Homework Accountability Measures (An End-of-Year Review)

While some of the school year still remains, all of the video lessons and, by extension, homework assignments for the year are essentially done.  We are currently working on the film Un monstre à Paris, which has changed the day-to-day rhythm of our class a bit, and the only homework students have between now and final exams is to finish up any movie activities we didn't have time for in class.  With that in mind, here are my thoughts after this first year in terms of how homework procedures & accountability went:

CMS  & Remind 101:
Having videos clearly indexed/organized is an absolute must, and having a way to e-remind students to watch (and spoonfeed them the link) makes a big impact on the percentage of students who are compliant with homework.

Goals to make this better for 2014-2015:

• Index ALL videos by chapter within Haiku.
• Fill in gaps in Quizlet decks available (all lists should have a deck).
• Mandate (through communication with parents) subscription to Remind101.
• Both in-video (where possible) and textually: indicate the accountability measure for each video lesson.

Door Checks
"Quizzing at the door" for me means having flashcards that students must identify before entering. What's important to understand is that after 1 viewing of a flipped video, I do NOT expect students to know the whole list.  That isn't standards-based by any means.

With some content (alphabet, numbers, etc.), I have the whole deck of cards, and I work through it until a student can name one.

With some content, I toss out any that are excessively hard or excessively cognatey (#yeahidid) before present the list, and then I accept any single correct response.

My favorite, although it involves more prep, was when I put about 5-7 words on each of 3 cards. I had a "Facile", a "Moyen" and a "Difficile."  I was then better able to gauge how well students knew the vocabulary.  I required that they get at least to "Moyen".

One of the issues I discovered is that if I allowed students to use their notes sometimes at door checks, they wanted to do that all the time.  When all's said and done, that doesn't demonstrate vocabulary mastery in any way; I also don't require students to take notes on "lists".  The other issue is what to do with the students who couldn't name any vocabulary. Only on the final 2 videos did I think to record how students did on a clipboard roster before they went in the room.  I'm pretty sure that technique is going to become a staple.

Goals to make this better in 2014-2015:

• Again, the importance of having Quizlet decks for all vocabulary lists is essential.  
• Create a facile-moyen-difficile set for all "list" type vocabulary.
• Use a clipboard roster to record student performance.
• At the beginning of the year, the desire to get in the door and not be in the hallway doing flashcards seems to be enough of a motivator, but by the time we start Chapter 2, I think it would be reasonable to consider this a homework grade, just like I would notes.
• 5 points out of 5 could be for student who a) get through all 3 levels or b) get through at least 2 levels without notes.  4 out of 5 would be students who needed notes to get past "moyen", 3 out of 5 for students who could get past "facile" with notes, and a zero for anyone who couldn't get past facile.

Note-taking
Like many other flipped teachers, I use notes as a primary accountability measure to ensure that students are watching the video lessons attentively.

What works: The 3-column notes for dialogue videos serve their purpose well. I only wish I had come up with that earlier in the year.

What needs to be better:

• Start all note-taking routines & procedures at the beginning of the year.
• I received some feedback that students weren't always sure whether to take notes or not.  I could see how that might be true, especially at the beginning of the year (when I was still working out what they needed to do) and around 3rd quarter (when I was barely keeping up with my own "production schedule").  A thorough review of all my videos to check that I am stating the accountability measure IN the video will do a lot to remedy that.
• I need to train students better how to take grammar notes.  I notice that either a) they are writing down only what they see and nothing they hear; OR b) they are taking great pains to carefully record all the summary/review information I give at the beginning of a video, but when they get to the new content, their notes are sparse and disorganized; OR c) they are accessing the presentation I used in the video, copy/pasting into a Google Doc and submitting that as their notes.  My hang-up on this is that I do think there is value in them learning how to take notes on their own without graphic organizers and fill-in-the-blank sheets.
• IF students are taking notes on "list" type videos, they are taking bilingual, 2-column notes, which is one thing I was hoping to get away from entirely with the flipped classroom.  I'm not instructing them to do this, and I'm hesitant to tell them not to because, hey, "good for you, you took notes," right?   Still pondering a solution for that one...