Adding some WSQ to my #flipclass

I’m nearly a month into my flipped classroom approach and I’m already seeing the benefits (some of which I’m sharing as part of a whole-school INSET on Wednesday):

1. Students are – in the main – responding well to the video introductions or lessons
2. My tasks are becoming more diverse to cater for students who need additional challenges in the extended time we have in class
3. My department website is the central focus of most of my lessons, where students can find or create sections on concepts
4. EdPuzzle has been great at tracking video views and the embedded questions have helped me group students together where possible for remediation or further challenges
5. Students are learning to make best use of the time in my class to move forward at a pace that suits them and to engage in deeper learning tasks

I’ve included a little screenshot of one of the pages of my department website to show you how I am beginning to embed deeper learning tasks into each concept.

While the layout isn’t pretty it is consistent and students are becoming used to completing the Task link (usually a Google Doc with some questions or challenges) before moving on to the Deeper Learning Tasks link.

I used an idea I picked up on whilst completing my Google Certifed Educator exams late last year: the Multi Media Text Set. This is where the student is given a number of different options: links to webpages, articles, videos, etc. so that they have an element of choice in each lesson. Here’s a screengrab of some of the deeper learning tasks for the Machine Instruction Cycle topic:

I have to thank the great Voxer group I’m part of for keeping me motivated, focussed and for sharing their own practices and challenges. One teacher (Shai McGowan) told the group about WSQ (pronounced whisk) as a way of collating feedback from students on the flipped approach. I’m currently using a mixture of EdPuzzle, Kahoot quizzes and 1:1 conversation with students (now I have the time!!) to gauge their progress but am interested in reading further. I did a little searching and found the following comprehensive guide to WSQing your flipped lessons:

http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.co.uk/p/wsqing.html

The next step is to try the approach with a few classes. While my target class for the flipped approach has been my year 10s I have been teaching younger students the art of note taking (Cornell style) so they should be by now more than capable of completing the Summary part of a WSQ. Come to think of it, I’d be very interested to see who are better – those who have been explicitly taught to take notes in a certain way or those who haven’t.