My Take on Flipped Classroom

"The flipped classroom is not about the videos! It is about how you re-envision class time." 

-Jon Bergmann

I've done a flipped math classroom for the past two school years and absolutely love it. I also train other teachers on how to do it in their classrooms, and the above quote basically summarizes how I open sessions. 

The technology with a flipped classroom is easy and can be learned in literally five minutes or less. I personally use Explain Everything on my iPad to create the videos, upload them to YouTube, and have a playlist of all videos embedded on a Google Site with a Sheet detailing which videos my students are to watch. That's the extent of the technology involved, and you can easily replicate that in your classroom.

However, there's much more to it than just making videos and assigning them for students to watch at home. (You can do an in-class flip, but I've done an out of class flip and it's worked beautifully for my students. Do what you feel is best for yours.)

The Buy In

Practicing a flip in class

When talking with administrators, have a plan. Mentioning the technology is important, so they know you have given thought to the logistics, but I lead with the why. Math standards get more rigorous every year, with content added constantly. It's hard to properly introduce new material, provide time for guided and independent practice, and assess all in the timeframe of a school day. Illustrating the benefits will help the admin to accept this idea, and it's great to back it up with data.

After getting the go ahead from my administrator, I next discuss it with the parents. Ideally, I do this at a formal Back-to-School night, but the information is always available on my classroom website, too. When introducing it, I explain what's expected of students at home (explained more in "The  'Homework'" section) and the benefits to both the student and the parents. Benefits to parents include that they can be consistent with what methods are being taught in school, there's less frustration involved (saying, "Go watch your flip video" is less likely to cause a fight than "Go do your worksheet"), and it empowers the parents to have a modeled practice of how to do math. Nine times out of ten, when I have a parent who says they were "hate math," it's because they are fearful that they can't do the math their child can do. A flipped classroom also helps tremendously with communication between the teacher and the parent. The parent can tell you specifically where the student is getting stuck rather than "He doesn't understand decimals."

Be prepared for some pushback from parents and/or admin. It's something new and they may not fully grasp it. Be open and flexible. I generally ask for ongoing feedback about flipped classroom to the parents in my classroom and they seem to appreciate that. Prepare to overcome some challenges, and you may be pleasantly surprised if none occur. 

Finally, after talking with the adults involved, I lay it out to my students. This is usually the easiest step. I tell them their math homework for the year is going to be to watch YouTube. Once the cheering dies down, I add that it's math-related, which is slightly less exciting for them. However, I then shift into why it's going to be helpful for them. I play up the fact that they can learn at their own pace by rewinding certain parts, pausing, and even rewatching the whole video multiple times over. I share how I nor anyone else in the class will know if they understood it after one watch or sixteen views, which saves them some dignity if they are a student who has traditionally struggled in front of their peers for years on end. The flipside is also true - if they get it after one viewing, they don't need to rewatch it and be bored to tears. Buy-in from the students is usually the easiest to gain, especially if they know you're doing it in their best interests. 

The "Homework"

Like I said, I do an out-of-class flip. I check with parents for access to Internet and devices and I've found that they always have some access. Just in case, I do have backup plans ready (they do it in class during a math rotation or direct them to a public library).

At home, the students watch the videos. I produce all the videos myself, because I can tie it into my students' interests and the methods I'm teaching in class. My videos aren't super awesome, but they reflect my personality and teaching style that my students get in class. I keep them under 10 minutes so if a student needs to view it numerous times, I'm respecting their time. Rewatching a 20 minute video quickly turns into over an hour of work.

Sometimes, students create videos during class and then I assign them to the class for homework. I'll expand on this in a later post.  

The videos all follow a "I do, we do, you do" structure. I introduce and model the concept, and then give them another problem and ask them to pause the video. Once they've solved it, they unpause and I magically finish it out. The videos conclude with a "Bring Back to School" problem, which has no provided answer. This is what I'll be checking in the morning and help me create my groups. 

Practicing taking notes

While the students watch the video, they take notes. I don't provide outlines or fill-in-the-blanks because I want them to write down what they feel is important. The rule of thumb I tell them is if I write it on my screen, it should be on their paper. They know not to try to write down everything I say, because Mr. B talks a lot and goes off on tangents. 

We practice taking notes as a class for at least three weeks before they're doing it completely independently at home. Each week, we shift from in class practice to more at home, and I find this scaffolding really helps. 

What if a kid doesn't do his video? This is the most common question I get when doing a training session. If this happens, I ask them if they didn't do it at all or forgot to bring in their notes. If it's the latter, I ask them to bring the notes the following day. If it's the former, I give them a choice: do it during math rotations or do double tonight. Generally, most students choose to double up and it's a rare occurrence for repeat offenders.

The Instructional Shifts

When my students come into our classroom, I check their notes for the "Bring Back to School" problem. This is my first indication of their grasp of the prior night's video. However, it could be their siblings' or parents' work. I also usually have them solve a problem about the prior night's objective, either on paper, a whiteboard, or Google Form.

This helps me group the students. If a few students misunderstanding a specific element of long division, I can work with them on that rather than the spray and pray mentality of giving everyone the same instruction. I can really focus on what the students need to best address their learning.

That's the power of the flipped classroom. I rarely introduce a new concept in a whole group lesson, since the video is the whole group lesson. Instead, we're using our math time for number talks and math stations. In our 90-minute math block, we're able to do a fifteen minute number talk, and three 25-minute rounds for math stations. These stations include meeting with me, hands on work, collaboration with peers, and technology based stations. Some stations are standardized, with the ability for the student to self-adjust based on their perceived level of difficulty, while others are individualized specifically for that student.

