Flipped Classrooms

Recently I met with a retired teacher/administrator/many other education titles and we talked about differentiating instruction. She used a concept called the flipped classroom in a school where she was the principal. She explained that using a video camera the teachers created lessons for low achieving students to watch at home so the students would be exposed to the material before the rest of the class, so as to give them a jump start on the learning. I researched other schools using the flipped classroom and there are some interesting web sites explaining the concept like http://www.edutopia.org/blogs/tag/flipped-classroom.  or
videos at http://flippedclassroom.org/.  Check them out, not sure how I feel about the flipped classroom but it is worth looking into.

Some things to remember...

Coming up with a Problem

Hi all!  Last week when our team met we began to discuss possible topics for our action research.  We had difficulty coming up with a theme universal to all content areas, seeing that we all teach very different subjects.  With that being said, we decided to go with differentiated instruction as our main idea.  Of course, we are going to have to break this vague topic down to specific types of DI.

Differentiated instruction is something that all teachers must incorporate into their lessons, no matter what subject you teach.  Students are all unique and learn in a variety of ways, therefore, one type of instruction is not going to reach all of your students equally.

As our research team discussed DI further, we came up with a few questions that we hope to answer with our action research.  These questions include:

• Is there a functional way to differentiate the assignments given to students?
• Does this differentiation affect students' self-efficacy? If so, how?
• When forming groups, is it better to pair students of the same level, or to pair high-performing students with low-performing students?

We will keep you updated as we explore these questions further!

Meet The Team!!!

Greetings, fellow action researchers and guests! We are the Green and Grey Classroom! We will use this blog to communicate the findings, questions, and results of our action research plan. We had our first meeting today where we discussed group roles, and came to the conclusion that we should first decide on a research question. We also created a Twitter account (@greyhoundclass) in addition to this wonderful blog to communicate with groups and individuals doing similar work. The five of us look forward to the year ahead of creating and implementing an action research plan concentrating in secondary education. Take a minute to get to know us below!

Hi, my name is Christy Kontos, and I am an action researcher out of Loyola University Maryland, focusing on secondary education. My content area is English, and I am hoping to work in 8th grade upon receiving my masters degree in education this upcoming May. I enjoy literacy, blogging, and creative writing.

Hello! My name is Kevin Harrington and I am currently getting my Master's in Teaching at Loyola University Maryland! My focus for teaching is Secondary Education in the subject of Social Studies.

Hi, my name is Dana Boggiano and I am currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in mathematics. I am hoping to work in a high school classroom upon receiving my degree in May.

Hi, I am Jane Mundy a math teacher at Perry Hall Christian School. I am a mother and a grandmother to a beautiful red head. I hope to earn my masters in teaching from Loyola in the spring of 2015.

Hi, my name is Colleen Carroll and I am also currently pursuing a Masters degree from Loyola University.  My content area is Spanish, and I ultimately would like to teach middle school.  I enjoy learning about other cultures and languages and hope to pass this on to my future students!