FlipGrid Semester Review Project

It’s almost the end of semester, thank goodness! We ended up without enough time to complete another unit in Algebra 2, so I assigned students a project to help review the semester’s content before their exam. Here is the handout/direction sheet I gave them.

There were two parts: making mini-review lessons/videos, and watching some of each others’ videos. We spent four days of class working on this project. Day 1 was spent planning, days 2 & 3 were spent recording videos, and day 4 was spent watching and replying.

To assign topics for part one, I made a list of all the sections we’d discussed this semester, printed off 2 copies and cut them up, and had students draw one topic from three different units. They then chose a fourth topic on their own. Students were asked to give an overview of the topic with several examples, a “try it” problem for viewers to do on their own, and an answer to the “try it” problem to check with. For part two, students chose four topics to watch videos on, worked out the “try it” problem, and left a reply explaining their solution.

Overall, I thought it went pretty well. Students did a good job on their topics for the most part, although they could improve their creativity a bit. I thought the final result of a library of student-created video lessons on each topic for the semester was pretty cool.

Things to change/remember for next time:

• Show students the process of uploading/TITLING a video in FlipGrid! I kind of forgot that these students might not have used FlipGrid before, because I’ve used it in all of my other classes.
• Make checkpoints due at 8:15am the next day so they can post them using the school wi-fi.
• Grading took FOREVER – maybe have them make the videos with a partner?

Some student comments…

Highlights for 11/6 – 11/9

I took a week off of blogging and it’s in danger of extending into multiple weeks. So although I don’t have one specific topic to talk about, I’m going to give a short recap of two of my favorite activities of the past week.

FlipGrid Reflection – College Algebra
My College Algebra students have a test coming up. I usually have them solve one homework problem in a FlipGrid video each week. This week I mixed up their prompt:

Say that our test consisted of the 6 problems in the photo…
1. Which ONE would you feel least confident about your ability to solve? Why?
2. Which ONE would you feel most confident about? Why?

Although I sometimes ask a similar question in their Google Forms exit slip, I like this better because I got to hear them explain why the problem was hard for them. It gave me some good insight on where they are struggling as we review.

Class Consensus – Calculus
One structure I sometimes forget about is “Class Consensus.” It’s super easy and I brought it back out in Calculus this week as a warm up on a homework completion day. I gave students a sheet with four slightly complex Chain Rule problems, and gave them 8 minutes to work alone. Then I gave them about 10 minutes to compare and settle on one solution to submit to me as a class. I promised them a piece of candy if they had no mistakes on the first try. I told them I wasn’t going to help or answer questions, but they could use their notes and each other. They succeeded and had some good discussion!

 

Experimenting with FlipGrid

One of my goals for this year was to try out FlipGrid. I gave it a try last week and am really liking it so far! What I did last week was take one regular homework set and assign each kid a problem to make a video of and post to FlipGrid. I told them I wanted to see and hear their thinking but it didn’t have to be fancy. I limited them to one minute in College Algebra and three minutes in Calculus. I also posted an example for them to look at.

What I liked:
It was great to get to hear kids explain their solving process. It’s so hard to tell what students are thinking just from looking at completed work on a sheet of paper. It let me know that we need to work on some of our vocabulary (the phrase distributive property got thrown out on a lot of just plain multiplication) and that kids need more practice speaking mathematically. It was also easier to spot mistakes and misconceptions.

I love how easy it is to use the teacher interface. I made my own “custom feedback” rubric for scoring, and then just went through and watched, typed a few comments, and hit “email to student.” Done!

Plans for next time:
I’m planning on having this be a once a week event. Next time I’d like to have students watch and leave comments on two other people’s videos as well as posting their own. Some of them didn’t realize they could watch other people’s videos, and it would be good for them share what they liked, what was unclear, or how they solved differently. One minor thing – I need to ask kids to title their video with their problem number. It would make it easier for me and them if they watch each others’.

I also ran across a post about a teacher who turned on moderation so that students couldn’t see each others’ videos and then used it like an oral assessment. Interesting thought… I’ll keep experimenting!