Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of my flipped life.  I started my spring semester Psychology classes at the beginning of February.  This was probably the worst month to try to get students into any kind of regular routine.  We had two snow days and two 2-hour delays and a four day weekend.  Also, I missed a day visiting flipped mastery in action with Tom Driscoll and a half day assisting with special education annual reviews.  Oh, and I almost forgot, I was “kicked out” of my classroom at one point because a new SMART Board was being installed.  I’m really happy that I’ve got this great technology but it’s still not hooked up yet and thus I haven’t been able to make use of it.  As you can tell, continuity was difficult to come by this month.
     My introductory chapter lasted a lot longer than usual because this time, it included an introduction to flipped mastery and the technology that we were going to be using this semester.  I created a “choose your own adventure” type assignment to introduce the students to the basics of Schoology (our LMS), Weebly (our blogging platform), and other resources they might find useful throughout the semester such as Cel.ly. 
     The students spent a lot of time customizing their Weebly sites (you can see them here) which I knew was going to happen.  It’s actually why I chose Weebly because it is easy to customize and has a ton of options for layouts.  I like pretty things!

     Some students also spent a lot of time trying adjusting to the fact that they had choice as to what to do in class every day.  Some would ask me “what do I do now?” and we would look at their Unit Objective sheet and talk about what they had completed and what might be the best thing to work on next based on the amount of time they had left in the class period.  It was pretty obvious that many of my students don’t have much of an idea about time management or prioritization.  I think that this concept alone will be a valuable one for them to learn throughout the semester.

     Other students breezed through the unit.  Those students were the happiest.  They expressed that they really loved the format of the class and that they finally felt that their time in class was well spent as opposed to being wasted with waiting on other people to finish writing when taking notes or dealing with classroom disruptions.  They are the students that feel comfortable with technology and are able to self-monitor their progress.
     I have been constantly asking the students for feedback throughout the month.  Prior to going to see Mr. Driscoll’s classes, I asked the students what they wanted me to ask his students.  The big fear that my students expressed was that flipped mastery would take away their opportunity to have class discussions or to ask for help when they needed it.  Their biggest fear was that our class would become impersonal. 
     I was sure to talk to Mr. Driscoll and his students about how they were able to keep student/teacher connections.  Mr. Driscoll’s format includes a ten minute discussion time at the start of each class period.  He might give the students a quote, political cartoon, or have them watch a video clip.  The students then reflect on their Daily Learning Journal handout (see below) and then engage in a class discussion.  I like this idea a lot and have been implementing it in my classes as well.

     Also, instead of having the students watch a documentary on the brain independently, we watched it together as a class.  That helped the students who were feeling disconnected too.  I created a “parking lot” on one of my free whiteboards where students could write questions and comments anonymously on post-it notes.  The students are just starting to post things here and I imagine it will be used more as the class progresses.
     I was feeling pretty good about everything until the last day of the month.  One of my students came up to me at the end of the class period to tell me that he was dropping the course.  He is an all-around nice kid, smart, hardworking, thoughtful, the whole nine yards.  I was devastated!  No one has ever dropped my class before; not like this.  He literally said “it’s not you, it’s me”!  He said that the format of the class was just too impersonal and that he thought that there was going to be more discussion.  I told him that we are really just getting started and that there is tons of discussion to come!  I told him that we will be having all kinds of activities that we wouldn’t have had time for using a traditional teaching model.  I asked him to hang with it for another week and see if I could change his mind.  He said that he needs to drop now, before the end of the 5-Week progress reports. 
     I truly thought for a minute that I should completely throw out this whole experiment and go back to my regular way of teaching.  Then I remembered that I have a wide PLN who has experience I can use to get me though my crisis of flipping faith.  I posted on Schoology that I needed them to talk me off of the ledge and they did just that!   I also made a point to talk to my students who I have for both Psychology and US History.  Those students know me well and have no compunction about being brutally honest.  They reassured me that the class is going well and that they truly enjoy it.  When I said I was thinking about doing a unit of US History as a flipped mastery experiment, they were excited.  They said what many teachers have said when talking about implementing a flipped classroom---it’s all in how you sell it to the students.
     I’m thankful that I have a great PLN, wonderful students, and this blog to reflect on my teaching practices.  I think that reflection might be THE most important component to improving as a teacher.  Thank you for being a part of my reflection process and for making me the best teacher possible for my students!

