Why Your #FinLit Course May be Missing a Third (or Two) of the Critical Content

All classrooms are different and every course, though the name may be the same, has its own goal based on its learners and teacher’s philosophy. When teaching Personal Finance, or any financial literacy focused course, my number one goal is setting students up to behave in a financially responsible way throughout their life. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy defines “Literacy” as both task-based and skills-based. 

Without the “Will They?” a learner “can” have all the ability in the world which goes to waste through lack of action. Though the knowing should not be ignored, if a person has the drive to behave a certain way, they will do what it takes to know what to do. Behaving, to me, is a priority over knowing.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle™, based on brain science, defines a clear & simple process for the most effective way to “drive behavior”. There are three layers or rings to this process which are specific in order from the inside out. These layers are: Why / How / What… in that order, illustrated below.

This Golden Circle™  represents the necessary approach to drive behavior in that first and foremost, humans need to buy into reasons (why) for doing things. Very rarely can we rely on others to just “do what I say”, especially the beautifully cynical minds of teenage learners. Once our brain has determined that we agree with the reason (why), it needs to understand how the behavior actually works. After these two pieces satisfy our brain, then and only then are we ready to be guided on what to do. Simon explains it way more eloquently in this 5 minute clip from his top viewed TED Talk here.

As a classroom Financial Literacy & Accounting teacher of 23 years, traditionally, Financial Literacy curriculum has knocked it out of the park with the outer ring, what to do. There are a ton of very good resources available for teaching & learning the traditional topics of: What is a good credit score & what should we do to establish one? What does a good budget look like & what should we do to create one? What is good debt vs. bad debt & what can we do to stick with only the good? And so on with each of the traditional topics.

Financial Literacy curriculum has been getting better with the inner ring (the bullseye), why we should behave in a financially literate way. The most personal “why” for a learner to buy into is the concept of taking care of future versions of themself, and the value of delayed gratification. The concept of “future you” is essential for a learner to understand and find a way to connect with. The best source I’ve seen for teaching the why is Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) who has developed a lot of really great things over the past years to help educators create this understanding and connection in their classrooms, though many curricula still don’t include it. And those that do often spend too little time on it to create proper buy in with the students. 

*If you need resources on teaching the why of Financial Literacy, I highly encourage you to check out NGPF.

The middle ring, how, is the most absent and virtually non-existent in Financial Literacy curricula. The how address the questions of: How does a good credit score help me take care of future me (build wealth)? How does a good budget help me take care of future me (build wealth)? How does embracing good debt & staying away from bad debt help me take care of future me (build wealth)? Understanding the answers to these questions requires Accounting Literacy. Without Accounting Literacy, the task-based (behavior) piece of Financial Literacy has a huge, ⅓ gap that will require a big leap of faith from learners. And though some students will “just trust me”, we can’t rely on that to be acceptably successful enough.  

The best source I’ve seen for teaching Accounting Literacy, the how, is Color Accounting who has an entire learning system the leverages concept mapping and hands on manipulative learning that develops deep understanding in a way comparable to nothing else out there.

*If you need resources on teaching the how of Financial Literacy, I highly encourage you to check out Color Accounting.

If you’re up for geeking out about Financial Literacy education and best practices, so am I :)

Hit me up and let’s chat... Twitter: @BusEdCrev / Instagram: @BusEdCrev / LinkedIn: Sean Crevier

Google Classroom Feedback: New Features

Managing assignments in google classroom, especially when providing feedback on student work, has typically been pretty awesome but a bit clunky and bumpy. Classroom has rolled out a new look with some pretty great features. Giving students feedback on their work is one area where the new classroom has really knocked it out of the park. Check out how in the video above!

Baby Gates & Web Filters

Raising babies is insane. The complete deprivation of sleep and non-stop decision making causes parents permanent memory loss of the entire experience as if we’ve been flashed with the neuralyzer from Men In Black. I’m convinced this is the only way most of us parents are able to come back for more and have a second / third / fourth / etc… Anything to make the process easier becomes a gift from heaven, especially things like the baby gate! However, in a two story house, raising two children, we never had a baby gate. In full disclosure, it was partly because I was always “too tired” to put them up, but we also believed in house proofing the baby over baby proofing the house, as much as possible.

