Friday, February 10, 2012

Flipping my AP Govt class, Part 2

Before I started to flip my AP Govt class, I did a bunch of research so I understood what flip teaching meant and how different teachers implement flip teaching. What I found was that there is no one "right" way to flip a class. A flipped class does not have to place all lectures online and have all homework done in class, but if that works for your class, then great. What I did find is that this model seems to work best for math and science classes.

I plan to place as many instruction delivered/lectures online as possible. In class activities posea different situation for social studies teachers. Instead of doing homework in class, I plan on trying to work on skills, such as having students practice writing FRQ prompts. I would also like to spend time using the vodcasts as a jumping off point to go more in-depth on some topics. An example of this would be what I did today with my class.

Students watched the 25th amendment vodcast outside of class and then I had a discussion with the kids about what they wrote in their "I'm still confused about..." responses, which I had them sumbit using a Google form. After that, I set the stage for the Reagan assassination attempt as a case study. I showed the video of the shooting, which generated a lot of questions from the students. Students then read an excerpt from "Rawhide Down," which is a fascinating book on the assassination attempt. This generated more discussion, then I showed the Al Haig, "I'm in charge" excerpt, which generated more good in depth discussion. My purpose was to use the Reagan assassination as a good example where the 25th Amendment should have been implemented, but it wasn't and why it wasn't implemented.

My next post will discuss my thoughts on putting together vodcasts.

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