as they watched all posted lessons and chose one to take notes on. The students brought the notes back to school where we were able to have a conversation not only about converting with metric measurement, but also about what they liked about this assignment/ what could have went better.
In their words:
Positives: "I really liked this homework... I even showed my sister one of the videos!"

Negatives:
"I wish we could have watched everyone's lessons, but then we probably wouldn't have slept."

My reflections/ take away points:
As the assignment took longer than I had planned, I quickly chose 4 lessons to post. It turns out that one of the lessons had an incorrect answer that I didn't catch in time. We turned this into a teachable moment as this morning my students and I were able to talk about this particular problem and how it should have been solved. It was a quick informal assessment for me as well to check in and see who picked up on the error, versus who took it at face value without knowing it was wrong. These were the same students who needed/got extra reinforcement today during our math centers.

I added an optional assignment... to post a positive complimentary comment as a way to explore blogging possibilities. Luckily I get the comment notifications sent to my phone because there was one comment that was not something that I wanted displayed for the world to see (very innocent about one student's not being as detailed as other lessons)... It was truly a perfect constructive critique, which to this students's credit, is something we are working on during peer editing. However, during our homework check in today, without getting specific, it gave me a great spring board for expectations and looking at good models for what is acceptable on a classroom message board.

I loved this lesson. My students are grasping concepts like metric conversion so deeply... I honestly feel like I understand how their brains need to learn concepts as I watch them work through these projects.  My next task is how to manage a similar assignment with a one-iPad classroom so that I can do this more often...