The bottom line is that with a flipped classroom, class time is no longer used for passive learning - it's all active while they're in the classroom.

The Results

We always need to look at the validity of using new instructional methods beyond "it's cool and shiny and the kids will love it." Not much research exists on flipped classroom yet, but I have two years worth of data to support it. In both years, my students experienced large gains in their end-of-year state exams (comparing third to fourth grade), both in average score and class pass rate. My first year of flipping saw about a 20% increase in passing, while both years have seen a 30 point gain. 

While data is great for admin, it's just as important to check in with parents and students to see what they felt. I'll close with a sampling of their responses.

Parent responses:

• Flipped videos have made a huge different to my child, he struggles with reading but is much better at math. The flipped videos allows him to do math without the struggle of reading, he can view a video for as many times as he would like. 
• An added benefit is that I can watch the video and help him, I have realized that I actually remember more then I thought from my days in math class.
• Taking notes is a skill that he is developing as he is watching and he is not surprised by what will asked of him the next day. The videos are short and not overwhelming and it makes it way more fun to do it on the computer.

Student responses:

• I think it is a lot more fun instead of taking home a worksheet you get to watch and video and it makes learning easier.
• It is fun because he includes things we like.
• I like flip notes because you cannot use the excuse of you lost your worksheet.

Hot Off the Press: Student-Created Newsletters

"A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect."

-John Jay Chapman

Authentic experience is an important element in teaching students to become good writers. In schools, many writing prompts and assignments lack meaning to students and aren't applicable to real life.

Another problem in education is keeping parents informed of what's going on in the classroom. We design awesome learning experiences, but students may still go home saying “We did nothing today.”

This year, I killed those two birds with one stone* - a student-created newsletter.

Click to enlarge - Note the level of detail in Monday

Each day, a student writes a one page summary of our day. I start at my first student and work my way down the class list alphabetically. By the end of the year, each student produces around six daily reports. Some choose to work on it bit by bit throughout the day, while others do it all at the end of the day during read aloud.

We don't have a fancy template - just a single piece of loose leaf notebook paper. Originally, I had no maximum limit, but then one student wrote four pages - front and back. After that, I implemented the "one front of page max" policy. This helped tremendously, since it forces the students to write the most important points down without too much flowery, overly descriptive, verbose, repetitive, unnecessary, and irrelevant wordy expressions of written language. (Do you see what I did there?) Identifying main points that belong in a concise summary is one of the reading standards my students struggle with, so this is a good way to give them extra and real practice by flipping it to generating a summary.

Having them write without a rubric or outline to follow also helps me to glean what the students found most valuable and engaging in class. They may quickly detail the standard math centers, but different learning experiences might be explained in more depth. If I thought something was going to be mind-blowingly cool, and it doesn't even net a sentence in the summary, I usually examine why that is. The one direction I do give was to write as if the reader had no idea what they were reading about. If we're playing Cutthroat Cornhole in class, they need to explain what the game is so the readers know what it is.

Once I have a week's worth of daily summaries, I type them into a Google Form. I don't correct any errors or add any details. I want their parents to see exactly what they wrote, so it prompts discussions at home. I work with a student's mother and she said that their family would use other students' writing to help guide him in what he should write when it was his turn. It makes them more accountable as a writer, as it is solely reflects them.

From the Google Form, Autocrat (which I set up in the beginning of the year) generates it into an actual newsletter. I didn't have to use Autocrat, but it saved me a bunch of time instead of making a copy of a template, typing, formatting, so on and so forth. I use a three column table - a column each for the day, the summary, and the author's initials. Using a table is helpful so it resizes itself automatically.

I also had Autocrat tags on the page for the date. A newsletter spanned from Friday to Thursday, so I can type them on Friday morning and not rush to get it done at the end of the day on Friday. The footer also includes my contact information, so the parents have an immediately visible reminder of how to get ahold of me, while the header has our classroom motto ("we don't make excuses, we make changes") as a constant reminder of what we stand for in our classroom.

There's a section on the newsletter of "Important Information From Mr. B" for assessment dates (and ways to prepare), special events (such as Readers Cafe), upcoming units of study, or other exciting information. Instead of sending numerous Remind messages throughout the week, I tell the parents to look at the newsletter. This forces them to look at the newsletter and hopefully appreciate their students' hard work.

A physical copy goes home with each student and it's also posted on our classroom website under the Classroom News page. This way, parents have no excuse to not see it! In the future, I think I'll include a higher-level math task related to our current unit or a discussion prompt related to our class read aloud after the "Important Information" section (if there's extra room) to help promote discussion at home.

A student-created newsletter is easily adapted for any subject area or grade level. It'll empower your students to be mini-journalists, keep your parents in the loop, and give you an inside look at what your students feel is valuable in your classroom.

As for me, volume two of the Mr. B’s Agents of SHIELD Classroom Newsletter will be hitting the stands in September. I didn't win a Pulitzer last year, but I'm holding out for one this year!

*Author's Note: If you've ever genuinely killed two birds with one stone, you have earned all of my respect.

Revisiting Reader's Cafe

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably."

-C.S. Lewis

Two years ago, my class hosted a Reader's Cafe. You can read the full blog post here (and you really should or you might be lost in this post), but to summarize, my students chose and practiced reading three books, wrote varying levels of comprehension questions for each books, selected and rehearsed the jobs of host, waiter, chef, and busperson, and ran the Cafe for the whole school.

