Percentages: Flipping & Differentiating

Differentiating & Flipping Classroom:

We are continuing to explore our central idea:

We use fractions, decimals and percentages in a variety of ways in real life situations.

Like every class, we have varying degrees of understandings and skills when it comes to percentages.  To cater to all these different levels and to make use of our classroom learning time, I gave my kids a google doc with links to youtubes for them to watch and record their findings at home. 

The doc looks like this: 

Enquiry into Percentages

                           

Step 1:    Choose 2 YouTube links below to learn about percentages.

Step 2:    Record your findings on your paper.

Key Understandings		More Challenging Understandings
Finding a Percent of a Number	Percents and equivalent Fractions	How to find percentages without a calculator
What percent is it?	How to find percentages without a calculator	Solving Percentages strategies

Google Doc Link: Percentages Enquiry






As they watched the Youtubes of their choice, they used the chart below to record their understandings and wonderings:

                                           Enquiry into Percentages                                       

               YouTube Title: ________________________________

What I already knew:

What was new to me:

What it makes me want to find out:

° Create 4 questions based on the skill/s in the video and solve them to show your understanding. Create challenging questions to extend your thinking: 

Looking at what they had recorded and the types of questions they created for themselves to solve from their chosen Youtubes gave me a good understanding of where each student was at with their understandings.  More importantly, they were all given an opportunity to extend their learning that catered to their own needs and also felt a sense of pride in being able to teach themselves new skills and understandings.

We began by sharing with our partner what we had learnt and then each partner had 5-10 minutes to peer teach a skill they had learnt. They love peer teaching and we have a good understanding that this is a great way for us to solidify and deepen our understandings.  

Instantly, the room was buzzing with so many different strategies and explanations being shared and taught.   There is no way I could have catered to all these needs with a typical chalk-n-talk or worse yet- textbook maths lesson. 

Here, the kids were enthusiastically explaining and clarifying each other's conceptions and possible misconceptions. So great!

Some sample teachings that were taking place:

 

 

 

The wonderings they had created in the third column will be collated together as a whole class next week.  Children will then choose questions they are interested in exploring and so our unit into percentages becomes student-owned and relevant to each child as they are able to explore aspects that they are curious about rather than being dictated by the teacher of what they should learn. 
So much rich learning took place and without the need of a teacher - kids teaching themselves and then teaching each other.  I love when our classroom buzzes like this!