It’s sad that this is when I feel like I’m hitting my stride. Last week I began the process to flip my classroom. Which, by the way, isn’t that hard, but it’s a little of work.

First, remember that I am a first year teacher. I feel like I’m testing styles on the classroom. I do believe I can get full compliance in my classroom though. I’m starting to come up with some tricks that might get them to do the work. I have a really great group of students. I have a few that need to work a little harder.

Second, I love the idea of a flipped classroom. For those of you who don’t know, this is when you make videos of your lectures. The student’s homework is to watch the videos, make some notes and come back to you with questions. Once you’ve answered those questions you launch into class work. This has a couple of advantages. The students always have access to those lectures. The students that want to work a head a bit can. The teacher gets to save their voice. Instead of stating the same lecture for every class, you do it once at home and then answer questions in the classroom.

The problems are that students think that what you say isn’t important. Student compliance at the average level in my classroom is an issue. They haven’t yet learned the importance of maturity and accountability. I’m going to help them with that. I’m going to find a way for them to have a good time in my classroom. There is a magic tool that will make this work.

It is interesting that in the first full week I have already called one parent because of missing assignments that shouldn't be missing. Here's my class set-up for clarification.

The first thing the students do is come in and do the "Prime Time" on the board. They are basic questions that are sometimes silly but mostly relevant and it gives me a moment to not only do attendance but also to check yesterdays work for completion and accuracy.

The second thing we do is start on work. I let the students sit with the problems we're working on, talk to each other and see if they can see a path to solving the problem. After a few minutes of frustration and success I instruct.

The instruction is pretty straight forward. The students who figured it out on their own will have it and can help if they want. If I need to explain all the bits I will, but mostly a student or five will want to answer questions.

I then set the students loose on the work. I give them as much time as I can to do it in class as possible. I don't really want the students to have to do homework. They get so much from all their other classes and it's easy to check for understanding in class and in a few problems. Having to go home and do 50 math problems on top of everything else is too much and creates a level of stress for the students and for me that I don't think is fair to either of us.