We didn't get to host a Cafe last year, due to state testing lasting until the last week of school, but this year we had two weeks between the end of testing and the end of the year. Rather than filling this with movies, kickball games, and other time wasters, we decided to host the Cafe. This year, we made some changes from the original plan. The basic structure and jobs stayed the same, but these changes helped to improve the experience.

INTRODUCING THE CAFE

THEN:

I introduced the Cafe model to my class with a written slideshow and verbally explaining it. I didn't have many pictures from when I first did it with my student teaching class, so I had no real visuals to show them.

NOW:
Introducing it this year was significantly easier than last time. I showed them the recap video that we made after the 2015 Cafe and fielded questions afterwards. We still followed the same steps in preparing - choosing books and writing questions first, practice reading the books, explain and pick jobs, and rehearse the whole thing.

DEVELOPING QUESTIONS

THEN:

Students developed comprehension questions, including a mix of literal and inferential questions for each book - one before reading, two during, and one after. They then typed these questions into a Google Doc, which led to a number of formatting issues.

NOW:
Students still developed questions, but this year, I used Autocrat to generate the question charts and menus. Students typed their book titles, authors, and questions into a Google Form, and Autocrat used the info to generate the question charts (and even the menus).

FAMILY INVOLVEMENT

THEN:
Eight families attended the 2015 Cafe and had very little interaction beyond that.

NOW:
This year, we had much more support from the families. 26 of 29 students had a family member visit, which was a huge uptick from the eight families who came last time. The parents also got more involved this year. They offered to donate money for food and supplies. One of their parents works in the building and saw that I chose gold as my theme color for this year (I had some leftover supplies from my little sister's Gold Award ceremony). When I came in the next morning, I was greeted with 30 gold streamers, a bag of gold confetti, six star balloons, and four balloons that spelled out READ. I placed these balloons in the hall, which helped hype up the whole school.

FEEDBACK

THEN:
Feedback for readers was non-existent.

NOW:
The biggest change in the Cafe didn't come from my own work - it came from a student. The Friday before we were to begin presenting to various classes for some practice rounds, a student came to me with an idea. He asked, "Mr. B, wouldn't it be cool if our customers had a way to review our reading so we knew what to improve?" I love student agency in their learning. I said to him, "I like it. Work up a prototype and let's talk on Monday."

Once I had explained what a prototype was, he was up for the challenge. Come Monday morning, he walked in with a sketch. He wanted customers to evaluate the readers on overall performance, fluency, and expression (which aligned to the oral reading goals for this project). We worked together to polish it and considered logistics. He decided that each reader would give one feedback slip to the people he was reading to and they would agree on their assessment. This student also developed an evaluation slip for the teacher to complete with their class when they returned, with more of a focus on our performance in the Cafe. Of the teachers who responded, we ended up with 15 positive reviews for the hosts, 13 positive reviews for the waiters, 14 positive reviews for the buspeople, and 11 positive reviews for the chefs.

This student generally steps back and is shy in class. He lets others take the lead, even though he is capable. It was so incredible to see him take charge and truly make something his own and then present it to the whole class. His mom even noticed a change in him:

"I really enjoyed the Readers Café experience. It was so awesome to see how much [Student] has grown. I am very proud of him in many ways and I attribute a huge part of his growth to your teaching style and support. He seemed to just blossom upon your return [from medical leave]."

SIZE AND TIMING

THEN:
My former school had roughly 500 students, in about 25 classes. We were able to fit all of our rotations in two and a half days, with five minute transition times between classes. These times soon became chaotic as we waited on different classes. Both the hosts and the waiters dismissed the customers, which was overkill.

NOW:
This school is over 900 and over 35 classes in total. We had to modify our timing and increase to three full days to accommodate nearly double the amount of customers. Rather than having a 5 minute rotation time, my students had 30 seconds. This actually was a huge blessing. Students had no time to get off task between rounds and helped the whole experience flow much more smoothly. Additionally, the hosts would help get the next class ready as the waiters did the dismissing. This helped give everyone something to do, as the chefs would be refilling the food and the buspeople finished washing and drying dishes.

CONCLUSIONS

This year's Cafe was even more successful than the 2015 one. The feedback slip really helped to tie it all together. Our final tallies are below, along with the promo video we produced afterwards. I look forward to continually tweaking the Cafe model to be even better in the future. I'd like to hand over the logistics (timing, amount of food to buy, etc) of the Cafe to the students, which would add a level of math integration to it. On Twitter, I saw someone had adapted it for a Math Cafe model and I am interested in that. Perhaps I'll do a Math Cafe before winter break and continue with Reader's Cafe at the end of the year. Stay tuned to find out!

Final 2017 Numbers:

787 students

39 family members 

32 visiting classes

7 boxes of Goldfish

2 bags of animal crackers

3 bags of pretzels

4 boxes of Cheez-Its

"Send Home Sheets" with GSuite and Autocrat

Due to being a 1:1 Chromebook classroom and my general feelings on the importance of technology integration, my students take many of their assessments (or "opportunities [to show our learning]" as we call them in class) with Google Forms. This is great because it cuts down on the amount of paper I need to print (and the time spent copying, handing out, collecting, etc etc.)

However, with students completing their assessments completely on their Chromebooks (including receiving their score, feedback, and some immediate remediation), parents and families don't get to see their child's results like if they had a paper/pencil assessment and thus can't work with their students to help them improve. I do check and send home their written work for math assessments, but many history and language arts assessments are completely digital. If we truly want parents working with their students at home, we need to be sure that they can see where the students have made mistakes, along with the questions and correct answers.