Fast forward five years and our schools receive those same children, entering a partnership with the parents to keep them safe from internal and external threats. And the easiest way to protect these littles from external digital danger is to throw up the baby gate of the internet...the web filter. However, at some point, kids need to learn how to navigate the web in a safe manner, on their own, without a gate. The longer we shield our kids from reality, the less prepared they will be for it as they move into later years of their lives. 

Our teachers, the classroom warriors, are so great at teaching, and they are mightily capable of teaching more than their content. Although today’s reality of lawyers and litigation looms over every big school or district wide decision, we need to hand over the reigns to our teachers, as early as possible, to teach responsible and safe web behavior. With the gates up, students are deprived of early digital citizenship growth, and teachers are handcuffed to only a fraction of the teaching tools that exist in our wonderful world wide web. 

So, in the holiday spirit of giving… let’s take away this learning barrier and give our students and teachers the freedom to explore and learn. If we take down the internet baby gates, shifting from student proofing the web to web proofing the student, our kids will be more prepared to climb safely out of our nest padded walls and soft gloves to responsibly navigate the entire world of digital opportunities.

To LMS or Not To LMS: 3 Questions To Consider

Having an official, common Learning Management System for your school community can be a daunting scenario. I’ve worked with a lot of schools who have one, and it feels very natural. I know others for whom it could not feel more strange. I think it’s completely normal to have both sets of feelings exist within one building or even across a district. In the end, an LMS decision is necessary and says a lot about digital management priorities which sets the stage for a very pre-determined educational experience. Before making a decision, which should not be a “one and done” task, we need to recognize that there are three primary prongs that will be impacted and call for consideration. The LMS decision should be re-visited every year asking the following questions:

1. What will this do to our students?

To LMS: Having an LMS will give students a more uniform experience and a one stop shopping feel. It will eliminate potential confusion from differentiated digital experiences and procedures from one teacher to another.

Not To LMS: With no official system adopted by your institution, the digital management process will feel different for each student. Depending on grade level and number of different teachers a student sees in the day, kids may have up to 6-7 different styles and procedures to follow for managing digital classroom content.

Ultimately: If you feel that having a streamlined process with low variation is more important than giving kids an authentic experience chosen by each teacher, then an LMS is the way to go. However, if it’s important to you to prepare students for future scenarios where they’ll have to adapt their digital management to work with a slew of different settings, then you may want to leave the LMS out of it and let things fall as they fall.

2. What will this do to our teachers?

To LMS: Having a uniform/common LMS will give teachers another mandated tool (I would not advocate for having one and NOT requiring teachers to use it) on which they’ll need to be trained. However, it will simplify the digital management process for teachers by removing a decision from their plate that they may not want to spend the time on making.

Not To LMS: With no official system adopted by your institution, teachers may be overwhelmed by ways through which they can manage the digital world with their students. However, it will give them freedom to find and decide on what they like and ease into a product at whatever pace is comfortable for them and their students.

Ultimately: If you feel like the “top”  rather than individual teachers will make a stronger decision for the whole about this process, then an LMS is for sure for you. If you are looking to build digital management processes from the ground up and are willing to provide coaching that can adapt to a myriad of different approaches, then leaving this one up to your teachers may be the way to go.

3. What will this do to our parents?

To LMS: Having an LMS will give parents a “one stop shopping” type of feel with digital engagement in their child’s learning environment. This will allow them to dive in pretty easily without much need to communicate with their child or school about “how.”

Not To LMS: With no official system adopted by your institution, parents will likely have a new learning curve each year their child progresses through the system. Parents will be challenged to work with their children (is this such a bad thing?) and probably the school/teacher in navigating a potentially new process.

Ultimately: If you feel that training the parents is something that the school and teacher is responsible for, and you want to minimize this process, then an LMS will work well here. If you are looking to increase ownership on the parent end and create a true need for parents and their children to work together in the digital learning space, then having a more open approach will give you and your parents great opportunities.

