Benefits of Flipped Assessments

Amy has been a music
teacher for 23 years.

Imagine the teaching schedule of a special area teacher in an elementary school. They are responsible for teaching every student, but in most cases, they only see them one time per week for about 45 minutes.

This time of year is exciting for my students because they are learning to read music and play the recorder. During a typical lesson for this unit, our wonderful music teacher, Amy Beasley, assesses each student individually. So with 32 students, she has very little time left for actual instruction. To complicate matters more, our students struggle to retain their learning in special area classes due to only seeing our specials teachers about once per week.

I started thinking about the amount of time individual assessments take out of Amy’s teaching day and a solution came to mind. If we allow students to take their recorder tests at home using Flipgrid, then the entire class period can be used for instruction. As Amy and I discussed this idea we brainstormed a few more ideas and we found so many benefits to using this assessment model. 

Increased Instructional Time

Assessing students through video means that Amy does not have to spend class time individually assessing each student. Instead of having about 10 minutes of instructional time with students this week, Amy can spend more of her class period teaching. 

Individualized Feedback

Before, Amy’s time with each student was very limited, meaning there was little time to provide feedback- but not anymore. Amy and I set up individual google docs for each student so that she can provide specific feedback. This also helps her to track the progress of her 132 fourth graders.

Increased Practice Time

In the past, not many students were motivated to practice at home. Now though, they naturally practice as they record themselves, trying over and over to get it just right. It’s not a perfect solution to promoting practice at home, but some students are practicing more than before.

Positive Music Experience

When using Flipgrid to take their recorder tests, students are able to perform without the pressure of their entire class watching them. Of course, students who play instruments will learn to perform in front of others, but at this young age, recording performance assessments is a great way for students to build their confidence and have a positive musical experience.

Online Instruction

In addition to having students practice and record their assessment at home, Amy and I also developed a way to provide instruction for students as they practice. A simple Padlet page now has a variety of short videos in which Amy plays each song for students so that they can hear each piece.

Challenges and Next Steps

Amy and I are so pleased with the potential benefits of flipping assessment. Not only can it address the issue of instructional time, but it also led to other ideas to improve the quality of at-home practice and feedback for individual students.

The greatest challenge that Amy now faces is motivating the majority of her students to actually record their assessments at home. We initially thought that the benefit of not playing in front of the whole class would motivate most students, but that hasn’t been the case. The next step is finding the right incentive to encourage student follow through.

Creating A Global Classroom

Last year, my class had the opportunity to travel to the island of Borneo through Google Expeditions. With the aid of smartphones and VR viewers, each student was able to explore the rainforest with me as their guide. While on our trip, we studied the ecological changes happening there as a result of deforestation. It was amazing!

Integrating technology in this way allowed me to provide a learning opportunity that used to be impossible. I want to be able to plan lessons with rich experiences for my students- opening their minds to the world both near and far.

I recently learned about Skype Classroom -a free community of teachers and experts working together to provide live virtual lessons, field trips, and collaborations around the world. Skype Classroom has learning opportunities appropriate for every grade level, and students do not need their own devices to participate. Your class can discuss a book with its author, collaborate on projects with classes around the world, and visit experts in their field.

Since each Skype Classroom experience is a live event, you can interact closely with your collaborator, asking specific questions and making your lesson or field trip highly relevant for your students. Here are a few examples of the experiences I’ve scheduled for my class.

Civil War Museum

My class traveled all the way to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond to learn about the life of a Civil War soldier. We were able to see artifacts, learn about primary sources, and gain a better understanding of life in the 1800s.

Indigenous People of the Amazon Rainforest

In a few weeks, we will have the opportunity to visit the Amazon Rainforest to learn about issues facing the indigenous people, study cultural similarities and differences, and explore the ecosystem there.

Writing Tips from an Author

To begin our poetry unit, we will visit with an author. She will share a lesson about writing with your senses and then guide us through practice. This will be a great way to make our writing come alive.


Give it a try! All you need to begin cultivating your global classroom is a free Skype Classroom account and a webcam. If you have tried Skype Classroom, I'd love to hear your favorite lessons, field trips, and collaborations. Comment below!

Designing Online Learning Experiences That Empower Students

Earlier this year, I was inspired by a teacher who required her students to assess their prior knowledge and then choose their learning path for each lesson. Soon after, my co-teacher and I made specific changes to our math workshop in order to increase student agency and ownership in our own classroom. Our goal was to provide ways for students to direct their own learning while also considering long-term projects as performance assessments.