One of my favorite Google Sheets Add-ons is Autocrat. It's a powerful tool that essentially allows you to create a mail merged Doc from a Form/Sheet.

For a brief bit of background knowledge on Autocrat, it operates with tags that appear like this: <<response>>. (I sometimes call the tag arrows "carrots.") You create a Doc template with <<tags>> in place of things you want inserted from the Form/Sheet. For example, if I wanted to ask a question about what a student thought the capital of Virginia was, I would put <<Virginia capital>> or something similar on the template Doc, and when I run Autocrat, it would fill it in with their response (which would hopefully be Richmond!) This can be set up to run automatically, and once you get the hang of it, it's incredibly easy to use. I'll admit that Autocrat isn't the easiest thing to explain in a blog post, but the video tutorial will make more sense.

Using Autocrat, you can make a Google Doc that inputs each student's responses from a Google Form assessment, along with the question and correct response, which I call a "Send Home Sheet." You can then print them or have them automatically emailed to parents for them to review and help begin remediating. Watch this video to see exactly how to do it.

When all is said and done, it takes roughly 5 minutes to set that all up. Copying and pasting from the response sheet saves lots of time in the "mapping tags" step, and keeps the formatting in nice and even columns.

Part of the benefit of doing assessments on Google Forms is the elimination of paper. This method seems to directly conflict with that, but in the long run, it's still less paper. My students recently completed an assessment that was 23 questions. If each question (and all four to five answer choices) were printed, it would have been 7 pages.

However, but using some clever formatting on the "Send Home Sheet," it ended up being 1 page front-to-back (lots of the saved room came from not having to print all the answer choices and the fact that a three column format is more efficient than one question per row). For my class of 29 students, I was able to print all of their "Send Home Sheets" in less than 30 pages versus the over 200 pages it would have required to print paper-based assessments. If you opted to send the results directly to email, no paper would have been used at all. (Personally, I use a Drive app called PDF Mergy to combine all 29 "Send Home Sheets" into one PDF and print that.)

Furthermore, by using the Quiz feature on Google Forms or Flubaroo, I didn't have to do any of the grading by hand. I'm a big fan of letting technology do as much of my rote tasks as possible so I can focus on using the assessment results to work on remediation.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, some parents aren't ready to accept that they might not see their student's work. This is a valid feeling, because if they want to help (and we need them to play a vital role in their child's education), they need to see where the gaps are. "Send Home Sheets" allow the best of all worlds - less paper waste, more time for the teacher to work on more important tasks, and gives the parents something tangible to review.

Give it a whirl in your class and let me know in the comments below how it works out for you!

Is Homework Really the Devil?

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework." 

-Lily Tomlin

For better or for worse, homework seems to be a highly polarizing issue in education. People seem to think it's either inherently horrible or it's an absolutely necessary element of school, regardless of actual value. Many arguments on Twitter quickly devolve into "Homework is bad and if you assign it, you're a bad teacher!" or "I had homework when I grew up and it taught me responsibility!"

Students demonstrating understanding of
prior night's video.

Yes, we all have heard the studies that "prove" homework is horrible and has little to no effect on achievement nor does it effectively teach responsibility. By and large, a lot of homework is meaningless, developmentally inappropriate, and just perpetuated for the mere sake of "it's part of school." But what if we stopped being so black and white about it and started analyzing how homework can be best leveraged for learning?

We interviewed Connie Hamilton and Starr Sackstein on the EduRoadTrip to discuss their new book Hacking Homework: 10 Strategies That Inspire Learning Outside the Classroom. (As an aside here, I contributed to the book. I'd recommend picking up a copy - page 107 alone is worth it!) The custom of the EduRoadTrip is to ask guests for a bumper sticker - a memorable takeaway from their episode.

Starr spoke up and said, "We're not anti-homework. We're anti-stupid homework."

Homework must be relevant and meaningful. In my classroom, I do assign some homework in reading, math, and reviewing history. I always give a digital and physical choice for each. I keep it to a minimum and allow the students some choice in what they do. 

The value of reading outside of school
Image Source: blog.maketaketeach.com/ 

In reading, the students must read at least 25 minutes a night. This could include reading a good book, visiting ReadTheory.org, or having a parent read aloud to them. I absolutely insist that students are reading every night. Reading will make a difference in life. If students walk out of my classroom not being able to recall who won the battle of Yorktown or how to multiply by hand, there is Google and calculators, respectively. However, if they can't read, they can't use those resources.

What I don't do is force a reading log. I don't understand the value of reading logs.  The main argument is it's "proof" that the students read. It's really just proof that students can write down numbers and parents can initial (or as I often did in my middle and high school years, students can forge their parents' initials.) How about just asking students what they read the prior evening? A rich discussion outweighs a log that gets thrown away.

In math, we do a flipped classroom. Each night, students watch a video to frontload them with the information they are expected to master, according to the state. I create the videos with my iPad and ExplainEverything, so I can tailor it to my students' interests and my teaching strategies. The key benefit to this flipped classroom is that the student can self-individualize. Watch the video once and you got it? Great. Need to watch it three times? That's great too. Viewed it 10 times and still want to keep at it? More power to you, but we can work on it in class more.

Practicing learning how to take notes for a
flipped video

If a student can't or doesn't view a video at home, I give the student a choice; watch it during class or do it at home the next evening. Either one is fine by me, but inevitably students choose to double up and do it at home. Why? They say they rather work in class on stations and they can focus better at home. 

