Good Morning Blog

[This past summer (2018) I had the opportunity to present at two different  Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning  conferences; the  South Shore eLearning Conference  hosted by  School City of Hammond  and the  eVillage  Conference hosted by  East Porter County Schools  in conjunction with eLeadNWI. The presentation that easily received the most buzz was my " How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter ." This blog entry is the fourth in a four part series outlining the contents of that presentation.] Part 1 Recap : Teaching the way I was taught wasn't working. I started using Khan Academy in class. That helped. But I wanted more. Part 2 Recap : I flipped my classroom for 2 years. That seemed to work better, but it wasn't great. I wanted more. Part 3 Recap : Being on Twitter introduced me to ideas in education I would not have heard otherwise. My past experience with coding gave me some perspective on the l...

[This past summer (2018) I had the opportunity to present at two different  Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning  conferences; the  South Shore eLearning Conference  hosted by  School City of Hammond  and the  eVillage  Conference hosted by  East Porter County Schools  in conjunction with eLeadNWI. The presentation that easily received the most buzz was my " How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter ." This blog entry is the third in a four part series outlining the contents of that presentation.] Part 1 Recap : Teaching the way I was taught wasn't working. I started using Khan Academy in class. That helped. But I wanted more. Part 2 Recap : I flipped my classroom for 2 years. That seemed to work better, but it wasn't great. I wanted more. Great. Now you're up to speed. I thought I had changed some big things about how my classes operated and was only seeing small changes in the outcomes. But the truth i...

[This past summer (2018) I had the opportunity to present at two different  Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning  conferences; the  South Shore eLearning Conference  hosted by  School City of Hammond  and the  eVillage  Conference hosted by  East Porter County Schools  in conjunction with eLeadNWI. The presentation that easily received the most buzz was my " How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter ." This blog entry is the second in a four part series outlining the contents of that presentation.] Part 1 Recap : Teaching the way I was taught wasn't working. I started using Khan Academy in class. That helped. But I wanted more. Great. Now you're up to speed. The following August I began the school year using Khan Academy in my Algebra 1 classes. It wasn't the only thing we used, but we used it plenty. While Khan Academy did offer students the opportunity to practice specific skills with instant feedback , ...

[This past summer (2018) I had the opportunity to present at two different Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning conferences; the South Shore eLearning Conference hosted by School City of Hammond and the eVillage Conference hosted by East Porter County Schools in conjunction with eLeadNWI. The presentation that easily received the most buzz was my " How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter ." This blog entry is the first in a four part series outlining the contents of that presentation.] For years, the underlying structure of each day in my classes was essentially the same; go over questions from the previous assignment, lecture over the new lesson, and give students the next assignment. Lather, rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat... And I kept doing it this way for far too long because that was how all of my math classes were when I was in school. That was basically how all of the math teachers I knew taught their classes. Tha...

In my last post, Better Late Than Never , I described why I allow students to complete assignments after the due date. In short, I believe there is instructional value in completing the work even though the due date has passed. But students will get the most instructional value from the assignment when the assignment is completed correctly. And that's what this post is about; why I let students redo assignments. I have seen students receive graded work back and immediately toss it in the recycling bin without so much as glancing past the score they received more times than I can count. If the student was making a mistake that I commented on, they never saw it. If they were doing something especially well that I commented on, they never saw it. I could have drawn funny pictures of cats for all they knew. They never would have seen them. Once the assignment was graded it was over. The students felt there was no more learning to be done. But there was. I made comments about wha...

I knew when I was in the 7 th grade that I wanted to be a Mathematics teacher. I knew I would need to go to college in order to make that happen. I knew I wanted to understand what it was I was going to teach so I would need to pay attention in class and do my homework. And it worked. I am a high school Mathematics teacher. Success! To be totally honest, I don't recall doing that much homework in high school. There are only a couple of instances that I can recall doing homework outside of the school day; studying for a Spanish exam with my brother, and trying to read " Beowulf " in the dimmed lights of the auditorium during play rehearsal. The other stuff must have gotten done. I did graduate. I just have no recollection of doing it. But I'll admit it, I'm not a stickler for due dates. I never had difficulty meeting them, but that was only because of the threat of getting a 0% on something and I wanted good grades. If I could turn in assignments late wi...