Flipped Algebra Classroom by Mrs. Arnold and Mrs. Larson

Much like many subjects, Algebra 1 has a demanding curriculum. When planning lessons, we used every second of class to teach the students the objectives, but we were always touching on the surface and running out of time. A typical class period would consist of a quick warm up, grading and discussing last night’s homework, taking notes over a new concept (or expanding a previous concept) and then assigning homework. We weren’t touching higher DOK levels and we always felt rushed.  Not to mention, a missed class period had students feeling behind, and class was routine and didn’t seem “fun”. 

After discussing the idea with students, taking a class vote, and holding a class meeting to alleviate concerns, we decided to flip our Algebra courses.  A flipped classroom is where the teacher creates video notes and the student take notes at home. When looking at a typical class period, note taking is the “easy” part. We are passing along information, which can easily be recorded at home. This takes place of the traditional worksheet or assignment that goes home. We do not find videos already made on YouTube, but make the videos ourselves using programs such as iPevo, Doceri and Screencastomatic. Students respond better when they can hear or see their teacher. We contacted parents to let them know what we were doing, and got positive feedback!

We provide a detailed calendar to our students. The calendar contains 5 columns which provides information about the date, mandatory work, in-class activities, stretch activities and homework assignments. The students are aware at all times when assignments are due or expected to be completed. Homework is not assigned on a nightly basis and the term “homework” refers to video notes.  To remedy the issue of internet access at home, students can always ask to have the videos air dropped to them before the end of the day. Otherwise, they’re placed on Canvas a day or two ahead of time.

When students arrive to class, we do a quick check to make sure that they took the notes. We then ask if there are any questions and typically work over an example or two if needed. This is a great formative assessment tool to make sure we are ready to begin our daily activity. This is where the fun part takes place. We are now only 5 or 10 minutes into class and have the rest of the period to dive into higher levels of DOK and/or participate in hands-on activities that wouldn’t regularly fit into our schedule.

Algebra students were recently tasked with booking vacations to Paris and New York City. They researched through travel agencies, wrote a system of equations to represent each city, solved using 3 methods and compiled a digital poster on www.postermywall.com. We didn’t skip or extend any objective to allow class time for this project. The use of a flipped classroom provided the time needed to successfully apply math to a real life situation.

We could go on and on about the success of our flipped classroom and the progress that we are seeing in the Algebra course. However, we asked the students to complete the sentence, “I love my flipped Algebra class because…” and the results were amazing! Students are responding well, parents are thrilled to have help at home and we are excited to be able to hit our math targets and have students digitally step outside of our classrooms!

    

2016 TMS/TSMS Presidential Election - Mr. Rose, Mr. Tignor, and Mr. Windler

Since this year is an election year, it was TMS’s plan to have a school wide election. The students learned about the election process first. We created lessons teaching students about the electoral college, the structure of an election, bias, fact vs. opinion, and laws pertaining to the election process. Teachers, also, provided students with facts about each candidate. Our hope was that each student would make his/her own decision and try to eliminate as much bias as possible.

We held the election November 2nd. Each team in TMS/TSMS was considered a state with a certain number of electoral votes going to each team. These electoral votes were determined by the population of each team (state). There were 538 possible electoral votes. This is the same as the national election.

All students that were present that day got to vote in the election. They voted using (portions of) samples of real ballots used in the 2016 election. Veterans Commission Board of Lincoln County helped man the polls and helped point the students in the right direction. Once each student received his/her ballot, he/she voted and cast their ballot into an official ballot box provided by our local voter’s registration office. Also provided by that office was 1400 “I Voted” stickers for each student to have after voting.

After the voting concluded, teachers tallied up the votes. The students were informed of the results through a video created by Mr. Tignor of TSMS with graphs of each team's voting numbers. This was on the Friday before the election, so the students knew how the school voted before seeing the results.

Our students learned about the impact and importance of making informed, educated choices as it relates to our country’s future and the students’ future. Most students were excited and opinionated with their decisions. It was a fun and educational experience for the students and teachers.

Presidential Election Results Video

War of 1812 and Battle of New Orleans by Mr. York and Mrs. Barnhill

Students in Mr. York’s 8th grade History class were studying the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans.  One of his objectives was to help students gain an understanding of the importance of the War of 1812 on securing the United States as an independent nation and how the Battle of New Orleans was the last significant battle of the war. Students were asked to listen to the song, “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton. The song was written from the perspective of an American soldier and tells the tale of the battle in a comical version compared to what actually happened.  Students were then asked to create a comic strip analyzing the song from a historical point of view retelling the story.  

For the comic strip, students were to write the comic strip in 1st person, but also had to write a narration at the bottom in 3rd person. Students had to create 2 panels on each verse.  Many of the words in the song were unfamiliar to the students. Students had to take strides in making sure they understood the events that were taking place in order to correctly portray the song. Students were also tasked with finding images that properly represented the events of the battle.  Interestingly, several students used imagery in a way that was unexpected, yet was quite creative. Allowing students to use their creativity in this manner certainly increased student engagement.

Once the comic strips were completed, students, using iMovie, combined their comic strip with “The Battle of New Orleans” song to create a seamless video. During the creation process of both the comic strip and video, students gained perspective of the history behind the battle that inspired the song. 