For history, my students have a variety of methods to review: classic study guides, online Jeopardy, or Quizlet flashcards. I use the study to teach study tips because like it or not, studying will be a part of their life later on. I noticed numerous students saying they could "never study the whole study guide" in an evening so I took some time to lead some mini lessons on chunking it down, self-monitoring, and having someone else to check their understanding. 

What you'll notice is there are no worksheets being sent home to be completed. If a student doesn't understand it in school, why would they understand at home? If a student gets it in school, why should they waste time at home practicing what they know?

I want to make homework purposeful, engaging, and in smaller amounts than the norm. I'm a big fan of students using their time at home to be kids with their families (which doesn't include little Johnny sitting playing Call of Duty in the family room while Mom updates her Facebook in the office.) I want families to spend time together, and it's even better if that involves learning together, as I shared in my earlier post Forming Family Foundations. I also know that students these days are incredibly busy, with sports, music, Scouts, and other extracurricular activities. If students spend 7 hours in school, another 2-3 at sports, an hour or two for traveling and eating, when do they get to just have unstructured play time?

I do not have children of my own, so I can't approach this from a father point of view, and I know my outlook will change if I do have children. The fact of the matter is they are kids (yes, even high schoolers) and we need to give them time to be kids at home. It's also important to note that this is what has worked in my classroom and I have modified it to be responsive to family needs along the way. Homework will look vastly different for everyone.

So next time someone starts ranting about homework, engage them in discussion. Shift the conversation from demonizing homework to discussing how the homework experience can be improved. It's not a black and white issue, and it won't be going away. It's not enough to simply not assign homework in your own class.

We can do better by our kids, so how will you make an impact on a larger community?

Student-Leaders Sharing Success

"What power to be able to talk about your own strengths and weaknesses instead of your parents and teachers talking about you behind closed doors."

- Parent of child in my class

Dressed professionally to present

Imagine parent-teacher conferences. You probably envisioned a new set of parents (with no child in sight) entering every fifteen minutes, with the teacher speaking a mile a minute. Later, the parents would go home and either praise or criticize the child for the report they just received. (I'll be honest, every year I heard, "Your teachers said you need to stop talking all the time! But your grades are fine!")

However, our conferences were different this year - I probably spoke about fifteen minutes total all day. The student developed, practiced, and led the entire conference this year.

This year, my classroom is a student-led learning environment, thanks to Learn Like a Pirate and the help of Paul Solarz. While preparing for conferences, I realized that with the students in charge of their learning, it made sense to have them lead the conferences.

On Twitter, I saw two of my close friends, Kayla Delzer and Allison Kerley, had recently completed student-led conferences. I reached out to both of them for advice and they happily obliged. I "borrowed" ideas from both of them. There are many ways to do student-led conferences; this is solely my take. 

First, I introduced the idea to my class. I asked them why they thought we were doing it. They expertly made the connection between student-led learning and the goal of the conferences. They seemed excited; for many of them, this would be the first time they even attended a conference, let alone run it. 

Working on the script

I set up a template (feel free to Make a Copy) and sent it out to them. They were to self-evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in all academic areas and set a goal. I also tasked them with developing a goal for their learning and behavior. The template included an introduction and closing, where I tasked them with formally introducing me to their parents and vice versa. For many of them, it was the first time they had spoken Birckbichler in many months!

After completing their "script," (completed example here) they partnered up and began practicing. One student would play the role of parent and the other would be the student. Part of their closing was to ask their parents for questions, so this was practiced too. I also practiced one-on-one with the students, providing feedback on both their information and presentation.

Practicing 

On the parent side of things, I notified them all that they would be bringing their child to conferences. Using Google Forms (along with Choice Eliminator, FormMule, and AutoCrat) parents selected their times and were sent reminders with time and the fact that the child had to attend, a tip I got from Allison.

The preceding steps spanned about four days. We only had about 30 minutes each day to work on this, which meant some students did not have a lot of practice time. However, the conference day approached.

I re-purposed my Selfie Stick to take pictures during
the conference

On the day of the conference, I asked the students to dress professionally or business casual. Every single student met this requirement, and some have even continued! For each conference, the students sat down on one side of the table with me, and presented their conference to the parents.

They all did a fantastic job! Most everything they said was accurate and reflected what I would have said. In reminder letters to parents, I asked them to ask their child questions and all parents did a great job targeting points I would have fleshed out myself. If a question was directed to me, I tried to give a succinct answer and divert it back to the student. I wanted to stay out of it as much as possible and let the students shine. The students did a tremendous job of thinking on their feet for the responses to questions they may not have had an answer ready for. 

Parents, students, and I were all amazed. I was very impressed with how honest and critical students were of themselves. They were able to examine their own learning, articulate it to their parents, and set realistic goals. Afterwards in class, I also asked students to write reflections, of which I will provide some brief snippets from their much more in-depth responses:

• I got a chance to tell Mr.B what i feel instead of him telling what he feels about my learning.
• I think it was a good idea because i could learn how to present things and i got to practice it and share how i felt about my learning.
• In my conference I liked that my parents were calm and asked questions that I have never thought of.
• I felt excited and nervous to start and lead the meeting.
• The advice I would give others is that you should not be nervous it is actually a lot of fun to do.

I also reached out to the parents to get their thoughts:

• I really enjoyed the flip... It was cute watching him get so nervous and his cheeks get all red. I'm very proud of him and his accomplishments. 
• I really enjoyed the concept and the change up in the style. I feel it allows them to look at their selves critically in a new and interesting way that they may have not thought of or gotten otherwise.
• I think it is empowering for any child to be in charge of their learning plan no matter where they are in the learning spectrum and you could tell that he was very proud even if he said it was very scary. Thanks for all you do to make learning easier for my son, the dream would be for schools to be filled with facilitators of learning for children on all levels rather then teacher who try to teach from the front of the class.

