Beginning the Flip

It's been another great week in my neck of the woods. One of my favorite lessons was one I threw together in ten minutes. Don't you love when those work out? We had been text mapping an introduction to Ancient Greece and I wanted to bring everyone back together to discuss it. I had a plan but when I got to school early I decided to tune it up a bit. I played around on YouTube and found this guy:

Literally, he said everything I would have but he was muuuuuch more interesting that Mrs. Wilkins. T have the kids focus, I quickly created this activity.

I stopped the video half way through and had the kids turn to a classmate and discuss what was going to go in their backpack. They absolutely loved it and rocked this assignment. I walked out of that period all jazzed because it worked so well and I actually came up with it 20 minutes before the kids walked in the room!

 

I did the same sort of activity with my 8th graders to discuss the difference between the north and south.

 

As I have mentioned before, I have a very high population of ELL students. My kids are amazing and hardworking, but reading long texts is so difficult for them. As my district gets more technology, I've been flirting with the idea of flipping my class. A natural practice for me, is to create videos to accompany complex text, much like a book on tape. One of my favorites is still the Explain Everything app. With a little learning curve, I was able to make this to go along with a text on the Industrial revolution.

I also found a great quick website that doesn't have as many bells and whistles as Explain Everything but does work seamlessly with Google Drvie. It's called MoveNote and it is an app that connects with your Drive account.

 

It's super easy to use and you can either share it by link, embed and download.

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So, as I enter the big world of flipping, what advice do you all have? What apps are amazing and you just have to share? I would love to hear from you!!!!

 

 

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