Annotated Bibliography – Flipped Classroom

For my annotated bibliography, I chose to research the flipped classroom approach.  I chose this because my partner teacher and I are currently in the process of trying a version of this approach with our students.  Since we cannot assign our students the videos to watch from home (as not all students have computer access), we have half of our students watching the video first while we meet with the other half, and then we switch.  It has been an interesting journey and have had to make many changes, but it is something that we feel will help to reach ALL learners.

I was able to learn so much from the articles I read.  Since I am implementing an aspect of the flipped classroom approach, I was able to relate to many of the results the authors were finding in their case studies.  Reading the examples also gave me hope and reassured me that this approach we are trying can be successful.

It has been many years since I have intentionally used APA citing techniques, so these past couple of weeks have been a great refresher.  I do however wish that Google Scholar was around when I was in high school and college.  It is such a great research tool that really allows the researcher to be selective with what they are reading and including in his or her research.

Below is the link to my annotated bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-ECG8WwY7Cg_NwdEdoY26S-N31sLGSKEMUyfYaYJPfM/edit?usp=sharing

RSS in Education Lesson Plan

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is a new term for me, but it was one I was excited to hear about.  On the video on our class site in Moodle, the gentleman in the video talks about the wasted time we spend going to individual websites or blogs to check for updated information.  I had to laugh, because that person is, wait no, WAS me!  I did just that daily!  Learning about RSS and the website, feedly, was very exciting for me, and will hopefully save me enormous amounts of time.

When I first began thinking about this assignment, I had a very difficult time trying to figure out how to make feedly work in a fourth grade classroom.  Until I realized that my students can do more with technology than I have given them credit for.   Just this week, we began using Google Classroom during our math time, and the students have soared.  They are learning at their own pace, learning more than they were before, are more engaged than I have ever seen them, and are having FUN!

I honestly don’t know right now how I could improve this lesson without diving in and trying it with my fourth graders.  We do have curriculum maps that we have to follow, so I won’t be able to try this lesson immediately.  We are scheduled to do informative texts during our second quarter, which starts the beginning of November.  I will be trying this lesson then!  I will be sure to let you all know how it goes, and make any adjustments that may be needed.

Below is the link to my lesson plan in Google Doc.

https://docs.google.com/a/u.boisestate.edu/document/d/1n5d7JS7YR-xKs4OPYmzI95QyEXkdgXxj4NRrFREcP6w/edit?usp=sharing