Why I Flipped My Classroom
I have always been very interested in a flipped classroom, but I have never truely understood how they worked. I feel as though this video was short and to the point which made it a lot easier for me to begin to understand this concept. This seems like a great idea, but I feel like I still have so many questions that I would not feel comfortable enough to put this into action in my classroom. This is definitely something I would like to see in actions such as review the materials and tools that will be used at home to learn the information and then what exactly goes in to the planning for classroom time. Would the materials and tools used at home be a PowerPoint with the information? An interactive website? A video recording of me teaching the information? This video definitely left me hangin as far as drawing me in but not giving me near as much information as I may have wanted, so I think I am going to look more in to this concept on my own time.
Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated Instruction is the way in which we teach children and this is best done when we keep the students' specific learning style in mind when creating lessons. There are a few questions that we need to ask ourselves when trying to plan for our students such as "How can you diagnose your students' needs accurately and practically?", and "How can you provide learning opportunities that increase the likelihood or student success?". As we begin to answer these questions we also need to make sure that our lessons are flexible in nature, challenging (working within our students' Zone of Proximal Development), and that we encourage student response. Differentiated Instruction should be student led because the students should have options as to how they want to learn and how they want to express what they have learned. It also builds off of the students varying academic levels because the students are able to work at their own pace in order to get the most out of their method of learning.
Using Assesment to Improve Instruction
When most people think "assessments" they may automatically think about vairous high stakes tests that are given to students by the state. These tests are looked at as ridiculous and when we talk about the results of our students on a test like these we usually determine that we know they can test better, but these shorts of tests are difficult to take. However, there is so much more to assessment then these state administered tests such as the ones that we give on a daily basis in our classrooms that true show us our students strengths and weaknesses. I love Mr. Moore's quote of "good assessment tasks are interchangebale with good instructional tasks". By this he means that we already ask our students questions throughout the extent of a lesson and use the information we gain to further help our students. This is an assessment. We use the information that we gain from our students to determine if we can push them a little further if we need to take a step back. In order to truely reach our children we must understand where they are starting from as far as prior knowledge is concerned as well as determining how well they are understanding the new information because those two factors will shape our future instruction.
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