Upon reflection of the project, Mr. York has already began tweaking the project for next year.  This was his first attempt at a project of this magnitude and realized a few changes would be necessary for the project to reach its fullest potential.  One realization was that the panels during the song were a little long forcing the comic strip to move a little slow throughout the song.  To correct this, students in the future will create a panel for each stanza of the verse rather than 2 panels for the entire verse.  

Another option in the future is to have students actually create their own video to go along with the song rather than adding a self-created comic strip to the song.  The comic strip project could be used in another fashion allowing even more creativity for the Battle of New Orleans project.

Overall, students were highly engaged in the process of creating both the comic strip and the video.  Critical thinking was required in order for students to synthesize their understanding of the song and correctly portray the events of the Battle of New Orleans. What a great way to bring history to life!

Student iMovies:

https://youtu.be/txa8zvUhQhI

https://youtu.be/-lX0TnLuOC8

Flight 307 by Ms. Watkins (Social Studies 6)

Students flew to an unknown destination to hook them in to the unit about Mesopotamia.  Students received a ticket with coordinates that were used for Google Earth.  After putting in the coordinates, they realized we were flying to Baghdad, Iraq.  Using Google Earth allowed the students to explore the area around Baghdad. Students were visually seeing some buildings that were damaged and this opened up discussions about the lives of the people of Iraq.

Investigative Journalism by Mrs. Malick and Mrs. Wahle

This marks the second year our middle school has been teaching writing using the Lucy Calkins Units of Study. In the first unit for 8th grade, students write pieces of investigative journalism. They begin by writing newscasts and then write more developed pieces that seek to illuminate issues, such as school scheduling or bullying. With all students having one-to-one technology in the form of iPads, we wanted to use that to our advantage in order to get kids even more engaged with and excited about the curriculum.

One way we used our technology to engage students was by reaching out to local journalists from news stations in the St. Louis area. Our instructional technology facilitators coordinated this for us. They used social media to contact local journalists and see if any would be willing to answer some student questions about their jobs so that we could paint a more clear picture for students of the work they were about to emulate. Luckily, we had two journalists willing to help out: Chris Hayes from Fox2 and Chris Nagus from KMOV. We collected student questions and they replied by sending us a video of themselves answering our students’ questions. We then used EdPuzzle to tie critical thinking questions to each journalist’s video. Students watched as their questions were answered and then they responded to questions that we inserted at various points throughout the videos. Some questions were, “How does the Chris Hayes’s advice of ‘learn by doing’ relate to our investigative journalism unit?” and “What is the importance of having deadlines?”  This format allowed all students to actively participate without being pressured to share in a whole-class discussion.

Both videos we received from the journalists followed the same basic format: they stated the question, what class it came from, then they answered it. The cool thing was that although their answers were similar, the way they presented themselves was so different. Chris Nagus’s video was very formal. He sat at the news desk and responded directly to the camera in a very focused way. Chris Hayes’s video was much more informal. He did the whole thing like a selfie from his phone while walking around the news station. It felt very natural and conversational. Kids learned about the positive aspects and some of the challenges of being a journalist. Afterward, it was neat to discuss why the journalists might have presented themselves in the ways they did and how two very different people, with very different perspectives, can do the same job. It kind of opened up the idea that anyone can be a journalist as long as they are willing to work hard and learn something new.

Another way we used technology to enhance our instruction took place in one of our very first sessions of the unit. On the second day, students go outside the classroom to observe as journalists and take notes, collecting potential story ideas. We did this, as designed in the curriculum, but then wanted to give our students the opportunity to observe and collect story ideas beyond the walls of Troy Middle School. So we shared a website where they could view some live-feed cameras from all over the world. We were hoping to allow each student to choose his/her own location to view the camera feed and take notes from there, but had some technical difficulties in the process. So we did what all teachers do when things don’t go as planned - we improvised! We chose one location (Times Square, New York) and watched as a class and had students take notes collectively. Even though it didn’t go exactly as planned, the level of student engagement was awesome and we got to have some really fun conversations as well! Most of their notes from this lesson didn’t turn into full news stories, but they definitely learned how to observe as journalists do, be constantly on the look-out for story ideas, and document everything.

The last major way we innovated the unit with technology was by having students take the final drafts of their pieces of investigative journalism and create iMovie presentations to broadcast them. Students recorded themselves doing a story introduction, like news anchors do at the news desk. They got to practice their best news anchor voices “I’m So-and-So and here’s your top news story.” which was fun and challenging for many. Then they found pictures that correlated with their stories, used a news theme and music, and had to summarize the key points of their final draft to include in their iMovies. This was a really cool way for them to create a visual version of their written piece and then share it with others. The students enjoyed making and watching each other’s videos.

With this being our first shot at fully utilizing one-to-one technology in our classes, we were very pleased with the result. There were certainly some bumps in the road, but the benefits, particularly from the standpoint of student engagement, outweighed any of the drawbacks we experienced. The work of taking an already full and well-developed curriculum and adapting it through the lense of the SAMR model was challenging, but it was also a great opportunity for us to continue our learning and develop our instructional practices as educators.