Fall CUE was nothing but AMAZING! It was my first time at a CUE event AND I was selected to present as well! I truly had my mind on triple over time!
I arrived bright and early Friday morning to experience all that is CUE. CUE thinks of it all, so before I had even checked in to get my badge and official CUE bag, I already had my schedule for the weekend pretty mapped out. CUE created an interactive online scheduler where all the attendees could select their sessions, map out their days, and see who else was joining that particular session! Additionally, you could see where others were thinking of going, read up on the presenters, sponsors, and key notes, as well as create your own persona on CUE. It was great! I just wished more attendees would have participated.
With all the new changes in education with Common Core, technology, and all that is trending in education on Twitter, I decided to focus on the needs of my classroom, namely flipped class and moving 1:1 with Chromebooks. There were tons more to see, hear, and learn....I wish I could see them all! Good thing CUE links presenter resources!
The sessions I did go to were so informative and many life changing for my classroom. One in particular was a session on "Flipping the Secondary English Classroom" by Kate Perry. Kate was amazing! She opened my eyes to what my classroom can truly be flipped. Now, as some of you may know, I have been flipping lessons in my classroom. I guess I am a moderate flipper. Anyway, Kate showed the three types of flipping (yep three!). I had already known that I was doing the traditional flipped model where students get the lecture at home and then in class we would practice or do an activity to strengthen what was learned the night before.
But since Kate's session, I now have so many ideas to take my current flipped model to an inquiry flipped class. Here is her flipped matrix:
Seeing this matrix was an eye opener! Reading her ideas led me to even more ideas! I have done the Sophia Flipped Certification and it was a GREAT jumping off point, but I knew I needed to do more and expect more from my students, I just didn't know how. This matrix and talking and sharing with the other attendees truly was an "ah ha" moment. Now I can take my students to the next level and having more face to face time with students individually.
So, my next flipped adventure was to to straight to the explore side. In pairs, students were given sentence examples (even some of their own) with chosen words in bold or italicized. From these examples, students had to determine what our next unit of study would be. Then students had to list what those sentences had in common and then come up with rules that the unit of study followed.
Once the pairs did this, then they connected with another pair to share the rules they came up with. From those ten, groups had to focus down to five specific rules.
I checked in to the whole class from time to time, but mostly I walked from pair to pair. I got to talk with students, listen, answer questions, and even asked questions. It was great to hear how their minds worked and the process students took to come to their conclusions. Powerful lesson!
Was it easy, no. Was it #eduawesome? YES! I asked students what they thought of this lesson and students loved figuring out the "mystery" and they couldn't wait to check how they did through the flipped video that night.
I was floored!
Once again, the magic of conferences and edcamps have not only made me a better educator, but have made learning more powerful and meaningful to my students. A truly great day and flip class lesson. I can't wait to take it further on tomorrow.
Wow.
I will close by thanking those educators out there. Thank you for sharing your expertise, your lessons, ideas, successes, and failures. Without you, I wouldn't be here. Without you, I wouldn't be learning, expanding, or experimenting, or challenging myself or my students like I am.
I am truly grateful. Thank you and keep sharing!
