Flipping the Classroom

The new trend emerging seems to be the Flipped Classroom. No longer are there long boring lessons with little time for hands on activities. Students do the learning on their own. There is a whole dialogue on the subject and below are some websites that will give you a background on the subject. This is by no means a comprehensive list and I don't necessarily agree with everything on each site but it gives an idea of what is trending. As always doing your own research is the best way to make things work for you.
Flip Teaching - Wikipedia
Educause Learning Initiative: 7 Things You Should Know About Flipped Classrooms (pdf)
Flipping the Classroom: Educational Vodcasting
Flipped Learning Network

How I Flipped My Classroom
I teach technology five days a week. I see one set of classes per day so these kids pass through my doorway only once a week. This can make it very hard to teach difficult subjects in a way that doesn't bore them to death. I read about flipping the classroom and liked the idea but I had to adapt it to what I do in an elementary classroom.
Currently my 3rd - 5th graders are learning PowerPoint. I have taught it in the past and found that in the end the kids learned but the level of frustration felt by me was mirrored by the kids. I tried to force them to follow my subject and make slides with little room for personal touches. I was wholly focused on getting the kids from point A to point B. They were bored and felt a bit stifled. It was too much information in too short a time with little practical application. I was frustrated too and I wanted to do better.

When I started reading about flipped classrooms I thought that I could adapt it to my classroom.
This is what I did:
I took one day and for half of the class I talked and demonstrated. Then I turned it over to the kids. We started mucking about in the program. I was just a facilitator. I encouraged them to help one another when a discovery was made. The level of excitement was high and even my slow or reluctant learners got with the program and were wildly successful! They found the ins and outs of the program on their own and their retention was amazing. Those who wanted to race ahead could do so and their new found expertise in Power Point led them to teach those who were lagging. The kids did the teaching and learned along the way. Everyone was asking questions sometimes of me sometimes of each other No one felt stupid and I was never frustrated. The noise level was a constant and pleasing hum punctuated by excited voices when they found something new. The individual creativity of the students floored me! Talk about a way to learn about your students! Kids that were shy and reluctant were bashing out PowerPoints that were filled with what they were passionate about. I had one child who rarely speaks put together a powerful program that spoke of her love of sharks. Who knew?

Another perk of doing a flip is that YOU, THE TEACHER, LEARN!
I am not ashamed to admit that I don't know everything and I encourage the kids to share when they find something.
I had a student teach me something about how to skew a preset rainbow background as we worked through slide layout. I showed them one part and with a bit of experimenting they showed me something. I was excited to learn and they were excited to teach me something!

There will always be times when I have to deliver information and they have to sit and receive it but any time I can figure out a way to do a flip I will do it.

Anyone out there have a flipped classroom? What works for you?

Feeding Your Appetite For Books

Image from: cinderellainrubbershoes/tumbler

I admit it. I am a book hoarder. I can't help it. I love to read.
I have a Nook, a Kindle and an iPad that I use to read as well as a metric ton of books made of paper and ink. If you are like me you spend WAY too much money on books.
I have a few ideas that might help you get your fix without breaking the bank!

If you like books you can hold and feel and smell check out these resources.



Paper Back Swap
My awesome mother in law saw the Paper Back Swap on TV and suggested that we try it to feed our reading addiction. I snagged a couple of paperbacks that I didn't want anymore, opened an account and here I am 400+ credits later still swapping away! It is easy and free.
Here are the basics of how to swap.

Goodwill
My local Goodwill has an amazing stock of books! Paperbacks are usually about .79 with cookbooks or specialty books priced anywhere from $1.99-$3.99. If I am very lucky, sometimes I can catch the 10 for $1.00 sale. When I come across that I stock up!! I get books for myself and books to put on Paper Back Swap. It is a win/win situation!

Garage Sales
Ahhh garage sales. I can't begin to tell you how much I adore garage sales. When I go the first thing I look for is the book section. There is nothing better than hitting a sale where all the paperbacks are .25 and the hardbacks are .50!
I have been known to clean out a garage sale!

If you have an e-reader you can check out some of these resources.





Book Basset
Book Basset's logo is Always on the Hunt for the Best Kindle Deals! Free to sign up and free to use. It is sort of a one stop shop for all things Kindle. The folks who run the site troll Amazon to find you the best book deals. I take them up on the free and under a dollar books. I always assume that if the book is less than stellar I am only out of a dollar.

Amazon dot com
I like to go through the free section of Amazon dot com to find books I might like to read. The authors will give away one of their books in an effort to draw you into their series. I have to admit that I have found some amazing books for free that lead me to make an actual purchase.

BookBub
This site caters to all types of ebooks. It allows you to use all book sellers and platforms. The sign up is free and you get only a few emails suggesting books. I give it a glance when the emails come through. Sometimes I find things sometimes I don't.

