A small part of my plan

Second semester is looking exciting for my World Religions Class. I'm experimenting with flipping my classroom, at least for the first unit. Once I see how that goes, I'll evaluate and make adjustments for units that follow.

For now, I'm working on flipping my unit on Hinduism. I've got a project in mind, but before I describe the project (in another blog post), I want to explain how students will be grouped in class. Weighing the pros and cons of how to form groups always bogs me down. For this upcoming project, though, the classes will have specific job descriptions. What better way to fill a job description than to do a job application? So I am creating a google form job application for all of my students to complete. Students will have a choice about what job they are applying for, though they may end up with a different job. Each class will have two to five team leaders, depending on the size of the class. I will first consider those students who apply to be team leaders, but I confess, I may tinker with the team leaders a bit so that those who are leaders end up in leadership roles.

Once I have chosen leaders, the leaders will review the job applications and will be able to pick their teams anonymously as I will remove names and substitute pseudonyms on the completed job applications.

Here is an overview of the whole process:

1. Students will complete online job applications for our Hinduism project. These job applications will be done in google forms.
2. I will download the google forms and put the data into a mail merge document that is the job application.
3. I will print the job applications.
4. Team leaders will be chosen in each class.
5. Each team leader will chose their team based solely on the job application.

What do you think of this plan for grouping students for projects in a flipped classroom? Let me know any ideas you have to make this plan better.

Further blog posts will detail the flipping and our first unit project on Hinduism.