I’ve recently started learning more about empowering students from author John Spencer. In this short video, he suggests 10 ways teachers can start offering choice for their learners.

I considered each of these suggestions when designing my latest online math content, a learning quest through Classcraft. My students engaged with this quest during their independent work time in math workshop over the course of four weeks. Each task in our quest includes a part of our fictional story from our “realm,” lesson content, assessments, and game rewards for student players.

Each location on the map contains lesson content and
learning tasks for students to complete. 

Student Choice in Daily Learning

Materials
Each learning task includes a variety of teaching materials such as charts, videos, songs, and examples. Students can choose how they want to learn and practice each skill.

Scaffolding
My students are able to choose which topics they practice first. They can build their confidence with topics that were easy for them to understand during small group instruction or they can choose a more challenging task.

Pacing
We provide students with ongoing instruction in each topic as they progress toward mastery, allowing them to spend more or less time on a topic based on their need.

Self-Assessment
My students determine when they will take the formative assessments for each topic based on their personal progress.

Student Choice in Final Performance Assessments

Project Format
When many students have shown mastery of most of the topics, we give students choice about how they want to demonstrate their learning with final performance assessments. Students can choose the format, audience, and specific topic of their project.

Project Management
While working on projects, students manage their own work. My role as the teacher is to help students stay on track and provide additional resources as the need arises.

Students have chosen final project ranging from paper and pencil tasks
to creating teaching videos and using manipulatives to model a problem.

Evidence of Empowered Students

One of the benefits of teaching in small groups in a math workshop format is that my co-teacher and I have a clear picture of each student’s progress toward mastery. At the same time, we want our students advocating for their learning needs. Part of what makes this possible is the visual aspect of the quest map. It makes it very easy for students to track their own progress, plus they are motivated to complete tasks to gain points toward leveling up. We have found that students are advocating for their learning needs more often by expressing their need for additional face-to-face help with specific topics. This is empowered learning!

Worldbuilding: Creating a Sustainable Classroom Environment for Gamification

Gamification has so many benefits including increased student engagement and willingness to take on new challenges without the fear of failure. We have been using Classcraft, an online gamification platform that transforms our learning into a game, and we are off to an amazing start! Part of what has made us so successful is that my students had been practicing necessary online learning skills since August, and now they are able to apply these skills independently within a blended learning environment.

I think it’s normal for the newness of an experience to wear off after a while, and it’s easy to fall into a predictable pattern of learning and planning, so I’ve taken intentional steps to keep our learning experiences fresh and engaging.

It’s my goal to create a classroom environment- our own gaming world- that makes our gamified blended learning sustainable. Community, story narrative, and engaging content are key aspects to consider when worldbuilding.

Community

Online learning is not synonymous with isolated learning. The community aspect of a classroom should transcend the actual location of learning- whether that is online or face-to-face. Regardless of where and how students are learning, they should have opportunities to interact with the content and their learning community.

Building a positive community within a competitive gaming situation is critical. Friendly competition is great, but what’s even better is a collective community that is genuinely interested in the learning of everyone involved. One way that we build our community is through collaborative battles within our game. Boss battles are formative review challenges within Classcraft where my class work together to defeat a fictional character. When the class is counting on every student to work hard and be prepared, students are motivated to invest in their peers. It’s powerful stuff!

My student groups also compete throughout the day for extra XP. The red team created a goal without any prompting from me, showing me that they are interested in building up our community too. Classcraft also has random events that can award students points, deal damage, or provide a silly way to have fun together. Whatever the outcome, whether good or bad, we are in it together, and it reinforces our community.

Narrative

Each quest within our game includes a fictional story. This narrative follows us from one adventure to another. An interesting story goes a long way toward keeping students interested in completing online tasks. I realized that my struggling readers were sometimes missing the narrative of our game because it was difficult for them to understand.

For that reason, I started creating short “quest trailers” that help students jump right into the story and understand the objective for the quest. It was a big hit with students, and after I started using these videos, my class as a whole was more interested in the story behind our game.

Since the quest trailers are a bit time consuming to create, I’ve also been using Blabberize to help students get excited about quests. It’s a quick and silly way to engage my learners, and they are excited to start making their own blabs in the near future.

Secret missions are also a bit hit for my students. I let them know that I’ve “hidden” an extra task in our quest with a large reward. They can unlock the secret mission when they complete a certain task, but they don’t know what that task is, so they are extra motivated to complete their work.

Engaging Content

Let’s be honest. Boring content is boring content. If I want my students engaged, then I need to find and create resources that they are interested in. Our online lessons include a lot of various media- articles, infographics, visual charts, pictures, Youtube videos, book read alouds, songs, and teaching videos I’ve created.

