D + Z Chapters 8 and 9

Last week I attended the 34th Annual New England League of Middle Schools Conference in Providence. I attended a really informative session called "Flipping for Middle School Social Studies: Using the Flipped Classroom for Teaching Social Studies," held by Jean Singers and Andrew Swan of the Bigelow Middle School in Newton, MA. Ever since being introduced to the concept of a flipped classroom, I've been interested in applying that model to my future career. Singers and Swan did a great job showing the benefits of a flipped classroom, demonstrating that it's an idea that can become a lived reality with a lot of frontloaded planning. I think that Social Studies is a content that can especially benefit from a flipped model: instead of making students read boring textbooks at home and then come in to a lecture everyday, students can watch short, content loaded videos and come into class with the background knowledge they need to enhance their learning at a higher level (applying what they know to new scenarios, analyzing primary sources, evaluating historical evidence and text, and synthesizing their knowledge into an original product). The flipped model has built in collaborative learning, a method that is especially fruitful for already super social young adolescents.

Reading workshops and book clubs, the two things discussed in Chapters 8 and 9 of Subjects Matter would be two great additions to a flipped classroom. Critics of the flipped model (parents and administrators) might complain that students are not doing enough content-area reading in home and in school. By using both sustained silent reading workshops in class and longer-term book clubs, students will get an extra dose of literacy instruction.

The way that Swan and Singers ensure their students are accountable for the information they should be retaining in their videos is through what they call "mastery quizzes." A student is assigned a video to watch at home- the video is under 10 minutes and contains only the most necessary information from a given "section" of a chapter or unit. Students have 2 days to watch the videos. When the videos are due, students are given a low-stakes quiz to check for comprehension. If a student passes, they are allowed to move on to the application phase. In the application phase, students are given a sheet with 5-8 different activities that require students to use what they have learned from the video. Students can complete more than one per class. Students who did not pass the mastery quiz can redo the quiz after rewatching the video. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and knows the basic content. After the application days, during which the teachers also have time to conference with students, students are geared towards multi day projects. Once those are complete the process cycles back again.

After learning about reading workshops and book clubs, I think they would be great additions to a flipped classroom. Here's how I'm imagining setting up a typical week:

Friday: assign a video to be watched over the weekend

Monday:

• mini review of the video / background knowledge activity (have students do something like tweet the text or use cluster mapping to keep track of what they've watched/learned)
• Think Pair Share about the video
• Mastery quiz: check comprehension- does everyone know who X is? what does Y mean? (basic comprehension of the terms, people, ideas, and places that are going to be found in the higher level activities later in the week)
• Book club: have students read independently for the remainder of class. Students should be reading a book of their choice, with 4 students reading the same book. This would be a historical fiction book that takes place in the time period the unit is on. One book per unit.
• Assign reading workshop: this would be 1 or 2 short articles / other non-textbook reading pertaining to the section

Tuesday:

• Reading workshop: 1/2 the class
• Students will have read articles in groups of 4. Each group has a different set of readings. Students would be asked to come in with a completed KWL as well as 2 discussion questions. 
• After students meet in their groups, use the jigsaw method so that each student has gotten a taste of what the other groups have read. 
• Discuss as a whole class
• during this time, I can conference with individual students 
• Application: give students a sheet with different "application" level activities that can be done in groups or individually
• These would be activities like reading/interpreting maps, evaluating political cartoons, short RAFTs, etc.
• Students who complete one activity move on to another

Wednesday - Friday:

• Group project based learning. Projects would be geared towards the enduring understandings of a section/chapter.

While this is a rough outline and does not stick to the exact methods of reading workshop vs. book clubs (I've changed them a bit), I think this model does a good job of combining UbD goals, flipped methods, literacy skill building, and collaborative learning. I'm still toying with the idea of also having a summative, formal test at the end of a unit. I'm sure that would make the administration happy, but is it necessary? I think that, with all of these activities, there would have to be a lot of built in informal assesessment.

Now I just need to start building up my library.....