Flipping Chemistry - Flipped Open House - February 5, 2014

8:20 - 9:55 AM and also 1:50 - 3:25 PM

Welcome to our Flipped Classroom Open House. Our goal is to make this experience as helpful to you as possible. If you have any questions, please email Mr. Skip Larrington at slarrington@rcs.k12.va.us and he will attempt to answer your questions within 24 hours.

Directions: Hidden Valley High School is located about 25 minutes from exit 143 off Route 81 in southwest Virginia. Directions may be obtained by clicking here.

Parking: Labeled visitor parking is extremely limited. The best suggestion is to park in the student lots (the first lot you come to on the right or the first lot on your left). Park in any space that has white lines and is not numbered (students have paid for the numbered spots). You will need to register your vehicle with the front office upon arrival.

Registration: Because of heightened security, all visitors to campus must register at the front desk and obtain a badge. You will be able to register your vehicle at this time. Students are welcome to attend the open house with their teachers; however, we have limited space in our classrooms, so we must limit attendance to 20 people for the morning session and 20 people for the afternoon session.

Hosts: Your hosts for the day will be Mrs. Maria Sherman and Mr. Skip Larrington. More information about both teachers is available by clicking on their names.

Class Schedule: Our school is on an A/B Block schedule. We do teach more flipped / mastery classes than we are opening. We are only opening classes where we can guarantee to you that there will be a class taught at that time. For this reason, we can guarantee there will be at least one flipped / mastery classroom available for observation in the morning from 8:20 - 9:55 AM and during the afternoon from 1:50 - 3:25 PM. As of today, February 5^th is scheduled to be an "A" day. This would change if we have another snow day prior to February 5^th.

Morning Classes: Mr. Larrington teaches College Bound Chemistry every day during first block (8:20 AM - 9:55 AM). Mrs. Sherman teaches Pre-AP Chemistry during first block on "B" days only. If February 5^th is an "A" day, Mrs. Sherman will spend part of her free period in Mr. Larrington's classroom to help explain the flipped / mastery concept. If it is a "B" day, teachers and students will be able to float between the two classes to see the different dynamics in the two rooms.

Afternoon Classes: Mrs. Sherman teaches College Bound Chemistry on "A" days from 1:50 PM - 3:25 PM and Pre-AP Chemistry on "B" days during the same time slot. Both classes are flipped / mastery. If it is an "A" day, Mr. Larrington will join the classroom to help explain the flipped / mastery concept.

Questions during class: We will do our best to answer your questions during class time; however, if you have additional questions, you may stay a little longer after the class is over to ask them. If you are coming for the morning session, you may arrive early (anytime after 7:30 - someone needs to be at the front desk to sign you in) as we will be there to answer questions prior to class. If you are coming to the afternoon session, we would be more than happy to answer questions after the school day is over at 3:25.

Why did we flip our classroom?: Four years ago, our School Board decided to switch from a traditional schedule to an A/B (alternating day) block schedule. Our instructional time changed from one hundred and eighty 47 minute classes to ninety 95 minute classes. We knew that students would not listen to a 95 minute lecture, so we knew we had to change our method of teaching. We decided to flip our classroom. We also decided that since we were going to go through this major change, we might as well implement the mastery portion at the same time. We knew this was going to be a monumental task, so we enlisted help. We purchased the chemistry lecture videos and worksheets from Dr. Jon Bergmann and Mr. Aaron Sams - the founders of this movement. The first year we made a few of our own videos to supplement their material as we discovered areas they did not cover that our Virginia SOLs required. We used some of their worksheet material and used some of our own. We spent much of the year creating test banks for each unit. When we surveyed our students at the end of the year their biggest complaint was, "You are not teaching us. Someone else is." This was the motivation behind additional changes that we made.

We took what our students said to heart. We reviewed our entire curriculum. We designed and then recorded 135 videos that match each section of the curriculum. Under the old scheme of 180 class periods, we felt that 135 lecture units seemed reasonable. The lectures are much shorter than they would be in class. We don't have to wait for students to copy things down. We also don't have to go through so many examples. Students can always rewind an example and watch it again. The videos are dry - straight to the point. To our surprise, students appreciate the directness. They know that the videos exactly match the material we have in the worksheets and on the tests. They know that we have made the videos as concise as we think possible.

Flipped with Mastery: Our classes are NOT purely flipped classrooms, they also contain the Mastery component. Here is a simple explanation: In a flipped classroom, students watch lecture material at home (podcasts) and do labs / worksheets / projects / tests in class. Everything else about the class is traditional. In a flipped/mastery classroom, all of those things are still true; however, not everyone takes the same test on the same day. Students work at their own pace. Material must be MASTERED before a student moves from one unit to the next. This means that students take tests repeatedly until they demonstrate that they have mastered a concept. Only then may they move on to the next unit.

Testing under Mastery: Unlike a traditional classroom, or a flipped classroom, tests are not all taken together on the same day. While students are strongly encouraged to watch the lecture material at home, we cannot require them to watch the material outside of class time, so they often do not. For this reason, they are allowed to watch podcasts during class time. Students take a test repeatedly until they pass the test (80% for College Bound Chemistry, 85% for Pre-AP Chemistry). All tests are on-line in Blackboard. To avoid memorization of answers, we had to create large test banks containing thousands of questions, so every test attempt is unique. Every test is cumulative! About 50% of the test is on new material, the remaining 50% of the test is on old material. So while we may be mainly testing on the stoichiometry or gas laws, there will still be questions on periodic trends. Every test is like a final exam, and while students hate this, we find they retain more information and come back to us from college saying how much our tests prepared them for the rigors of college.

Testing under mastery: Our curriculum is divided into 20 units. If a student passes all 20 units by the end of the school year, they have earned an A for the year. If they pass only 19 units, they have a B and so on. If they pass less than 17 units, they do not pass the class. We have created a "pacing guide" for the students so they know exactly where they should be on any given day to earn an A by the end of the year. We have four pacing guides, one for each grade (A, B, C, and D). In this way students always know, on a daily basis, exactly what pace they are on. Unlike a traditional classroom, a student who has an F at the end of the first semester could have an A for the year. Warning - the reverse is also true. Grades are never averaged. Grades are purely determined by hiw much material has been mastered.

Class Time: Class time is spent doing labs, doing worksheets, taking tests, asking questions, getting assistance, and yes ... watching podcasts. You will see students doing all of these activities on any given day. Students are on many different units, so the class is something we refer to as organized chaos.

Video Introduction to Flipping with Mastery: This video http://youtu.be/R-bVbtWQ1TA explains to our parents why we went to a flipped classroom with mastery. Feel free to watch it if you so desire.