Language Sensei

A Language Teacher's Journey

Flip, Flubaroo and Fly….. Reinforcement with Instant Feedback…

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flipI’m starting a new story unit this week and experimenting with ‘flipping’ the small grammar points that are new, but occur over and over in the text. I admit that the idea of flipping came to me after much angst about how much time I was going to need to introduce the points in a TPRS-style story before having them read their actual story. So – whether you agree with flipping or not – I wanted to use the ‘flip’ as a pop-up grammar lesson. But I wanted to go further and see ‘if’ they were getting the concept and ‘how well’ they were getting it. Oh – and I wanted them to know right away as well if they were on the right track. I remembered something about automatically marking items and the word ‘Flubaroo’ had stuck in my mind (and my Evernote ‘tech’ notebook). This might be, I thought, the perfect  chance to try it out. Here’s how I did it.

THE TECH STUFF:

Make or Find the Video: Using my tablet/computer I used Snagit (my district has a license for it) to record me annotating/talking about the point – it’s not exciting in any way (keep in mind they have heard these words before but not looked at ‘how’ they are made). I then uploaded this to my YouTube channel – Snagit will do it directly but if that doesn’t work you can do this from YouTube.

Link to a GoogleDocs Form: To see if the students were ‘getting it’ I wanted a quiz to reinforce the points. I created a multiple choice GoogleDocs form in the target language. Remember to ask students to input their first name and an email contact (this will be critical for later). Make sure this is the form you want – in the form you want – as once you activate Flubaroo you can’t change it. Once my form was done I went to ‘view live form’ and copied the url. Then in the “basic info notes” section of the video (you can access this by video manager) I included a message for students with a link to the form.

Activiate the Flubaroo Add-On: First I suggest that you complete the form for yourself – this will be your answer key for the ‘quiz’ you have created. Then from the forms section go and get the Flubaroo Add-On. This is a GoogleDocs add-on – and easy to activate. Once activated I chose to ‘mark’ and used my answers as the key. There are several options for how feedback is sent. I chose to not send the correct answers to students. I then went back to the live form and did a sample answer, as a student and I received feedback in my inbox almost instantly. As a teacher – I could go to the bottom of the response spreadsheet and click on the ‘grades’ tab – to see how individual students did (and what was still an issue for all – requiring some more teaching attention from me).

THE RESOURCES TO DO THE TECH STUFF:  I used Sylvia Duckworth’s awesome tutorial and the excellent Flubaroo site to walk me through the steps. Easy to follow and duplicate!

THE REACTION

Students loved the ability to watch the video several times – and the instant feedback. They asked if they could ‘re-do’ the quiz after revisiting the video – and asking questions of me if they still didn’t understand. We decided that they would get two attempts at it – before I marked it for completion. I note that most students did attempt a second time – showing improvement in how they did. To be honest I want them to check sources (and each other) to try to improve their understanding – this isn’t a ‘test’ – it’s all about mastery!

This is not my typical style of teaching and I don’t like to rely on explicit grammar teaching but in this case its a useful alternative to help to deliver the material. So if you are interested in trying to ‘flip’ a lesson and ‘assess’ how it goes based on student feedback this might be a an alternative. Merci encore Sylvia for your support!

Colleen

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