Student-Directed Teaching

Today I got to see one of the greatest aspects of using the Flipped Classroom model in my Algebra 1 class. Today's "official" lesson was pretty easy, so the focus of today was on reviewing, catching up, and taking the concept quizzes that go along with each of the lessons in order to prepare for the Chapter 9 test.  Every day a different version of the quiz is available, so students are all at different quizzes.  Some students just started with Quiz 1 today, while others were already at Quiz 8, or somewhere in between.  Some students were on their fourth try of Quiz 4 (trying to get a perfect score of "8"), whereas others were attempting every quiz for the first time.

I try my best to grade the quizzes automatically after the students take them, and encourage them to take one quiz at a time (each quiz is 1-4 questions long, depending on content).

Two things happened today that I loved:

1. As I was grading, if a student didn't do very well, I just shouted out "Who's a ______ expert?" (example - "Who's a discriminant expert?" "Who knows when a graph is skinny, fat, or normal?"etc).  Several students would excitedly shout out and say "I am!" and then I would send that student to them and move on.  Sometimes, it would end up being a group of 3-4 students figuring out what their mistakes were with a student who knew what was going on, and then they could always check back in with me.  Students can't retake the same quiz twice in one day, so hopefully tomorrow they will be able to do it correctly.

2. Also as I was grading, I graded about 5 students in a row who all missed "Identifying zeroes on a graph". At that point, I was able to stop the class, call everyone's attention up front, and go over 4-5 examples of how to do it correctly. Took about 2 minutes, and then the students got back to work.

In my flipped class, I am able to go over what my students need... individually, in small groups, or (if necessary) as a whole class.  My teaching is focused on their needs, not mine. 

Student-directed teaching. I like it :)