Description

I am a math and science teacher at a high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This blog documents some of my journey as I explore the use of the Flipped Classroom model with my classes.

Saturday 21 November 2020

A New Start: What Quadmester 2 Brings My Way

 


Starting Monday (Nov. 23), I get a fresh start. Secondary schools in my school board will start our second quadmester of the year that day, and students will again take two courses each, in a four-day cycle. The regular teaching days in this new quadmester will end on Feb. 2, with either credit rescue or exam days following on Feb. 3 and 4. We will also have our usual 2-week winter break from Dec. 21 through Jan. 1.

The model

For those students who are attending in person, the model looks like this (each student being either in cohort A or cohort B for each of their two courses -- though, confusingly, they may be in cohort A for one course and cohort B for the other):


For students choosing a fully-virtual model, all the timing is the same, BUT during the slots labelled "In Person @ School" they instead interact live with their teacher online.

In our semestered system during a regular school year, secondary teachers teach three out of the day's four periods, with the other period dedicated to prep time. When our timetables were made for the quadmestered system, our semestered timetables were essentially split in half, basically making quadmester 1 what our mornings would have been in a semestered system and making quadmester 2 out of our formerly-afternoon classes. A serious consequence of this is that, depending where your prep period would have fallen in the semestered timetable, all teachers ended up with one quad where they teach 1 course (keeping their prep period) and another quad where they teach 2 courses (with no prep period). It so happened that my first quad was one of those two-course quads, and let me tell you, it was brutal. Because every day I had to provide 3 hours and 45 minutes of live instruction to one cohort of one class, 3 hours and 45 minutes' worth of work to the other cohort to do without interacting with me during the same time slot, and also provide 1 hour and 15 minutes of live instruction in the afternoon to both cohorts of my other class, I essentially had to prepare a weeks' worth of teaching Every Single Day, to say nothing of the evaluation, feedback, and student care I also needed to take care of for both classes. It was unsustainable, and I am very glad to have the change for quad 2 to a 1-course timetable.

This quadmester, it looks like I have either 24 or 25 students (still figuring out a numbers discrepancy for one of my cohorts), all taking grade 12 chemistry from me. They fall into three groups:
  1. I have 4 or 5 students (again, still figuring out a discrepancy) from my school who will attend the class in person. Keep in mind this still means I only see them in the classroom once every 4 days (on Day 3), but we will have some in-person contact. They are my cohort A.
  2. I have 12 students from my school taking the course in a fully-virtual setting. They are in my cohort B.
  3. Since that means I would only have 16-17 students in the class, spots were offered from it to students who wanted to attend in a fully-virtual setting from another school, and as a result of that I also have 8 students (fully virtual) in cohort B from another school in the city.
To interpret what the graphic above means for me and this class:
  • Days 1 and 2: I instruct both cohorts live online at the same time in the afternoon, 2:00-3:15pm. This is the length of one of our normal classes from before the coronashutdown in the spring, so it's not too bad, although I almost never would have talked for the entire period before this pivot. (Sometimes during these afternoon classes in quad 1 I did have them just work on something while connected to the virtual class and ask questions in the chat section as needed, but I definitely talked more than usual for a period over the entire course of afternoons.)
  • Day 3: 
    • I instruct my 4-5 cohort A students in person live in the classroom from 8:45am to 12:30pm (yes, that's 3 hours and 45 minutes).
    • My 20 cohort B students are to have work provided to them that they can do during that time without interacting with me, and that work is to give them "new learning." That work cohort B will be doing has been referred to as "asynchronous" learning by some of those in charge, but there is a Google Form we are now required to have those students fill out by 9:00am for attendance purposes (yes, even though they are all at home and not interacting with me, really -- the Ministry of Education wants this tracked!), so that "asynchronous" bit is now a misnomer.
  • Day 4:
    • I instruct my 20 cohort B students live online from 8:45am to 12:30pm (yes, again, that's 3 hours and 45 minutes...sitting in front of a computer).
    • My cohort A students are to have work provided to them that they can do during that time without interacting with me, and that work is to give them "new learning." Again, this is incorrectly being referred to as "asynchronous" learning, and again, I am required to have them complete an attendance form by 9:00am each of those days.
Concerns and challenges to address (and some thoughts on some of them)

Concern 1: Community and Relationships.

