Experimenting with Flipped Classrooms
What is a flipped classroom you say? Come, listen children. It's story time.
A flipped classroom is exactly what it implies. The lesson is taught at home and the homework is done in class. Teachers create videos for the kids to watch for homework. They watch said video and we attached a note catcher to our lesson that our "students" had to bring in. Our math majors watched a video on Plot Diagrams and filled out their work sheet to bring into class. We, on the flip side (haha get it, flipped! No, just me? Okay...), watched a video on fractions and took a Google Forms quiz attached in the description of the YouTube video. It was pretty cool. Once the students reconvene in class, the class is spent doing an activity. Our resident math majors had to create their own plot diagram for a scary story (since it is almost Halloween after all), and fill in things like conflict, setting, rising action, etc. We on the other hand did a fraction worksheet in class.
This had its pros and its cons. On one hand, it was really handy having the teacher's sitting next to us as we did our activity. When we had questions we only had to turn around and ask and they were able to show us pretty easily. When they had questions, the same was available. What I really liked about the math side of this was that I could go through the video, pause, and repeat what I didn't understand the first time through. I've never been bad at math, but I also haven't taken a math class in a very long time. It was nice to have someone walk it through step by step and still have the ability to rewind or fast forward through what I did or didn't understand.For English, this type of lesson plan cuts your lessons in half time-wise. Usually a class is spent on a lecture then a planning session then in class writing then in class editing and so on. This can eat up a whole week's worth of classes. The lessons themselves can be watched for homework. Plot diagrams, writing, editing (verb choice, grammar, sentence structure, adjectives, etc); all of this can be taught at home. Then the kids get to come into class and get right to it. If they have questions, the teacher is right there when they get stuck and frustrated in their writing. For higher grade levels, English teachers often have the kids write their essays at home. While this is fine and dandy, some kids need that teacher there to help them when they hit a wall.
There are cons to this though. The big one is internet access. If the kids don't have access to a computer or internet at home, a YouTube video may become a real problem. It's also difficult to assess whether the kids watched the video or not which is why we created a note catcher and our math majors created a quiz. It's something that can be quickly graded for participation points or as a part of the whole unit. It also might be a good idea to have a place for them to ask questions if they were confused at any point in the video. Those should be addressed first before the activity has them in over their heads.
Overall, I loved the flipped classroom. As an English teacher it makes the writing portion of a unit that much easier to facilitate though some things should certainly be addressed in class. The flipped classroom places a lot of trust in the students as well, so make sure you get a good feel for your classroom before you try it.
Good luck and have fun!
Here's the links in case you're interested in what we created:
http://klorraineportfolio.weebly.com/flipped-classroom.html
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