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Professional Development Book Groups

1/15/2014

Update of the update:
I hope you've enjoyed your book group this year and have gotten something from the readings and from the discussions with each other. You will share what you have learned our next staff meeting.

Get with your group sometime before April 9 to:

Decide important take-aways to share with the whole staff (focus on how what you read can make us better teachers)
Choose presentation structure and technique/s (skit, lecture, powerpoint, Thinglink, seminar, etc)
Create and time (10mins) the presentation

Update: Book Group Final Presentations Set for April and May faculty meetings.

During April's faculty meeting, please be prepared to present a 10 minute summation to the staff of your monthly book group PD. Some groups will present during the April meeting, the rest will go in May so we'll have time to discuss.

To ensure you are ready, make sure your group can answer yes to all the following questions by April's staff meeting:

Have you:

completed the book study?
decided which are the most important take-aways to share with the whole staff?
decided what presentation technique/s (skit, lecture, powerpoint, Thinglink, seminar, etc) your group will use to best impart the knowledge gleaned from your readings and discussions.
organize the presentation focusing on how what you read can make us better teachers.
timed the presentation to keep it at 10 minutes?

Let me know if you have any special requests.

Click the image to go to the Google Form for Piedmont's PD Book Study Groups for 2013-2014.

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Flipped and Blended Instruction

1/15/2014

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Flipped Education is a term for the idea of automating the lecture/instruction part of your class so you are free during whole group time for discussion, practice and activities.

It's called flipped because in the old days homework was the practice done with out the teacher and kids would spend all their time in class just listening.

But we've never been about learning like that at Piedmont: Ms. Bailey uses Blendspace, our teachers personalize (as seen here) , and here are two specific examples of Flipping at Piedmont:

Our World Language Teachers Flip

They can can make their own lessons or use other language teachers' videos and videos native lands
They embed the Educreations on their wikis websites and Google Classrooms as stand-alone or playlist assignments to play from Chromebooks, computers and ipads, at home or school.
Students can go back to the videos and playlists and review for tests
Students can learn anytime and can control it-pause, rewind, or fast forward if they know it.
Students can learn from her modeling how to make their own Educreations for class presentations
She also uses online flashcards at the site Quizlet for interactive practice
She makes the wiki pretty using Glogster (also check out Weebly for a "pretty wiki)

Our Math Teachers FLIP

Students have several ways to get the information-
The 6th grade math team uses the best of basic, no-nonsense instruction like Khan academy (where it says this and this and this below)
They also uses motivating Dan Meyer videos (where it says Nana's chocolate milk)
They focus on real-world teaching of what students really need.
They don't have to actually blow up a bridge to motivate students to do their math to figure out how far away it was( read from a Piedmont Math teachers wiki here:

"You see the bridge explode 1.63 sec before you hear it. We wanted to know how far away was the camera man form the bridge. We talked about the speed of sound being about 340m/s which is about 1116 ft/sec. With this knowledge we were able to figure out that the camera man was about 1800 feet away. We talked about multiple ways that we could get the answer, and focused on making sure that our answers made sense an not just writing down what the calculator told us.
this is a youtube video of the demolition you just have to take my word about the 1.63 seconds."

Last Friday we talked about Nana's Chocolate milk and this is where last Friday's quiz can from, the egg problem at the bottom.

these are some things from Khan academy that may be helpful, this , and this, and some practice problems

Mr. Booth also makes his own videos, he reports that students loved seeing his own children in the video, this is motivating:

this is a clip of me playing the Product Game with my Daughter
Here are some practice problems, just push pause before I solve them and then check your answer against mine.Practice

The divisibility test is something to know. Here is Kahn's take on it, another look. I like to know why three works and 9 too. Here are some Practice Problems for the D. test
Some definitions that would be good to know:
Prime Number, Composite Number ,Perfect Number ,Abundant Number Deficient Number, Proper Factor

_________________
Intro to flipped PD (using the presentation below)
Flipping is a tool that is traditionally thought of as "class lecture at home, homework in class" the resources can be used in many ways: for whole group, for homework, or individually in class or as remediation or enrichment. In order to do a brief skype session about flipping at our faculty meeting, please view the following resources at your leisure so our session won't run long. Be thinking about how and if you can use these in class and come ready with questions and I'll share how and when we use it in our IB middle school.

I have cued the videos to begin at the minute I want you to start watching. You are welcome to watch the whole thing but you don't have to.
What is Flipping? - TV news segment on Flipping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxJgPHM5NYI&feature=youtu.be&t=6m11s -watch minute 6:11-10:13

Benefits of Flipping for at-risk students (raised scores, lower dropouts, fewer failures) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3LGd88qrTA&feature=youtu.be&t=1m41s watch minute 1:41-2:08

Please also take a quick peek (don't have to watch whole video) at these sample flips:
An example of a literacy/social studies/character ed or library flip (watch the video then click "think" "dig deeper" and "discuss" to see how one teacher used it as a lesson. Teachers can modify these questions, add their own, use it as is or upload their own lesson from scratch) http://ed.ted.com/featured/3nnuEvPB

An example of a Math Flip on that same site : http://ed.ted.com/featured/7mw3qRSi

Want to know more?
Here is the Flipped and Blended PD I delivered to a principal's meeting based on the flipping and blending we do here at Piedmont. Including links to resources for making your own as well as ready-made lessons for you to take from sites like ted-Ed, Khan, etc.
A Flipped Lesson + Augmented Reality Bonus
This is the Flipped lesson the counselors and I presented using the ColAR Mix app

http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/3/post/2014/02/colar-mix-app-in-class.html

including more info about Augmented Reality and resources for using it in apps like ColarMix and Aurasma.

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Professional Development Book Groups

Flipped and Blended Instruction

Teach Like A Pirate

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