If you're familiar with my teaching, I hope it's become clear that two big pillars in my teaching philosophy are relationships and active learning. I don't make either of those happen nearly as well as I'd like, but they are very important to me.

So. I have three completely different groups of students in this course. I will only see the faces of 4-5 of them in person. Given that turning on the camera during our virtual classes is not mandatory in my system (and I support that!), I may never see the faces of my other 20 students during class. How can I take this mishmash of student groups and form them all into something that truly feels like one learning community?

I have some thoughts on this. First, I intend to have the students complete a Flipgrid "getting to know you" assignment at the beginning of the course, so I can at least see their faces and hear their voices (and a clear pronunciation of their names) at least once during the quad. I am hoping that being able to see each other through that assignment -- and offering some positive feedback on each other's responses -- will help the students and I all feel more connected to each other.

Second, I plan to go back to using Classcraft. This will be my first time trying to use the gamification platform with a group that includes virtual students, but now that I have the additional headspace that a one-course quad has to offer, I think I'm up for the challenge. I intend to have each of my in-person students assigned to a different team that includes a section of my fully-virtual students, and I also want to try to include some students from my own school and the other school on each team. I then need to find ways to help each team connect with their teammates and feel like they are a unit -- and then each of those units will be in friendly competition with the others. I'm actually kind of excited to see where this goes! I also intend to make use of the Quest lines available within Classcraft to give some fun structure to each of my academic units, which has my gamer-adventurer heart grinning real wide :).

Concern 2: Equity of In-Class vs. Fully-Virtual Chemistry Experience

Well...I mean...that's a joke, right? There is no way to fully replicate the ability to handle the specialized equipment and chemicals involved in a grade 12 chemistry course for a fully-virtual experience, but I'm not going to make the in-class students miss out on that opportunity, either (again, active learning is very important to me). So what can I do to help those who are fully virtual still have a really good quality chemistry education? ...I don't know. I'm familiar with various simulations and such we can use, but nothing will be the same as in person. I've requested access to a Google group that's for other teachers of the course in my school board, and I look forward to seeing what ideas they have to offer.

Given that part of my passion is actually for the Flipped Classroom model, and given how much I really enjoyed the couple of days in quad 1 I was able to bring some flipping back into my classes, I'm also looking at how I can get more "flip" into my implementation of my course even given the weirdness of the structure under which I must operate. I truly believe that a flipped model is of great benefit to students, so how can I mesh even some aspect of that model with this weird hybrid thing I've got? I have ideas, but they're not ready yet to be typed out so stay tuned to see how that evolves.

Concern 3: Equity of In-Class vs. Fully-Virtual Assessment and Evaluation

I'm not even going to bother devoting writing space and time here to what the concerns are -- they're common to all teachers who have had to pivot to any amount of online assessment since the spring (if not before). I will be learning more about how to use the Quizzes component of Brightspace (formerly called D2L or Desire2Learn) and giving more thought to diversifying the means I use to assess the course expectations. I plan to make an overall marks breakdown for the course before our first day of in-person instruction on Wednesday so I can tell students exactly what portion of their grade will be met by each evaluation as I give it out -- the clearer I can communicate with them from the get-go, hopefully the less anxious they (and I) will feel about it all.

Concern 4: Diversity of Student Prerequisite Knowledge

Some of these students will have taken their grade 11 chemistry course in the spring, and since their marks couldn't go down after March 13 at least some of them may have stopped engaging in the prerequisite material for this course not long after the spring coronashutdown started. There are also potential differences in background preparation between my students who took the course at my school compared to the other school, or even between the teachers they had for that course. Variations in preparation for a course are always a concern, but they are certainly exacerbated this time around.

Part of my solution will be to have "review" videos or other resources available regarding prerequisite skills for each unit, for "just-in-time" access by the students who need it. I'll also need to ensure I'm on the ball with diagnostics of those prerequisite skills, especially as the fast pace of the course will make responding to those diagnostics while also helping students to master the new course's knowledge challenging indeed.

Phew. That's a lot on my mind at the very start of a course, but again, I am actually looking forward to the experience this time. I intend to try to keep my blogging up during the course this time so you can follow along with my journey, but we'll see how that goes, heh -- wish me luck :)!