So what? So, I’m gonna wave the Switzerland flag on this one and say that I truly think the “right” decision just depends. I believe that the age of students plays a HUGE factor in this. With younger students, making this process smoother and more straightforward is probably going to be more desireable. With older, more capable (which could be arguable though) students, allowing them to navigate through less streamlined waters could benefit them in the long term. I also think that the experience level of the parents and teachers, and their comfort with digital learning will also contribute to one side or the other when deciding “To LMS or Not To LMS?”

3 Ways to Find Comfort With Discomfort

I’ve had several recent conversations with friends, educators and non-educators, about discomfort. Many of them were driven bt the news of a school pulling “To Kill A Mockingbird” because it made kids uncomfortable. My Goodness! And, all of these conversations revolved around today’s students and how education treats them in regards to their discomfort. For whatever reason, fear of lawsuits, not enough resources to deal with the parent complaints, wanting desperately to be “short term liked” by the student, or whatever else it may be… education has fallen down the slippery slope of helping students avoid discomfort. It’s not the students’ fault...they’re kids! We cannot expect them to know how good discomfort is for them and their future self. Yet we help them avoid discomfort as if THEY know what they need. We allow them to blame outside forces all too often by turning verbiage into a perpetrator that we call a “trigger word”. Our focus has shifted to the outside force instead of building capability to deal with it inside the impacted person.

We are the adults and WE should know that real life will make us uncomfortable, no matter how smart we are or how well our intentions may be. Life WILL force us into uncomfortable situations and the only way to better deal with it is to engage with discomfort as often as possible when we are young and DO have support to help us learn how to deal with it instead of avoiding it. As educators, we need to model this for our kids. We have amazing opportunities for improving our craft, all around us. Implementing new instructional models, technology, structures, grading practices, etc.. can be scary and will be uncomfortable. Being able to model this for our students is a huge teaching tool we can and should leverage to help them prepare for real world discomfort as opposed to assisting avoidance.

So, how do we help kids “deal with it” once we commit to refraining from helping them avoid it? I think there are a ton of different frameworks that can work. Different people have different ways of talking about facing discomfort and tackling it head on. But, I don’t think this is a “one and done” topic for anyone. Like staying healthy, it’s a lifestyle approach that needs to be constantly fed. I feed my skill in dealing with discomfort with these three simple (it has to be simple if it’s gonna work for me) moves that I believe are simple enough to use with kids as well:

Find The Funny

There is comedy in discomfort! Having the ability to laugh at reality is a crucial life skill, even though sometimes the laughing is at one’s own self. One of my biggest areas of discomfort used to be the “awkward silence”, especially when in groups. For me, I spent a LOT of my life uncomfortable with the absence of sound. About 10 years ago, I was attending regular meetings led by someone who was magnificent at creating awkward silence. I absolutely hated it at first. Then a co-worker (also in regular attendance of those meetings) said to me, “You ever look around the room during the awkward silences? It’s hysterical.” That right there cured my discomfort with awkward silence...for good. If we can help kids find the funny in discomfort, we can help them laugh and laughing cures quite a bit of things...even discomfort.

Own The Squirm

A good chunk of my discomfort comes from trying to hide it from others. I’ve found that I can usually cut (if not eliminate) discomfort in half if I can conjure up the energy to make it known, to everyone involved, that I’m uncomfortable with something. Simply pushing out the words, “Holy cow, I’m so not comfortable with this right now” does wonders for me and the anxiety that buddies around with discomfort. If we can help kids own what makes them squirm, we can help them rid some of their nervousness that hinders their performance during uncomfortable situations.