The snow has not been friendly to me recently.  It has be wreaking havoc on my teaching plans as well as my blog posts!  I’ve been waiting to write this particular post until I had a bit of time with my students to experience the flipped mastery.  I also wanted to be able to talk about my experience with Digital Learning Day.  Mine was delayed due to one in a series of blizzards we’ve had this month.  Now, finally, everything has fallen into place!






     As I mentioned in my previous two posts, I began experimenting with flipped learning almost a year ago.  I have researched, conducted trials, solicited student feedback, researched again, and went back to the drawing board.  
     As I started this school year, I still believed that the flipped mastery model would not work for me and my students.  I teach inclusion classes and I didn’t think that the students could manage working their way through unit objectives on their own, I didn’t think that my students would have enough support to be successful, and I didn’t think that my students would be able to learn everything that they need to enable them to pass the Regents exam in June.
     But assigning video notes for homework wasn’t working because too many of my students weren’t watching them. They weren’t doing the regular homework either.  The students did feel like the videos were beneficial and they loved that they could watch them at their own pace during the times that I had them watch them in class.  I loved how much time I was able to free up to do other activities and to work on skill building.
     I came to the conclusion that if I wanted have my cake and eat it too, I would need to give up my reservations and try flipped mastery.  Because I was still a little nervous about the prospect of trying something so radically different, I decided to only use a flipped mastery model for my Psychology classes.  Psychology is a semester course, an elective, and does not have a Regents exam.  I figured that I couldn’t screw things up too badly!

These are the things that I use to produce flipped videos and to enable my students to view them.

• Logitech Labtec Desktop Microphone 600 (when I purchased this it was $15) This was my original mic and it served me well.
  
• Yeti USB Microphone (currently $98) I got this for Christmas from my husband.  It’s a real upgrade in sound from my original microphone but not truly necessary to be able to produce screencasts.  It sure is nice though!
  
• PowerPoint
  
• Screencast-o-matic Free or $15 for a year.  Uploads to youtube or screencast-o-matic or even better save to your computer
  
• YouTube- my channel 
  
• Weebly-  My website to post links to videos
  
• Schoology - Starting in October our school district now uses this as our LMS and I now post videos here.  I download my screencasts as MP4s from Screencast-o-matic and then upload to Schoology. Then I don’t have to worry about them being blocked at school!
  

What's on my list to get next:

• Camtasia
  
• A video camera to attempt green screen recordings!

     Flipped mastery has begun for the second semester of my Psychology classes.  We have just begun our second unit.  I have to say that I am quite pleased and that my students are happy also.  Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

• I learned the students names a lot quicker than I normally do
  
• Some students like choice and independence while others are completely confused by it (this has been improving daily)
  
• Some students shine that in other classes just put their heads down 
  
• In my foray into student blogging, I have learned that I need to teach writing and plagiarism (these were not topics that were big in this type of class previously) 
  
• There is a learning curve for both my students and me with this very different method of learning.  The way that I sell it to the students is that we will be working as a partnership.  So far the feedback from the students is that they are feeling empowered.  
  

     After visiting Tom Driscoll’s classes (@Mr_Driscoll) and talking to his students, I feel like I have made the right decision to pursue this new method of teaching.  His students were regular students, just like mine, and they were independent, knowledgeable, engaged, and learning!  I gained quite a few tips to smooth out some of the bumps that I have encountered so far and will be putting them into place immediately.  He also gave me a lot to think about for the future, particularly the addition of a gamification element to the course.  My co-teacher was so excited after learning about how successful Tom Driscoll has been in flipping his classes that he wants to get started with flipped mastery prior to the end of this school year rather than waiting for the fall as we had talked about previously!  I have to say that I’m extremely excited as well!!!
     I will be cohosting a Twitter chat for Psychology teachers with Melissa Schaefer (@MT_schaef) on March 12th at 9pm EST if you’d like to join in discussing our experiences with Flipped Learning.  Additionally, I will be presenting at the New York State Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Albany (March 27-29) about screencasting and curating videos for a flipped class.  I will also be posting updates here as the semester progresses to give you the play-by-play of what is working and what I have needed to modify.  