The Public Library
I am ashamed to say that I completely forgot the public library! Thanks to P. Run Around for reminding me of this valuable resource!

Go online and find your state and how to get an elibrary card from them.

Borrowing books from the library for Kindle. Info here.
Borrowing books from the library for Nook. Info  here.
Borrowing books from the library for iPad. Info here.

Copyright, Fair Use and Research Skills for Elementary Students

Teaching copyright and fair use can be a bit tricky with kiddos. They automatically assume that everything on the internet is fair game. While most things are able to be used in a limited fashion it can still be confusing as to how much constitutes a limited amount..

We are beginning to learn Power Point and the kids will be using pictures from the internet to create the life cycle of the frog. I did what I could to research the subject and found the following websites that did a better job explaining it than I could! : )
I love Cyber Bee's little quiz. It is a quick way to get them started on what they need to know.
Copyright Kids
Copyright Alliance
B4UCopy


This is an article on teaching research but it goes with the whole copyright discussion.
I know there is much more but this should get you started down the right path!

Shooting Dice in the Classroom

I wasn't always a technology teacher. I did my time in the "regular" classroom. I always got the hard to handle classes because I could handle them. It made for interesting times.
These classes presented many challenges. The biggest one was always how to get them involved in their learning. I had the kids who would refuse to do a teacher created worksheet but would use polyhedral dice to roll up a hundred problems of their own to solve.

You may be asking yourself, what the heck are polyhedral dice?? For those who are not blessed to have geek and gamer friends let me show you.
Below are the most common polyhedral dice.

Dice can be found at Mathartfun.

The dice from left to right and top to bottom:
Six sided - Ten sided - Twenty sided
Four Sided - Eight Sided - Twelve Sided

Never have you seen children work so hard as the days that they were allowed to make their own math problems. Here is what you do.

Addition for the younger kids:
Two six sided dice of different colors (our school colors are red and blue so I always used red and blue dice.)
Red went first so if the child rolled the dice and got a 5 on the red die and a 6 on the blue die their problem would be 5+6= _____

Subtraction for the younger kids:
They roll two dice of the same color and put the larger number first to make their problem.

Addition for the older kids:
You can choose any number of dice in any combination just be sure that they know what color goes first. 

Subtraction for the older kids:
Again, choose any combination of dice just remind them that the larger number always goes first.

Multiplication:
Choose two 12 sided dice. Tell the kids which color goes first (again, we used red and blue with red leading) and have them roll up their problems.

Warning!
Before you start you need to lay out some rules. If you don't you will have a craps game on your hands!

My rules were simple.
Two kids, two dice - they took turns rolling the sets of dice to make the problems
There was NO "shooting" the dice. If your dice rolled off of the desk or out of your area on the floor you had to use MY worksheet to do math problems which was NO FUN!
Write legibly. If I couldn't pick your paper up and read it you had to use my math worksheets and that was....you guessed it..NO FUN!
No fighting. If you can't work it out then you need to be separated and use MY worksheet.....NO FUN! : (

Some Dice Resources (if you don't like these just look up dice on the internet!)
Learning Resources
Educator's Outlet
Dice Game Depot
I also go to my local comic book or gaming store. You can buy the dice you like in the quantities you like.
Garage sales are also a great place to get dice!

Teaching the Teacher Using Youtube!

Say the word 'Youtube' and everyone will think of something different. Some think of the amazing cat and dog videos out there. Others think of the cool music videos one can view.
Now, these things are FUN, no doubt but Youtube can be a valuable tool for teaching the teacher.

You can use it to look up fixes for computers, iPads and a variety of other things. You can go to Youtube to get an idea of how to teach a lesson. I used it just the other day when I was struggling with teaching a fun, interactive and valuable lesson on Powerpoint. I knew what I wanted to do but I couldn't seem to make it coalesce into something so off to Youtube I went!
There was a teacher who had a new iPad she received from the ESL department. She had NO idea how to use it and neither did I so we jumped on Youtube and found out what she wanted. Easy!

Now if you are the brave type that likes to be in the limelight then please get out there and make videos for others to share! They don't have to be movie quality they just have to show what you are teaching! Teachers are the most valuable resource to other teachers!
If you have a video out there please let me know so we can share it with others! : )

Recharging the Batteries!

Whew! Christmas break has come and gone and with it a seven day cruise on the Carnival Cruise Line! We went to Mahogany Bay, Isla Rotan then over to Belize and our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico. It was an amazing time to put away the phones, the internet and everything else in favor of just BEING. I read three books during the cruise and started a fourth! (If you haven't checked out The Mortal Instruments series I recommend it!)

School breaks are not just for kids. Teachers often forget that when the kids are off we should be too. It is hard not to keep on grading and keep on planning when we aren't in school but we must remember that if we are not at our best we can't give our best!

Here's looking forward to an amazing 2014!