Go Alone

Finally, the coach in me wraps up with “Practice Practice Practice”. Getting better will not just happen, especially when under pressure, even if we know about tips and tricks. Les Brown says “If you do what’s hard, life will be easy.” So, I do things that are hard to get better at doing things that are hard. I am constantly finding ways to put myself into uncomfortable scenarios that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t truly matter. I do triathlons for two equal reasons: 1. To stay healthy  2. Because it makes me better at being uncomfortable. Triathlons and the associated training are my way of practicing being uncomfortable, by myself, in low stakes settings. If I suck at it, nobody knows or really cares. It allows me to find the funny by laughing at myself when I vomit in the middle of a run. It allows me to own the squirm by talking to other racers about how nervous I get at the start line. I’m not saying that we should all be long distance racers. But we can all help kids find something to do on their own that initiates the practice of getting better with discomfort in situations where screwing up won’t have life altering impacts.

So, next time a kid (someone else’s or our own child) starts squirming, complains of discomfort, let’s help them through it instead of getting them out of it!

Consolidating Docs

This time of year has us in a spot where we’ve got a LOT of stuff. Most teachers AND students are looking to consolidate and clean up before we head out for the summer. There’s a great tool from Alice Keeler that will automatically consolidate Google Doc work into one spreadsheet for us and our students. Just click here to get the template tool and check it out!

Drawing For Learning With AutoDraw

Illustrating is such a great way to demonstrate a concept. Sometimes I want to draw and show something & sometimes I want my kiddos to draw a concept to show how they are picturing it. However, I draw pictures as well as United Airlines draws passenger names “randomly”. Luckily, our friends at Google have tapped into some awesome artists to make a super simple, magical drawing tool that can make anyone look like DaVinci. Just go to autodraw.com and start drawing. Your task options are in the bottom left corner, color options are located in the bottom right and the smart images from which you can choose are located in a row along the top. Once you’re done with your masterpiece, just click the 3 hot dogs in the upper left to get action options where you can download it or share it through a variety of ways, including the simple “copy / paste” move. Enjoy!

ClipArt For Google Docs

I love free stuff, and one thing I miss the most about using Microsoft Office is clipart and the ability to grab any of its amazing, royalty free images while staying INSIDE the document. I know, kind of weird...but it’s one of those things where “you don’t know what you got 'til it’s gone.” There are definitely ways to get clip art for Google Docs, but here’s a cool way for you and your students to quickly get it, for FREE, WHILE staying INSIDE the doc. Check this out...just go into any Google Doc and click “Add-ons” up top. From there, choose “Get Add-ons” and type in “Open Clipart” in the search bar. Choose the Add-on and it will install. To use it, just choose this Add-on anytime you need to use it, and it will pop up on the right hand side for you.

Survive & Advance: March Madness Class Tourney

It’s that time of year when I can’t remember winter break break, and I can’t see spring break. It’s the dog days of winter, just trying each day to survive and advance. Luckily, “survive & advance” is right around the corner w/ the NCAA tourney. I enjoy using this tourney to have a little competition in class with our content. Let me show you an example of a contest activity and tool I use in my classes to create our own tourney and spice it up a bit to help get us through this second half of winter. Click here for a link to the spreadsheet that you can make a copy of and use for yourself.

Download & Save Files To Chromebooks

Sometimes when our students are on their Chromebooks, trying to get creative and build a digital masterpiece, they face challenges with file downloading and saving because they are on a Chromebook and not a “normal” computer. Their Chromebooks actually DO have the capability to handle some file downloading and transferring, which can be used as a work-around if need be. Check out this little trick you can use with your kids to help them get past this stumbling block.

Google Classroom Individual Assignments

A new feature in Google Classroom has made it fantastically convenient for us teachers to individualize instruction. We can now assign tasks / projects / challenges to individual students within a class, instead of being locked into assigning everything to the entire class. I’ve also found that this gives us a great work around with group projects. In group projects, I am now picking one kid per group to be the “digital point person” and only those students receive the assignment. They share their copy with their partners for working purposes and then they turn it in when the task is completed. This keeps them and me more organized throughout the course. I love this new feature, and I hope you find it useful for yourself as well.