I’m a goal setter and a list maker.  Last spring, I set the goal to transition my classes to a flipped learning model.  This week I was finally able to implement a full, flipped mastery model to my two psychology classes.  How it will work, how much my students will learn and enjoy it, and what changes will need to be made all remain to be seen.  For now, I can tell you the process which led me to where I am today.

The Beginning:

It started with Twitter and Twitter Chats.  The two I engaged in the most last year were #sschat and #psychat.  People mentioned flipped learning and I was intrigued and decided to read up on it.  My research started online and then moved to the book Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams.  Initially, I found the book very useful but I decided that Flipped Mastery would not be something that I could do with my students.  I didn’t see how I could get through the curriculum or how they would be able to achieve mastery.  I also felt like it would mean me giving up on the instructional side of my teaching which is something that I love and feel that I am good at.

After a bunch of reading and research I dipped my toe in to flipping in April of 2013.  I figured that I couldn’t mess up too much at that point in the school year (we end in June) and I did some in class flips for my US History and Psychology classes.  I made sure to get a lot of feedback from my students along the way.  It helped me to fine tune my videos (shorter!) and to give me more goals to set in the future (put me in the videos, maybe even green screen).

Since it was the end of the school year, I didn’t get the opportunity to assign too many flipped homework assignments.  I did, however, make 13 Regents review videos for my US History students.  When I asked them just before the exam what were the most effective review methods for them, my review methods were highly rated.

Making Adjustments:

As the new school year started this fall, I had the goal of flipping one lesson each week for both US History and Psychology classes. 

This did not work out as planned for US History.  The students weren’t watching the videos and thus were not learning the material.  Instead of giving up entirely, I made videos as test reviews and for each vocabulary list I assigned to better explain the material and to help the students to review for our vocabulary quizzes.  The students have been making good use of these resources but I still want to get back to my initial goal of flipping more of the class instruction. 

In my psychology classes, my goal has been working out pretty well! I didn’t flip every single week but I did create flipped lessons regularly.  To increase students’ likelihood of watching the videos I did several things.

1. Put the videos on flash drives and DVDs for the students with limited internet access.
   
2. Posted the videos on both YouTube (with the links on my website) and Schoology (which is not blocked at school).
3. Gave the students ample opportunity to watch the videos; not just one or two nights.  I assigned the videos on Monday and made them due on Friday.
   
4. On the Friday when the videos were due, I held class in the computer lab.  I assigned fun activities for the class like taking personality tests or completing memory exercises.  The students loved them!  The students who hadn’t watched the flipped video for the week, however, had to watch the video prior to being able to do the fun activity.  
   

Using these methods, all students watched the videos whether at home or during class time.  Class time was freed up to do more engaging activities, have more discussions, and delve deeper into the material.  I was quite pleased and so were my students.

In my next post, I’ll discuss what technology I have used to flip my classes and some of the specific places where I have learned about how to flip effectively.  In a third post I’ll let you know the steps I’ve taken to move from a weekly flipped lesson to a fully flipped mastery model for my psychology classes.  Stay tuned!

     Over the summer I read a book that many other teachers read as well: Teach Like a PIRATE.  This book has been the talk of the town for a while making the rounds at conferences and water coolers.  One of the biggest venues to discuss the book is via twitter chats.  You can now find subject specific chats in addition to the general #tlap chat (Mondays from 7-8pm Eastern Time).  There’s #tlapmath, #ELAtlap, #sstlap, and #SCItlap (for science).  I’d say that the twittersphere’s response is a pretty good endorsement of how influential this book is!
     This book interested me before I even knew that Dave Burgess is a fellow high school social studies teacher.  Honestly, the pirate thing was the biggest draw for me.  Who wouldn’t want to teach like a pirate?  I wanted to be the teacher who would hold the students captive to my educational awesomeness and the idea of being a bit of a quirky peg-legged, eye-patched, friend of parrots was a definite incentive for me to read the book.  Finding out that the author teaches difficult to motivate students US History was only icing on the cake!
     So, I’ve decided to put my own spin on the pirate lifestyle for my classroom this year.  I loved Dave’s idea of selling the class to the students.  I made my class handouts resemble advertisements and even had endorsements from last year’s students.  I decided to break away from my regular first few days of class where I went over the rules day one and dove into the curriculum on day 2.  Like I said, I did my own spin on the pirate life so on day one for US History I did an activity called History in a Bag  and for Psychology I did the Marshmallow Challenge. 