Here are a few of my favorite tools and sites for finding and creating engaging content. I'd love to hear your favorites too- add a comment below!

• Playposit allows me to make any online video interactive for my students.
• Flipgrid is a great way to allow students to interact in online discussion or demonstrate their understanding for an assessment.
• Wonderopolis is a fantastic site that provides students with interactive images and videos on a variety of topics. It’s a great way to encourage students to explore a topic.
• Thinglink allows you to make any image interactive. There are lots of different pricing plans, but the basic version is enough for me.
• Kidsdiscover has some great infographics for download.
• TheKidShouldSeeThis has short educational videos that are perfect for my learners.

Every Game Needs a Gamemaster

In this journey into gamification, I’ve realized that my students take their cues from me. While my role is to prepare content, give feedback, and provide instruction so each student moves toward mastery, I also have the important role of Gamemaster.

It’s important that I show my excitement and willingness to be silly and play with my students while we learn. I’m both the teacher and the Gamemaster. I set the tone for a positive community and a positive game experience, which means my students need to know that I’m all in!

Setting the Stage: Preparing Students for Gamification

My goal for this quarter is gamifying our blended reading groups. Gamification is incredibly motivating for students, and I am already beginning to see the benefits of using Classcraft with my learners. Before beginning though, there were a number of foundational skills and experiences that my students needed in order to find success while learning independently in a blended model.

Online Learning Skills

I remember learning last year that we read online text much differently than we read print text. It stands to reason that students need specific skills to learn independently online. I applied what I learned about creating online content and then taught my students a few specific skills to prepare them for their online learning.

First, I had to teach students the difference between watching videos for entertainment and engaging in video content for learning. It seems obvious, but students need practice engaging with media by pausing, taking notes, making sketches, asking questions, and finding connections.

Second, I’ve helped my students develop visual literacy skills through graphic novels so that they can effectively learn information from visual sources. Third, we have spent quite a bit of time self-assessing our work this year using rubrics and learning progressions. As a result, students have developed a self-awareness of their learning tendencies and self-monitoring skills needed to learn independently online.

Experience with Tools

I have been intentionally been using a variety of technology tools in class this year. From our district learning hub, student blogs, Storybird, Pixton, Blabberize, Google Classroom and Flipgrid, we have been learning and demonstrating our understanding in a variety of different ways. When creating online learning tasks, I mostly use tools my students are familiar with so that they can successfully complete independent tasks.

When introducing each new tool, I encouraged my students to explore a little bit before I modeled using the tool for our learning. I did this to allow students the opportunity to discover new tools, not just “use an app.” I want my students to know how to learn about a technology tool without me directly by their side. That way they have confidence in their tech skills when learning on their own.

Quest Support

I learned last year that it is critical to have students solving their own technical problems. My goal is to teach small groups while students are learning independently online, so I can’t continually provide tech support. This year, I have identified four students who excel at problem solving. These kiddos are able to help their classmates when they run into problems. My quest support students are also available to explain learning tasks when students are struggling, freeing me up to teach guided reading groups.

A Note on Managing Personalized Blended Learning

Part of what makes using Classcraft so great is that students can work at their own pace to complete tasks and objectives. While this is great for my students, it poses a challenge in managing the learning of my 33 students. For that reason, I created our Classcraft board. It serves as our main form of communication for the tasks were are learning.

Student have a magnets with their picture next to their team shield. When they finish a task that I need to check, they move their picture to the scroll. Once I check their work, I move their picture to the treasure chest or book to show that they have moved on to the next task or need to go back, review the feedback I left for them, and try again. This board also helps limit how many tasks students can finish in one week so that my learners are encouraged to complete work well rather than rushing to try to get ahead.

Beginning Gamification with Classcraft

My goal in gamifying our blended learning rotation during reading groups is to increase motivation and engagement when students are working independently. Since students are working on their own, and not in a whole group setting, I was in need of a sophisticated gamification app to both deliver online content and assess student learning. 

While I like the idea of being able to customize game settings to best meet the unique needs of my learners, I really needed an app that is easy to use for a complete novice in the gaming world (that’s me!). Classcraft is a perfect fit. It’s really great, guys! I can easily customize settings for my class, and it has online support via chat, community forums, and all kids of video tutorials. All those resources made it really simple to get things all set up for my class. 