Gift Yourself A PLN This Holiday Season

The best gifts are the ones we give ourselves! The time for teaching on an island is over and education has so much to give and share. But, we can’t receive these gifts unless we open them up for ourselves. Twitter is a fantastic box to open for our professional growth and development as educators. No longer can we rely on others and “In-Service” days to solely help us get better...we need a Professional Learning Network of our own. If you’re not on Twitter, get yourself signed up and just follow. You don’t need to post or interact...just read and take and grow. Here are a few people and groups that I’d recommend following to start out with:

People - @alicekeeler  @gcouros  @rmbyrne  @mickie_mueller  @plugusin  @ cybraryman

Groups - @ice_il  @isteconnects  @googleforedu  @edtechteam

Forms Data Collection...Reverse The Order

I am not a fan of Google forms collecting data by putting the newest entries at the bottom. I often reuse forms with my students (I have some that I’ve been using since 2012) and can’t stand having to scroll to row 750 to find today’s entries. However, if you create a second tab in the spreadsheet and plop a simple formula in cell A2...all can be fixed. The formula pulls from the original data entry tab. So, if you make sure that tab is named “ENTRY”, just use the following formula in cell A2 of the new tab and you’ll be good to go: =SORT(ENTRY!A2:H,1,FALSE)

The only thing you’ll really need to pay attention to are the items in red. 1. “ENTRY” needs to match up with the exact name of the original data collection tab. 2. “A2” is in fact the top left cell from which you want to start pulling data.  3. “H” is the furthest right column from which you want to pull data. Don’t put a number after “H” so that it will continue to pull data ALL THE WAY down column H, even as new entries come in.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

By 35 years old, I’d had 3 close friends take their own lives. Whatever their struggles were, they felt that they were not equipped enough to go on...so they stopped. I was so angry at all three funerals. At each one, I couldn’t pinpoint my anger. There were moments where I was angry with them, moments where I was angry with other people, moments where I was angry with myself, and moments where I was angry at the dirt on the ground and clouds in the sky. I knew the direction of my anger was off about all of them. Finally, it clicked… I was angry about our culture’s lack of education and support for how to deal with struggles. So, instead of just being angry, I decided to do something about it with a twitter account and recently a TEDx Talk.

We do so much to set kids up for success, to help kids avoid failure, to build confidence through wins. We ask kids… “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” The intentions there are SO good, but the results are SO lacking. They ignore the reality that no matter how we protect our kids, they ARE going to fail, struggle, and become frustrated...A lot!  We need to put more effort into preparing kids to deal with the failure WHEN it happens, how to #GetUp from the struggles WHEN they occur, how to bounce back from the disappointments WHEN they set in.

What better time for us American adults to take advantage of the here and now, than now?!?!

This election process did not yield the result I wanted. I won’t go any further, politically, than that. There is an abundance of disappointment across this nation. Our kids are living it and watching it… but they’re also watching us! They are watching their parents, their teachers, their bosses, their coaches, their aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Over the last weeks, I heard so many adults, famous and less than famous, pre-emptively claim that they would be moving to another country if their candidate doesn’t win. And now I’m hearing so many pronounce the same declaration, reactively.

WHAT?!?!

This! Now! Here! Today! In our homes and schools and gyms and places of worship! This is our chance to show kids how to properly react to disappointment, losing, failing, and frustration. It’s NOT time to take our ball and go home. It’s time to BE AMERICA. We are NOT a nation of quitters! We dig down, play on the team that was picked for us, and make it as successful of a season as we can make it. If we don’t like a team-mate or our coach or our captain...we don’t HAVE to. But we do need to stop complaining, put our big boy shoes on, lace ‘em up, and play ball WITH them!

This “moving to another country” stuff is insane… joking or not, It’s for the quitter mindset. If we want to move to another country because we want to live in better weather, or experience a different culture, or be closer to family... Awesome!! But leaving this incredible nation (for sure we have faults) because we don’t like our new boss? Grow the… well, we need to grow up!

So, adults...parents, teachers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, bosses, coaches...here we go! This is such an incredible opportunity, right now!! #GetUp and grab your boots & overalls and strap ‘em up! Please...I beg, let’s model for our kids HOW to #GetUp from this and keep moving forward. Let’s dig and grind and forge on with each other so our kids and future can learn how to make the most of challenging scenarios.

Let’s do this, now, PLEASE?!?!