     Next week I will be doing activities where the students will be up and moving in both classes.  Both activities are inspired by my summer conferences.  My US History classes will be doing an activity I learned about at the Library of Congress Summer Institute involving maps entitled “Connecting with Primary Sources” (more on this later).  My psychology classes will be taking part in a Values Walk.  
     I truly believe that using the PIRATE methods in addition to my own general zany character will really make my class an exciting place for my students where they feel motivated to learn.  Coupling this with my move towards gradually flipping my classes and integrating more technology overall will make this even easier for me to accomplish.  My goal is to have more class time to engage my students and really help them to connect with the content.  So far I’m feeling extremely energized and very excited to teach my lessons.  One student has already said to me “You can tell you really like your job”.  What a great endorsement two days into the school year!

     I was looking back at my blog posts and I realized that I never mentioned that I was accepted to the APA-Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers!  It just so happens that the conference took place this week from 7/22-7/24 and it was AMAZING!!!  Twenty-five high school psychology teachers were selected from throughout the nation (16 states were represented) to take part in the 9th annual conference in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Did I mention that it was amazing?!?
     The conference was a combination of presentations from professors at the forefront of psychological research and from master high school psychology teachers.  The high school teachers coordinated the activities and materials they shared with the topics the professors presented.  For example, Dr. Marianne Wiser (Clark University) discussed how she approaches her sensation and perception course.  She discusses each sense in order of complexity from least complex to most complex: pain, touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision.  The master teachers then gave illustrations of activities, videos, web-links, and handouts to use in class. 
     The most engaging presentation was given by Dr. Champika K. Soysa (Worcester State University) who spoke about children experiencing PTSD in Sri Lanka due to war and the 2004 tsunami.  The stories were heartbreaking but the discussion about how sociocultural characteristics can impact perceptions of mental illness was thought provoking.  The presentation which I think will have the greatest impact on my teaching was from Dr. Victor Benassi (University of New Hampshire).  He shared his studies of how the single most effective means to increase student test scores is by taking a quiz---even if the student doesn’t get the correct answers to the quiz prior to taking the test.  The best kind of quiz to give uses a variety of types of questions including open-ended and multiple choice questions.  Quizzing is more beneficial than rereading the text, making flash cards, or even being given the test questions prior to the test!
     Beyond the seminars that were given, I greatly enjoyed our tour of the Psychology department at Clark.  The research that is taking place at Clark is diverse and timely.  Topics include comparison of adjustment for families who adopt children from both traditional and homosexual couples, correlation between parenting styles and student academic success, and Latino men’s perceptions about seeking treatment for mental illness.  I left the tour feeling excited and a bit jealous of the grad students who are taking part in these studies.
     The best part of the conference, however, was having the opportunity to rub shoulders with some wonderful, knowledgeable, and dynamic high school psychology teachers.  I got to meet in person two members of the weekly twitter chat #psychat: Amy Ramponi (@AmyRamponi) and Jennifer Schlict (@jenslish).  Jennifer also maintains the blog “Using Pop Culture in High School Psych Class” (http://psychteach.com/).  Amy will be taking over as moderator of #psychat in August 21st discussing “Kicking Off Your Psych Class”, Jennifer will follow on 8/28 with “Tech Integration in the Psych Classroom”.  I will be moderating my first ever twitter chat on 9/4 discussing “Unit Projects in Psychology”.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about having the ability to take part in something like this!
     The other people that I met at the conference were equally influential in making this a terrific conference.  Dr. Lee Gurel’s generous donations made this conference (and the last 8 conferences) possible.  Dr. Gurel is a Worcester native who graduated from Clark in 1948 and still remembers how influential his psychology professors, particularly Dr. John E. Bell, were in guiding him and believes that high school students deserve the same opportunity for inspiration and guidance.  Dr. Nancy Budwig (Clark University), Caitlin Crowley and Emily Leary Chesnes (APA) were also instrumental at ensuring that conference attendees were able to get the most out of the conference. 
     I would certainly recommend the conference to any high school psychology teacher.  Although I was one of the only participants that does not teach AP level psychology it was a great experience.  Applications are typically due in April so be on the lookout on the APA web site in late winter.  If you are interested in any of the materials that I received from the conference, please feel free to email me at [email protected].