First Week Post Mortum

Done with week one and it's been a long week.  Not necessarily due to the flipping, I think it is related to the fact that this is our first full week in three weeks.  PHEW!


Well, today was our What do you Know? and for the most part I was pleased.  However, my first period has a handful of students not working to potential.  In no uncertain terms I let them know what I thought about their lack of effort.  Some students got 30's on their WDYK? and others, who normally get 40's, passed with flying colors.  I reiterated that students will get out of this what they put into this endeavor.  Students cannot sit, do nothing and expect to pass in this type of classroom.

After our WDYK? students created a talking drawing (I'll post about that next week) and an end of the week mural.  Each student is tasked with thinking about one thing they learned this week and represent it on the mural with a word or drawing.  Each period had their own mural.

Next week we are continuing with the middle ages.  Students have a few more sets of notes to complete, students will listen to NPR podcast about an illuminated manuscript, a vocabulary activity that includes math(!), a video clip on the Mongols and others.

Happy Teaching!
C

Screencasts

We have had some "snow" days these last few days.  I decided to take advantage of this extra time to work on my flip (in addition to bleaching the grout in my bathrooms and cleaning my washing machine- but that's for another blog...maybe confessions of a type-A crazy clean person).

So, my dear husband showed me how my Mac already has a program to allow me to make a screencast of the column notes.  I spent Monday (our holiday) and yesterday recording and then uploading on my Schoology page.

Here is a sample of a screencast.  The screencasts are not as fuzzy on Schoology and this is an edited one.  I got distracted and forgot what I was talking about.  The average length of the screencasts is 6 minutes.

The first part of the column notes is one screencast where I fill in the blanks and discuss new vocabulary, new concept or relate back to previous information.  The second screencast is the second column answers.  I encourage my students to answer before watching.

The supervisor of blending learning is coming by to see me to help me figure out what exactly I'll be doing with our time in class.

Happy Teaching!

C