Casting Student Screens to Projector

A recent update to our Chrome browser now allows us to smoothly, with a small amount of setup work, fling student Chromebook screens (or any device running the Chrome browser) to the teacher computer.  Assuming this teacher computer is connected to the projector, this means you can project a student screen to the class with this cool tool! Just check out the video for a quick look at how it works and then dig in. It plays VERY nicely with Google Classroom. So...if you have students set up in your classroom, you can connect them all with one click. Good luck and happy casting!

Project Management Pace Tracking

Managing productivity and pacing when working on long term projects is difficult. As teachers, it’s our responsibility to provide our students with tools and skills to do this successfully. The tool I use with my students, google spreadsheets, is nothing that’s earth shattering. I used the spreadsheet to help my students create a system / map for them to follow while working on long term projects. I not only talk to them about goal setting and pacing, but also accountability for their time. We discuss the business world, especially consulting, and the need to document and bill for time. This tool has proven to be successful in helping keep students on pace, prevent them from becoming overwhelmed, and give them real time feedback on how effectively they use their time to be productive. Feel free to make a copy (from the link above) and use it for yourself and your students.

Rubric Creator

I’ve learned that getting kids involved and invested in what they’ll be graded or judged on is a crazy powerful thing. Five years ago, I committed to implementing a 20% Time project into my Advanced Accounting course. It was a good deal of work to get it up and running, but has been worth every second that I put into it. The passion that students show for a problem that THEY have identified and a solution that THEY have chosen to come up with for that problem is amazing. In this process, THEY also choose the specifics on which they will be graded. I spend ample time talking about project management, goal setting, and the importance of the process instead of just the end result. This process includes an important decision about how they’ll be judged and evaluated...or in their world, graded.


The world of handing over decisions and ownership to students can be overwhelming and daunting...for many reasons. From a logistics side, rubric creation can be tough enough for teachers...let alone students. This is why I love Rubistar, a simple rubric creation tool that not only can teachers use very easily, but they can also put the creation in the hands of students. With this smooth tool, teachers can feel very comfortable turning the “judging” process over to the kids to let them have a voice in how they are graded.

5 Things Teachers Can Learn From The CMA's!

1. When the bell rings...GO! (Hook em or lose em.)
My buddy texted me 10 minutes into the CMA’s, upset and asking what he missed. The opening bit and performance is ALWAYS solid, year in year out!! Carrie and Brad kill it when they come out and start the show. It’s called “THE HOOK”, we all know it. We’ve all been hooked. If we don’t hook ‘em we lose ‘em! If we GO from the start with GOOD STUFF, they’ll be ready for the start. If not, the first 5 minutes of class becomes irrelevant and they know it. Would your students be upset about missing the first 5% of your class?

2. Include your audience

The best laughs in the show (audience moving / making noise = absorption) come from the interaction between the PEOPLE on stage and the people in the audience. When our students are moving and responding, they are absorbing. The show is not for those on stage, it’s for the audience. Do you put your students in the show as much as possible?

3. Showcase the new, but respect history.

I love when they (and they do it at least twice every show) put a “newbie” with a “legend” for performances. They know that everyone loves “new”, but they also understand that today wouldn’t be here without those who built it. I so often see either one way or the other in classrooms. The non-adopters saying “why change it if it worked?” and the early adopters saying “this is going to change education.” Certain things just flat out work and will always work, but there are ways to make other things better through experimenting. QUALITY is about BALANCE. Does your classroom have a balance of trying the new and respecting the old tried and true?

4. Things will bomb, but if you don't give 'em hell, everything will bomb.

This year’s CMA’s were incredible. However, bell to bell, it had some lulls and boring parts. They didn’t try to make them boring, they just didn’t nail it like the planners thought they would. So what!! If we plan / teach in fear of something not working, we’ll never know if it WILL WORK. We owe it to our kids to bring them our best, even if we have doubts. Sometimes our best isn’t incredible, we need to accept that and keep bringin’ it!! Do you scratch an exciting plan just because it “may not work”?

