Dear Senior Students: You Will Try the Flip, and You Will Be OK.

This is my tenth entry in Andrew Swan's 20-over-30 September #flipblogs challenge. See my first entry here for some context and a little more information about the challenge.

At this point, my grade 9 classes are further into the introduction than my grade 11 course as I ease my classes over to at least a partial flip. I thought I had talked to my grade 11s about the plan before this, but when I mentioned in passing that we're going to start doing more flipped classroom stuff next week, they had no idea what I was talking about..

I gave them a brief overview of what it means to flip a class, including this highly artistic whiteboard sketch:

I mean, what more explanation could you possibly need ;)?

I asked them under which type they thought they'd feel more supported...and some said the traditional model. You know what, I said, fair enough; this flipped classroom thing is new, it sounds weird and therefore scary and you think you don't like it. Let's try it out for a bit, because this is not my first flipping rodeo. Even when we first try it, it may feel uncomfortable, because you're not used to it, so we'll talk about it and see if we can work out whatever problems may arise, and then we'll keep trying it for a bit. After we've given it a fair shot, if it's really not working out, we can go back to doing things more traditionally -- I'm okay with that, because it's all about what's going to work for you as students and your learning.

That's about all I've got for today...it's been a HOT one, but next week is supposed to be cooler, and I'm looking forward to really getting the flip going. I also want to flip my potential-PLC invitation to our teachers (because really, what better way to talk about the flip than through a flip, especially if it saves precious minutes at a meeting?), so I'll be thinking this weekend through the way I will present that; I'm sure it would be wise to run it by my admin team to make sure my vision and messaging matches up with their expectations, especially given some of the concerns we discussed in our meeting.

Happy Friday...

This is what I was going for! (source)