Why I haven't flipped my Maths class.

I started last school year really excited to try flipping my Grade 4 class for Maths. I had done loads of research - read the articles, watched the videos and read plenty of flipped classroom blogs. I met with my school Principal and got his go-ahead. This was a big step for me - ours was the first class in the school to take homework online.

Then I met my class.

My class in 2012-2013 were an amazingly diverse bunch. We're talking something like 18 different nationalities, most of them fluent in 2 or 3 languages.

Concurrently, there was a lot of variation in students' confidence, knowledge and understanding in Maths. This ranged from kids who really needed to revise basic concepts to those who were racing ahead into middle school territory. I quickly realised that I didn't have one class for Maths, but several groups. Introducing a new concept via homework video could only work if that one concept was appropriate for every learner in the class. So I went back to the drawing board.

What really helped my planning was a quick pre-assessment every time we moved on to something new. These little pre-assessments turned out to be much more useful than the beginning of year number assessment I'd done. Each pre-assessment told me where each kid was right now, and allowed for fluidity in student groupings throughout the year.

So then what? In any Maths lesson, there might be a group working on an introductory or revision lesson with me, another one or two groups consolidating or revising independently and another working on extension activities. I was lucky to have an excellent support teacher working with me to help me 'get around' my groups a few lessons each week. At the end of the mini unit, a quick post-assessment told me where to go next.

You can take a look here at last year's homework website to see what I ended up putting together for Maths homework. Each week's homework incorporated a revision video, sites with games for skills revision, a Google form 'worksheet' and a Maths Challenge for extension. At the beginning of the year, activities were specific to the previous week's classwork. By the year's end, we were revising content from throughout the year. Those needing extension could try the problem on the 'Maths Challenge' page. It wasn't 100% perfect, but it worked pretty well.

I want to finish up by saying that I do believe that the flipped approach is a great step forward in teaching and learning. I can attest to the fact that children find the online format motivating and value being able to 'replay' their teacher's words. Feedback from parents at the end of last school year was also pretty positive overall. That said, I think a little evolution is necessary. In my class, introductory videos aimed at 'grade level' would have left some to flounder and others bored stiff. Differentiated groupings in class allowed plenty of scope for problem-solving and discussion as per the flipped approach, but scrapping the introductory video meant that those kids who weren't 'bang on' grade level didn't end up frustrated.

Prepping

It's been a few glorious weeks of summer holiday with my family - spent hiking, running, eating, reading and catching up on my favourite TV series. But my 'try this!' list has been calling to me and last week I decided to get to it.

Last school year saw a change of direction in my professional practice - my fourth graders were blogging, we were the first class in our school to replace paper with online homework and I began to use web curation tools like Diigo and Evernote, mostly for my own resources but also for students' stuff. I also started experimenting with flipping the classroom for Maths. All this has provided plenty of fodder for 2013-2014 goals.

First off the mark was 'getting serious' about Twitter. I confess to being a 'taker' last school year. I found some excellent chats and people to follow and poached ideas from their links and blogs to fuel teaching and learning in my classroom. I apologise, but thank you all so much for the inspiration! It's going to take time and some work, but I have committed to shifting up a gear this year to engage more effectively with you all. Slowly slowly, my PLN is growing.

I've also spent a bit of time revising and reorganising the homework website and maths revision site. I plan to add resources to the maths site as we progress through the school year, so it looks a little bare now. This is all part of my plan to strengthen home-school links..

Today's job has been to begin the task of creating text sets for my class' Units of Inquiry. I have recently reread Vivian Vasquez's book "'Getting Beyond 'I like the book'" and I'm looking forward to having my students work more critically with texts. Finding appropriate texts for my mostly ELL students is proving to be a bit of a challenge, although kids' news sites like Time for Kids and Dogo News have been useful. Of course, it's early days yet - will mine the school library when I get back to work. What I would really love would be to find these kinds of resources in students' home languages. Will add it to my list.

Next up is to do some planning for blogging. My kids' blogs last year were fantastic but unfortunately we had difficulty drumming up a readership. In the interests of privacy, I decided to limit public access to the blogs, which made us over reliant on the small community of people who had passwords. Lesson learned! 

I have great plans this year to buddy up with some other classes around the world who are also blogging - please do let me know if you have a class interested in being blog pals! 

• Any tips on developing text sets from critical literacy experts out there?
• Any other teachers of ELL students blogging with their kids?
• What are your goals for the new school year?