5. Appreciate & promote your colleagues...they rock too!

Closing with a bang at #5, my favorite part of the CMA’s is the camaraderie between the artists. Say what you will about Taylor Swift, but seeing her (and many others now) belt out and dance to songs being performed while in her seat is cool. They all legitimately cheer for each other and are happy for each other when they win. They team up on stage, even though they are competing on iTunes. As teachers, we often protect ourselves and compete. Teaching is not an individual sport! We need to get off our “Teacher Island” and connect to, share with, and cheer for each other. Teaching is a challenge, it’s easier when we’re all in this together. Does your career involve ACTIVE sharing and cheering for your colleagues?

R.E.A.L. Flipping

Having completed my first year of "flipping" my classroom, I needed more structure. Sometime, I over-structure. But, I don't think this is the case. This past year, I've given talks / presentations on my experiences as a "First Year Flipper", co-led a two day workshop on flipping, and informally helped other teachers brain-storm flipping. I've developed a lot of flipping related structure (both up front and along the way) because of my decision to flip.

What I needed was to align my classroom flipping with my obsession for Blooms Taxonomy and the recently popular and most fantastic SAMR Model for technology integration. So, I created my own guideline of "R.E.A.L. Flipping" that is helping me reflect / improve on the "why" behind flipped lessons I delivered last year, as well as new ones I'm brainstorming on for the upcoming school year.

The REAL Model allows me to assess my own decision making of "to flip or not to flip" by organizing my lessons into HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) and LOTS (Lower Order Thinking Skills). The more I am able to Amplify & Levitate my lessons, the more I'm able to implement HOTS for my students.

My understanding of each level of REAL Model Flipping starts with what I (and all teachers) already know, the non-flipped lesson. In my eyes, the Traditional Lesson looks something like (in general, but certainly may vary depending on your daily schedule / structure) the slide below:

So, "How" do I flip this lesson? Do I "Re-Order" it? "Extend" it? "Amplify it"? Or "Levitate" it?

Re-Ordering has benefits, even though at the bottom. I don't see Re-Ordering as a content game changer, but I do see it as a game changer for student accessibility to the content. See (how I see) the difference between the traditional lesson and the "Re-Order Flip" below:

Extending a lesson by flipping it, creates a lesson that can bring more content and comprehension to students. It takes the re-order a bit further in that it delivers the content even more concisely than the Re-Order. Less time spent on frivolous tangents (so often spent in class when the teacher isn't challenged by a 10 - 15 minute time limit) breeds more time spent on relevant content goals. Although some HOTS can start sneaking into play here, the bulk of this level typically delivers more of LOTS. See (how I see) the difference between the traditional lesson and the "Extend Flip" below:

Serious flirting with HOTS is seen when we are able to Amplify the lesson through flipping. At this level of a flipped class, content delivery is concise like the Extend, but takes students to a more interactive place with their responses from home. This sets the stage for the next day in class, which will look more like a factory with the learners as producers and the teacher as a problem solver. When we flip to Amplify, we also see a more continuous bleed from one lesson to another, or even a multi-day series of one flipped lesson. See (how I see) the difference between the traditional lesson and the "Amplify Flip" below:

Finally, on a whole new plane than we are usually able to reach as teachers due to time and logistical restrictions, we are able to Levitate our lessons through flipping them. In a Levitated flip, student production and interaction begins before class even starts. Sprinting is happening the moment class starts and content creation is student led with the teacher as a guide and consultant. Class will also be seen as a natural place for students to take an active role in determining the content and identifying its source for consumption that upcoming evening. When the lesson is Levitating, learning is cranked up to a whole new plane and may (probably should) look a bit chaotic at times. An "on the spot" decision by the class may be made here that another teacher produced flip lesson is necessary. Real world learning here is truly being experienced in the levitation. See (how I see) the difference between the traditional lesson and the "Levitate Flip" below:

Note that I don't think it's realistic to always achieve levitation. Nor do I even believe that it should be if it could. However, these four levels are helping me assess where I am at in providing my students with a valuable flipped lesson. Feel free to use this for yourself. However, if you do, I'd love your thoughts on how it's working for you and how it could be made better.