Basic Features

I created accounts for my students and assigned teams in only about 10 minutes. Once that is done, individual students are able to create their own character. Student teams work together to gain points, protect one another from possible negative events, and ultimately, level up in the game. This collaborative aspect of the game provides an extra layer of motivation through peer accountability. As the gamemaster, I can assign students or teams points or damage based on their class behavior, very much like Class Dojo. All this is free for teachers! 

Teachers can view student profiles and add points from
 a computer or smartphone. 

Delivering Lessons and Assessments 

It gets better! What I’m really excited about is quests. I decided to pay for a premium account so that I would have access to this feature. Quests are a series of lessons and tasks that I create for my students. This is how I deliver online lessons and assessments. Each task is accompanied with a story, where I write a narrative of what is happening in our fictional world of the game, and what characters must do to complete the quest and win. 

This map outlines the seven tasks students must finish to complete the quest.

As students work their way through each task, they reveal a new part of the map we are playing through and earn rewards for their character and team. When students earn enough points, they level up, making their character more powerful and acquiring new skills. Students can also use the gold pieces they have earned to get a pet for their character or buy new accessories to make their characters look extra awesome. 

Personalized Learning 

Another great feature for quests is that I can personalize learning for my students. Within each quest, I can create multiple paths for students to reach success. If Student A is completing tasks well, she can continue on the normal path, or even choose a more challenging path. When Student B shows that he has not mastered a skill, I can set up the quest so that he automatically follows a separate path to receive reteaching and extra practice before progressing to new skills. How great is that!? 

After a bit more practice, I plan to start creating quests with these more complex paths to personalize student learning. Here is my first attempt. The yellow path is the most direct route and requires basic mastery of skills. The red detour includes reteaching and remediation activities, while the purple detour challenges students to apply their learning in new ways. 

This map shows multiple learning paths for success. 

Initial Implementation

We have been using Classcraft in our reading groups for about two weeks now and we LOVE it! My students are so engaged and motivated. When students have failed at a task, they have asked to try again so that they can further develop their character. They have even asked if they can "play" Classcraft at home. Wow!! This is winning!

My next goal is to maintain this motivation after the honeymoon phase wears off. I can’t wait to see how my students learn and grow using gamification! 

Leveling Up: Gamifying Instruction to Increase Engagement

I told my students that my goal for 2018 is to have fun. I stopped straightening my hair, my husband and I set up a 15 foot trampoline in our family room for our kids (no really, we did that), and I committed to gamifying part of our instructional day. Let the fun begin!

Gamification Basics

I was introduced to the concept of gamification during my graduate course work last semester. Gamification is a fancy term that basically means using game design principles in a non-gaming context. It can be as straightforward as transforming learning activities into games or a more subtle application of game design principles to learning tasks. Game design principles include concepts like cooperation, competition, point scoring, genuine challenges, and character development.

Gamifying your classroom can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. Some teachers choose to make their own game for their classroom in order to customize features including backstory, characters, rules, and objectives. At the same time there are many user-friendly apps that you may already use in your classroom:

• Kahoot A quizzing app allowing students to compete against classmates when answering questions.
• Quizizz A quizzing app that can be teacher or student paced.
• Class Dojo An app focused on building positive classroom community through teacher feedback.

Student Benefits

Playing games is part of our culture, and students can be highly motivated by game-based learning opportunities. Honestly, not of all my students are motivated by the grades they earn, but most are willing to spend hours working to beat a challenging level in their favorite video game. Pairing student motivation related to game playing along with learning tasks has the potential to increase student engagement.

Like with coding, failure in gaming does not usually result in immediate frustration like we so often see when our students are given a challenging educational task. In gaming, failure is an opportunity to gain immediate feedback on a mistake and try again. This type of growth mindset goes a long way in helping students develop perseverance and problem solving skills. If incorporating game design into learning tasks helps my students view challenging academic tasks in this way, then I’m all for it!

My Goal

My goal for this grading period is gamifying the blended learning portion of my reading groups.

I use a blended learning model for my guided reading groups because I want to maximize student learning when they are working independently. Last year, I created online lessons for students to complete independently. When we met face to face, I would provide instruction to further their progress based on their achievement so far. We experienced so many benefits of blended learning, and I found that my students were highly motivated to complete their online lessons at first because it was something new for them. There were also excited to have the responsibility of working independently on their Chromebooks. Unfortunately, when the initial excitement wore off, some students tended to stall out, and they lost interest in making progress.

My answer to that problem is using gamification to prolong student motivation and engagement while working independently. I’m looking forward to trying this with my students, and I’ll be sharing our experience in the coming weeks!

If you’re interested in learning more about gamification, watch this interview with gamification guru James Paul Gee. He makes some great points about teaching to meet the needs of today’s students.