What would I do differently in the future? I would have liked for the students to have different samples of work and assessments. They would explain the grades (examining if any low scores were due to testing problems or content knowledge) and how to improve or further challenge themselves. I plan to start the students tracking their own results this quarter with this similar strategy. I would also like to do a second conference; where the students reflect on the goals they originally set and how they have worked toward achieving them. Along with this, I would have them set a more specific goal. I would allot more time to work on this too to give students more time to practice.

I feel it was a very beneficial experience. How often do students get to share their feelings with their parents and teachers in a formal setting? Like the opening quote reflected, many decisions about students are made without them behind closed doors. We expect students to be responsible for their own learning, but then don't include them in the process. It seems backwards to me. The goal of education should be to empower all students to succeed. 

Below you will find a video of two students' conferences. What can you learn from them? How can you do this in your own classroom? Let me know in the comments. 

I Thrive on the Friday Five

"They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Carol Buchner 

We are only nine weeks into the school year and I have already called parents 45 times. I don't think in all of my years of teaching I have ever had to contact parents this much in such a short timeframe. However, all 45 calls have been positive calls. This year, as part of my positive mindset plan, I have incorporated the Friday Five into my schedule. 

I want to make it clear that I did not come up with this idea. I heard about it a while ago, but couldn't remember how or when. When I tried to track down the original idea to give the due credit, I found two different articles here and here. So kudos to those educators for inspiring me!

Here's the quick version of it: Every Friday, I call five parents. While calling them, I share something great about their student from that week. It could be a concept they worked hard to improve, a great peer interaction, or showing respect to me or another teacher. I do this every Friday without fail. I aim for verbal contact with the parent, but if I can't reach them I will leave a voicemail. Yesterday, I was fortunate to connect with all families.

Google Sheet with specific comments and dates

How do I pick the students? Randomly. I have a Google Sheet set up with all the names of the students. I quite literally press my random name generator until I get five names. This way I'm not targeting specific "problematic" kids or the "overachievers."  Under this system, each student gets a call about once a month. I write the date down that I'll be calling them and then use the comments feature to write down what I want to share. I aim to be highly specific. Saying, "On Tuesday, Johnny worked really hard to master decimals" is much more powerful than "Johnny had a good week."

How has this impacted the classroom? In a word: hugely. The parents are very appreciative. Taking a tip from one of the provided articles, I now start each call by asking if they have time to hear something awesome about their students. Before starting this, parents seemed worried or hesitated to listen. You can hear the sound of relief in their voices and they thank me profusely. I have even had parents email me thanking me for the voicemail. 

The students love it too. They are aware that I'll be calling their parents because I tell them that day. On Monday, they normally come in beaming saying, "My mom said you were bragging about me!" This sticks with them for the next few weeks and I rarely have major behavior problems. Relationships matter.

One thing I would like to try is make the calls in class. I saw this idea from David Huber during #FlyHighFri. He posted a video of teachers and him doing this in front of the whole class. I'm sure that moment sticks with the students for a long time. 

We are #flyhighfri with more positive in class calls to our families #SSSct We are proud of our kids & their effort pic.twitter.com/KDuPun4Hl4

— David Huber, Ed. D. (@DavidJHuber) September 25, 2015

I have also benefited from it. While I like to think that I watch over all my students all the time, this  holds me accountable to be looking for specific moments of success and greatness. I've realized that I am now looking for excellence in all kids all the time versus just those five. Using the Track Record idea from Hacking Education by Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez, I have a Google Form set up where I record both good and bad choices that are made. With the RowCall add on, the Sheet sorts it into each students' individual page for me to review later.

Try it yourself. On Monday, pick five students. They could be random or they could be targeted. Look for something amazing they do during the week. Write it down somewhere. On Friday, surprise both them and their parents by calling them and praising their child. A two minute phone call will pay off in dividends. 

Who's with me? Who's trying it this week? Share your comments and experiences in the comments below. 

It's the Start of Something New

"What is the most important thing one learns in school? 

Self-esteem, support, and friendship." 

- Terry Tempest Williams

My new classroom set up

Originally, I was searching for an opening quote for this blogpost related to new starts and fresh beginnings. However, I happened upon this quote and decided it worked perfectly. This shall be my mantra for this year. I will not be focusing on the tests. I will not be focusing on data. I will be focusing on creating lifelong learners and strong relationships with my students.

Today was the first day of school. While I am exhausted, I am inspired and exhilarated. I read many wonderful books this summer, including Learn Like A Pirate, Teach Like a Pirate, He's the Weird Teacher, and Move Your Bus. I'm going to dedicate an entire post to the lessons learned from these four books in the future, but they made me look at my classroom differently*.

Inspiration from Learn Like a Pirate

First and foremost, I hit the ground running. I sent out a welcome video and information to parents a week before school started. The video introduced me (and my cat and superhero obsessions) and gave some insight into the coming year. I also called all of my students and spoke to them or left voicemail. This laid the groundwork for building strong relationships.

I also rearranged my classroom. I threw out all desks (including my own) and replaced them all with tables. This opened up and created a new look for my room. Time will tell how this works out.

Other changes include the environment and instruction. On the environment side of thing, I am going to give more responsibility to the students. This is largely due in part to the lessons in Learn Like a Pirate. We will also be flipping math class. Today, we discussed the concept of flipping, why we're doing it ("we can learn at home and work in school" - their summary,) and practiced taking notes from a video I recorded. I am excited for this new endeavor and will wrote a more extensive post later on this*. In addition to this, I just raised enough funds on DonorsChoose to get 12 more Chromebooks for my classroom. I am looking forward to being almost fully 1:1 and the possibilities it brings!

