How My ELAR Flipped Classroom Was Born!

A little over a year ago in February, my seventh grade ELAR class and I had about ten minutes left, and we were in a deep discussion on how things were going in our class. One student chimed in and said, "Mrs. Kenley, I don't mean any disrespect, but you talk too much!" You should have seen the looks on my other students' faces after he made this comment aloud. They couldn't believe he would say such a thing to me, and they even told him how it was rude of him to make this comment. I quieted down the class and actually expressed to everyone how RIGHT he was. I indeed talk too much in class. Maybe more than I should. However, I expressed to this class the reason WHY I talk too much. In Texas, seventh grade ELAR (English Language Arts and Reading) teachers must teach 3 subject areas to prepare for two state exams in the spring, which include Reading, Grammar, and Composition, and let's not forget to mix in some Vocabulary.

I went home that night and did some digging on the Internet and it just so happen that the "Flipped Learning" concept fell onto my lap by accident. The more I researched it, the more I fell in love with the idea. I presented it to my principal at the time and he said go for it! That being said, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had no idea "how to go for it"! How do I get started? What do I tell my students or better yet, how do I tell my students? This is when I discovered Katie Gimbar and the Friday Institute https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/. This website gave me the basis I needed to get started. It took me another month to get it going, but I slowly eased my students into the idea the rest of the semester. Let's just say I piloted the idea part time considering I had no idea what I was up against. My students that year had an incredible attitude and offered many great ideas. I was only able to produce six videos when my students worked on their research project the last six weeks cycle. Creating videos was the most challenging especially using the dry erase boards. The challenge was the time factor and at that time, I just wasn't able to keep up with introducing a new change and just simply not knowing what I was doing. I was just winging it. Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams were inspirational as well. One of my favorite things I loved about their flipped classroom is how they managed administering informal quizzes to their students (simply by verbally asking them what they have learned). I wasn't able to implement it into my classroom last year, but it was definitely something I wanted to do.

On a side note, my youngest sister is attending college to become an educator. She happened to stumble over a book called Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams. I couldn't believe it! She called me up knowing I was interested in the concept. I was so thrilled that I bought a copy that day! Thanks lil sis! It took me a weekend to read it. I totally recommend it.

Summer came and our school was getting a new principal, and the few months I had left were pretty booked, but I was able to create some videos for the coming year. However, I still wasn't comfortable in starting the new year just yet with the new flipped learning model. I am not one to just jump into something unprepared. Well, I ended up taking a risk once August arrived, and the new school year began for 2012-2013. I created a parent letter to let parents/students know that I was planning a pilot and explained my plan in great detail. As the semester was moving along, the pilot for the "flipped learning" slowly crept along. There were just too many new challenges that came along, and I ended up finding myself teaching traditionally again. I would have my students watch a video here and there, but what I found myself doing was that many of my students were not buying into it, and I ended up teaching the concept anyway during class. I kept thinking what the use was. Those students who brought their notes showed me, but I wasn't sure what to do with them. I couldn't take a grade since half the students followed directions. By October, I found out that I won the AEF Teacher Grant for my pilot, "Flipping the Classroom". I was recharged at that point and so excited to continue on my search for learning more about the concept. I received enough money to purchase two Google Nexus tablets and 18 flash drives. Now what? Well, at this point, I realized that the time factor wasn't working with creating six whiteboard slides (and I am so camera shy) that I realized that there are other avenues to creating videos or presentations other than PowerPoint and using my Flip video camera. I also came to the realization that why does it have to all be video/audio? So, I decided to utilize my teacher webpage and upload not just my videos, but why not upload my notes, too! I even went ahead and uploaded my PowerPoint presentations. Google Docs was becoming a new deal especially at our school. I had a student teacher last spring and she introduced Google Docs and Prezi Presentations. Wow! We truly do learn from our students!

Time went on then Christmas came and went then here came Spring Break. Well, over Spring Break, I was on FIRE! I found an answer to my prayer! If you're not WSQing, TWIRLing, FITCHing, or SSSing then you are definitely missing out. You've got to check out Crystal Kirch at www.flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com. I was needing someone out there in the blog world to demonstrate their class in action, and boy has she done that and MUCH MORE! I have done nothing, but study her models, listen to her podcasts and webinars, and just basically have been INSPIRED! A few of her models would not be suitable for my twelve-year-olds, for her students are 9th and 12th graders plus she teaches advanced Math! However, many of what she explains is by far the definition of what a true, flipped classroom really is. I personally am using many of her models, but will call a few of them something different just because I teach a different subject and age level. I absolutely love the TWIRL model. I changed her FITCH to FETCH (which I will explain my model later). Her SSS is my SAP (Student Action Plan-will explain later). I do not use her WSQ model due to it being too advanced for my students, but instead, I will use the CNQR approach (pronounced Conquer-again, I will elaborate later). Lastly, I absolutely love her online survey ideas and Secret Question (which is like the new version of a pop quiz).

I also spent an afternoon recently perusing and learning about www.sophia.org. Wow! This is a fabulous instructional resource for educators to organize their materials and data for students to use. I learned in less than an hour by viewing short tutorials on how to manage the information. This is going to be wonderful linking things I created in my Google Docs and even from my Teacher Webpage.

Let me end by saying that I have learned so much within the last year of piloting this new teaching/learning concept about Flipped Classrooms. I've noticed that there are not many Flipped ELAR classrooms, so I am hoping that I can be another resource to other educators in this content area. Yes, it is a difficult and time-consuming task to manage ELAR because there are just so many concepts to teach in one year, but I hope that this blog will help others tackle their challenges quicker as I continue my own journey and share my own experiences.