Tonight in the #flipclass chat the flash blog topic was: What will you change for nxt year? What worked this year, & what didn’t? How can you turn failure into learning?  A rather big topic so here goes.

My changes for next year are a total revamp of my General Chemistry and Forensic Science classes both in scope and sequence.  I will be changing up number and types of assignments. I want to move away from compliance assignments to ones that actually mean something to the student and class.  Students will have to work independently and in groups to succeed. Key to all of this is planning and creating all summer.

What worked this year was more hands on and video creation by students. I need to have a better process for this though. What didn’t work was the classroom management of one of my classes. They were a unique blend of students that travelled together all day and would feed off of each other. However, I did learn from this and will correct my weaknesses next year.

The biggest failure was one of our barrel implosions.  The first time it did not work for one of my classes.  In the next class we used a different barrel and it work to a tee. So in the first class we adjusted the variables to match those of the other hour.  Finally, we made our second attempt and another failure. Even after the barrel sitting over a week today I took it out and it was still charged and sealed. So the only conclusion we could come to was the it was a reinforced or heavy duty barrel.

So on to next year and more planning.