So there is a lot that is changing in my room, but a lot will stay the same. Relationships first has always been my goal. I focus on growth, both academic and individual. My standardized test scores may not be outstanding (nor are they terrible) but that doesn't matter to me. I will continually strive to make sure all 24 of my new students feel that they are a valued and critical part of this classroom. I said to them that we would become a family, and I intend to keep true to my word. 

*After proofing this post, I realized I alluded to
numerous future posts. Sorry! 

I will also continue to support the families of my students. I recently completed my Masters of Science in Curriculum and Instruction, and my research was all based on parental involvement. I investigated a first-hand look into the parent perspective of involvement. I am not a parent of humans (only a cat) and this helped me to understand their needs. I will use this to help meet their needs, through my continued HSCNs and providing the Flipped Videos. I also revamped my classroom website to maximize its efficiency and "user-friendly-ness" and created a Facebook (first time since 2011) to help meet the parents where they currently are. This support for parent will begin right away, with me holding a "Back-to-School Night" all about what to expect in fourth grade on Thursday. 

Positivity is my goal for this year. I want to make sure my students, the parents, my co-workers, and I am happy. Fly High Fridays are something I'll write about more later*, but essentially they are meetings to celebrate successes in our school. I'll be doing the Friday Five where I call five parents to share something great their child did. Too much of education is about data and tests and negativity and fixing run-on sentences (maybe I need a refresher.) 

I want this year to be different; hold me to it. 

What are your goals for the year? How will you celebrate success and build relationships?

Readers Cafe: Nourishing the Mind and the Body

"Welcome to Readers Cafe. We have amazing readers waiting to read to you and awesome snacks too. We hope you have a wonderful time. May I show you to your seat, sir?"

Readers Cafe in action

What is Readers Cafe? In a nutshell, it is a student-run restaurant that serves both snacks and books to its patrons. It exemplifies the CS Lewis quote:

"Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably"

The opening of the restaurant is the final goal, but as is often the case with learning, it's more about the destination.

Practicing the books

I cannot take full credit for Readers Cafe; it is a concept that I adapted from the student teaching cooperating teacher. Due to state testing butting up to the second to last day of school last year, I wasn't able to do it then. However, this year we had two weeks between state testing being done and end of school year. As soon as I realized this, I approached my principal about doing it this year. She had remembered it from my original interview and agreed. She also agreed to fund the supplies and food needed!

Before even thinking about opening up the Cafe, the students had a lot of work to do. I partnered them up, trying to build new friendships and keeping reading levels heterogeneously mixed. From there, each partnership chose three picture books. I told them that all three books should last no less than twenty minutes together, but there would be no maximum time. For a few days, we practiced just reading the books, focusing on fluency, pronunciation, and expression.

Note the questions chart

The next step was to develop comprehension questions about the story. Questioning is a great way to develop higher level thinking skills. I instructed and modeled beginning prediction questions, one literal and one inferential question each for the middle, and one summarizing/evaluating question for the end, for a total of twelve questions. The only requirement was that the questions couldn't be answered with a simple yes or no. On Google Classroom, I shared a matrix so they could type in their questions. After developing questions, the students continued working on their fluency and practiced asking the questions.

Following this practice, we began on working on the Cafe jobs. There are four jobs in Readers Cafe:

Host greeting our principal

• Host - Greets the customers, shows them to their seats, keeps track of time, and dismisses the customers. 
• Waiter - Takes the orders from the customers to the chefs and brings it back. They also help in dismissing the customers.
• Chef - Fills the orders (goldfish, pretzels, and animal crackers) when the waiters bring it to them. They are also responsible for making sure the food bowls stay filled.
• Bus Person - Clears the plates after the customers have eaten, washes the dishes, and returns it to the chefs. They also fill in if a host or waiter is absent.

Waitress helping with an order

Chefs filling the snacks

After detailing the jobs, the students picked what jobs they wanted. Amazingly, every student got their first or second choice. I also told them they had to develop their own systems for their jobs. The hosts developed this opening and closing and which sections they would be seating, the waiters developed this waiter pad and which sections they served, and the chefs and bus people determined who would be in charge of which snacks and sections, respectively.

Busboy rinsing dishes

I had twenty two students this year. This means that while eleven of the students (one student from each partnership) were reading , the other eleven (the other student from the partnership) had jobs. We alternated between round one and round two. When they finished their job, they would read quietly or assist other students.

Finally, we were ready to practice everything together: the books, the questions, and the jobs. We used two of my close friends' classes for this and it helped us to highlight weaknesses and strengths. A big strength we noticed was that the systems worked wonderfully. The biggest challenge was keeping the customers focused on the reader. We implemented a "tap the desk, say their name, ask a question, get Mr. B" system to help manage the attention. During the real event, I never had to step in to help get a customer under control. It was amazing to see them solve inattentiveness issues and hopefully it gives them an higher appreciation for teachers!

Family Day at Readers Cafe

Our final practice round was with the families. The Friday before the school-wide event, I invited the families to drop in at any point at the end of the day. We had to make a modified schedule to account for this, but it was clear we had all systems down pat. I even asked the parents to get off task to test how our "tap, name, question" system worked.

