Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

STAAR is upon us... (well, actually it is over... Hooray!)  As part of my STAAR Preparation for my 6th graders, we had some days where I did a reverse flip.   I came up with an idea to use my dear friend, Blendspace, to help with some differentiation with my students. I took pictures of problems that fall under a certain topic (for us, that is a TEK or two) and plugged them in. After the picture, the next slide is a video of me explaining how to solve the problem.  This way my students could work at their own pace. Some choose to watch each video, others chose to fast forward to see the answer, then if they got it wrong, they would watch the entire video.   Some days, I had a Google Form at the end as an exit ticket, to see if what they had been working on sunk in.  They seemed to like it, no one ever complained we were doing test prep.   A picture of my class during our "reverse flip".  Links to my lessons  -  Equivalent Numbe...

Sorry it has been a while since I have written, but I haven't really had anything inspire me lately. Until earlier this week.... Here in Texas, we are in testing season. Our 7th and 8th graders have already taken a couple STAAR tests, and we are all gearing up for another round in a couple weeks. In my math class, today we started our test review unit.  And while Monday's lesson kept everyone on the same page and same pace, that isn't going to work everyday. I came up with an idea to use my dear friend, Blendspace, to help with some differentiation with my students. I took pictures of problems that fall under a certain topic (for us, that is a TEK or two) and plugged them in. After the picture, the next slide is a video of me explaining how to solve the problem.  YouTube Capture is super helpful with exporting the videos to my YouTube account.  And until tonight, I didn't realize I could record videos with YouTube Capture as well (that would have solved my dilemma...