Today I implemented my new unit, complete with flipped instruction and rich formative assessment, that tailored the unit to students’ needs.
I’m pleased with the progress of the lesson. In previous posts, Dana had asked how I could be sure if kids watched my video and Gary Bass talked about his inconsistency with students actually viewing the videos. With this in mind, when I assigned the homework to my class, I asked them, “How can I be sure you watched the video?” It didn’t take them long to figure it out(they’re often smarter than me). They replied, “Well you want us to take notes, right?” I had told them that was part of my expectation. They continued, “Well, can’t you just look at our notes?” Easy. The other class offered a suggestion that involved students commenting on the post. I told them that I thought that might be a little unnecessary, but it did present a great way for students to collaborate on refining their understanding. “If you have questions,” I said, “put them in the comments.”
I sent the students on their way and two days passed. Only one student didn’t show me any notes. She did not do well on the formative assessment.
The rest though, did okay. In the first class, the majority of the class fell in my “middle path” on the formative assessemnt (5-7 correct out of 10). So I divided the class into groups of three, had them peer teach and I re-assessed. Their scores improved. Later, when digging into their data, I found a flaw in my auto-correcting for text fields scheme. While I thought it wouldn’t be an issue because there is only one correct answer for conjugated verbs, I found that the scores were affected by extra spaces at the ends of
answers. It turned out that the class didn’t need re-teaching at all. They knew the concepts. At least this prepared me to teach the second class. The second class had a data set that was accurate and came out squarely in the peer-teaching path. You can see their collated, auto-corrrected and color-defined scores below. I grouped them for peer-teaching and re-tested them. The new data showed great improvement. Two students were still at 5/10, so I updated the Google Doc where we share formative assessment data and sent them an email.
Overall, I’m happy with the results. It seems to be a good way to reach all of the students quickly and differentiate classroom instruction almost instantly. I can’t wait to see what happens Tuesday when we do it again!