Reading to our Head of Instructional Technology

About two weeks before the school-wide event, I sent out a Google Form with a reservation form to the staff in the building. I used a really awesome add-on called Choice Eliminator that make it easy to make sure no one was double booked. It worked pretty well, aside from two minor issues. I also invited the Assistant Superintendents and other members of the School Board Office to attend at any time during the three days. We ended up having seven join us!

Teacher getting into the book

Monday came and Readers Cafe began. We had decorated with a patriotic theme, including red, white, and blue leis for the customers, flag print tablecloths, and other adornments. Each class was given twenty minutes to be seated, served, read to, and lined back up, and we had five minutes in between to switch rounds. Truth be told, aside from announcing which round we were doing, I basically sat there and did nothing. The students ran it all, from seating to serving to clearing to dismissing. The teachers had a choice of being sat in my comfortable recliner or with a reader. Many started on the recliner, but ended up inching closer to the nearest desk! 

The feedback I received from the customers was great! The students seemed to enjoy the books and the snack, the teachers said it was a cute and awesome experience and commented on the outstanding fluency and expression, and the School Board thought it was a great way to end the year. I saw a lot of great things: critical thinking questions, improvements in fluency, leadership roles, problem solving, and hard work. My students loved feeling in charge of the Cafe and I loved seeing them take ownership of it. My students begged me to do it again next year, so they can attend it as a customer!

Now that you've read this post, check out what we updated in 2017 here.

You can watch a video overview of Readers Cafe above.

The Final HSCN: I Volunteer as Tribute

The arena set, the districts formed, the Capitol ready. 

Tributes working hard in their Districts

Sounds like the beginning of the Hunger Games, doesn't it? This was the staging for the final HSCN: The Math Hunger Games.

To bring you up to speed if you are not familiar with my HSCN, I hosted evenings three times a month where I instructed parents on math and reading. This is explored more in depth in this blog post. The final HSCN was Students vs. Parents.

In a Twitter chat, I got the idea to do a review game based on the Hunger Games. I was going to do this in class, but opted to play Survivor instead. I used the idea for the final HSCN instead. I sent out the RSVP forms and was expecting about 11 families (students and parents.)

It involved some set up. I took released items from the VDOE and pulled them into a Google Presentation. I also devised simple rules to play: Correctly answering a question earned you the right to steal "lives" from other teams. I decided to use Smarties as "lives," and gave 16 to the students and 10 to the adults. I also created challenges that aligned with the books' quotes to reveal along the way, as detailed below:

Math Star Surprise

• “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute”
• President B needs one tribute from each district to participate in a round of Math Star (flash card game we play to practice math facts.) Winner will earn 5 Smarties for his/her district. You have ten seconds to decide.
• “The Cornucopia"
• Visit the Cornucopia and retrieve the bag for your district to use in this next round. Open it, but keep it a secret! (Prizes included a calculator, extra Smarties, a "cheat sheet," and a "peek card."
• “The Quarter Quell. As a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest cannot overcome the Capitol...”
• For the following round, the winning tributes must give half of their prize to President B
• “If we burn, you burn with us”
• One tribute from each District (cannot be same tribute from Math Star round) will face off against President B on a math problem of Mrs. Burke’s choosing. Beating President B results in a win of 10 Smarties for your District. 

Receiving the Declaration of Education

There was even a surprise in it for me! Before we got started, two of the parents interjected and said they had two surprises for me. The parents in my class had gotten together and gave me a Visa gift card. I appreciated this a lot, even though I was not expecting this at all. Their second surprise was more meaningful for me. The students had gotten together with one of the other teachers and written a Declaration of Education, detailing reasons they enjoyed my class this year. It was a very touching gift and I will treasure it for years. 

We had 22 total Tributes (12 parents and 10 students.) I livestreamed the entire game on YouTube, which you can view here. The students and parents were all extremely excited. Even better, the majority of the Tributes got all the questions right, which helps to show that the HSCN was effective. As we went along, I decided that I would have students and parents model answers on the board. I was surprised by the eagerness of some of the parents to model problems, especially ones who had said from the start that they were not "good at math." This illustrated how I had empowered students and parents alike. 

Student modeling

The game lasted for two hours and it was a memorable experience for the parents, the students, and me. One parent team became the winning district, earning one pack of Smarties per member! 

Overall, I saw the HSCN experience as a very powerful and meaningful experience for all involved. I noticed gains in the students. One student in particular went from borderline failing every subject to excelling. Her parents attended the majority of the HSCNs. She also put forth a huge amount of effort in class, so it is hard to quantify exactly the effect of HSCN. Overall however, I saw a greater degree of improvement in many of the students whose parents attended HSCN regularly.

Parent modeling

I also witnessed and heard great things from parents. Many of them mentioned how it was a great refresher for them and they felt empowered to help their students at home. Parental involvement is something I am very passionate about (to the extent where my graduate research project is being formed on this topic,) and I was thrilled to hear that I would be able to help the parents grow.

Recently, I was contacted by a teacher in a neighboring school district who had heard about my program and wished to mimic it. He asked me various questions about the process, including if it was worth it.

Showing answers

I immediately said yes. I will be the first to admit it; this experience has been no walk in the park. It takes about three hours to make a truly effective presentation, another two hours on presentation night, and then some time sending out RSVPs and other related tasks, all of which I am doing on my own time for no extra pay, recognition, or incentives. It is frustrating when I get to a night and only three parents show up. However, I frame it as I am helping those three parents, which then helps my students. I like to keep a student-first mindset and that is what keeps me going. I would highly advise you to give a whirl, whether its by yourself, with a grade-level team, or school-wide.

Have you every tried something like this? Do you need any help getting started?