Almost every educator in today’s schools often state that their biggest problem is a lack of time. Over 5 years ago, educators like Aaron Sams and John Bergman started “flipping” their classroom to solve this issue. According to Flipped Learning Network's flipppedlearning.org, this style of instruction is defined as “a pedagogical approach in which the direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space” (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). In other words, students are provided with the whole group lectures and lessons at home or in a more personalized environment. This whole group instruction is often delivered through video or podcasts and are archived. During a full day workshop in November of 2013, I had the opportunity to meet and work with Aaron Sams. When posed with the question, “what does the teacher do during class if the students have already heard the lecture or engaged in the whole group lesson?” Aaron was quick to rattle off an extremely long list of potential “teacher-to-do's, some of which included:
In other words, providing students with the direct instruction in an alternative environment can result in MORE TIME for amazing learning to occur in the classroom!
Many educators question whether flipped learning practices has a place in the Elementary classroom. Elementary schools are full of young readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists who reap great benefits from explicit modeling. Therefore, I would argue that a blended approach, more like a somersault than a full flip, is the perfect solution!
(See below for a video describing Aaron Sams' Flipped Classroom)
- Facilitate inquiry/ problem based learning
- Facilitate project based learning
- Provide enrichment or intervention lessons
- Conduct individual student conferences
- Provide guided instruction
- Gamify lessons
In other words, providing students with the direct instruction in an alternative environment can result in MORE TIME for amazing learning to occur in the classroom!
Many educators question whether flipped learning practices has a place in the Elementary classroom. Elementary schools are full of young readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists who reap great benefits from explicit modeling. Therefore, I would argue that a blended approach, more like a somersault than a full flip, is the perfect solution!
(See below for a video describing Aaron Sams' Flipped Classroom)
I started "somersaulting" my 5th grade classroom during the 2013-2014 school year. I began by asking my students to watch math lesson videos for homework a couple nights a week. Many teachers who have flipped their classrooms completely, ask their students to watch a video for homework every night of the week. I feel that at the Elementary level this is a bit of an overload. Regardless of how many videos the students are required to watch each week, it is important to make the content easily accessible. I always ensure that the videos students are asked to watch are accessible on a variety of devices including smart phones, tablets, iPod touches, and computers. I even mention to students that I will burn them a DVD if they think internet at home will be an issue. So far, I have not has a single students actually ask me for a DVD. I post the videos under announcements on our class My Big Campus group and generally on my Twitter page. I always ask the students to answer a question, or comment with a question or new insight to prove that they have watched the video. Depending on the content and objective being addressed in the video, I almost always still conduct a whole group lesson the next day. The comments and feedback from the video always dictate the length and level of explicit modeling of this lesson. The comments and feedback from the video can also help me decide which students need to be pulled for guided practice once the rest of the class gets started with the project or problem based learning activity.
Recently, I discovered an amazing Ed Tech tool called eduCanon that allows teachers to assess their students' understanding during the video. I would argue that eduCanon is currently the best free tool on the market for video instruction assessment and accountability. Teachers and students can both sign in with their Google Accounts on iPads and computers. Teachers can create multiple class groups and have their students join with a code. Once a group is created, teachers begin creating “bulbs.” A “bulb” is basically a lesson plan that revolves around a video. In order to create the “bulb” teachers must first choose a video to upload. This video can be original content or created my other educators. EduCanon allows teachers to upload videos from Youtube. Teachers then begin adding questions to the “bulb” at certain points during the video. For example, I recently used eduCanon to assess my students’ understanding of this Causes of the American Revolution - Parent Child Analogies - video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilOhWwexHnI). As students are watching the video they will be prompted to answer the first question forty-five seconds and can not continue watching the video until they do so. As the students are watching the video and completing the questions I can monitor their progress from my account. Students also can view their results at the end of each "bulb."
(See an example of my Causes of the American Revolution Bulb below)
Teachers who are interested in flipping or somersaulting their classrooms might ask, “how do you make the time to create all of the videos?” The simple answer to that question is, “you don’t!” As technology increases its presence in the classroom, more and more resources are becoming available for teachers to use to provide students with whole group lessons in their own learning space. Websites like LearnZillion, Khan Academy, and TenMarks are curated with Common Core aligned lesson videos and activities that teachers can assign their students in a variety of ways. PBS Learning Media and My Big Campus Library are also great places to look for engaging videos and lessons. These two libraries are great because teachers are asked to rate the content.
For ambitious teachers who want to create their own videos, I would suggest utilizing some of the tools TechSmith has to offer. Screen casting software like Camtasia allows teachers to create instructional videos with multiple layers of video content, like the example I have provided below. I also have used student generated videos to flip lessons. Students in my class have created videos on how to multiply decimal numbers using applications like Educreations and DoodleCastPro. These videos can be posted in a location like My Big Campus Announcements or a shared Google Drive folder and used for the entire class to watch. Whether I am using an original video or one that I found online, I make sure my students know where they can access ALL of the videos so they can always refer back to them. In other words, rather than just using the videos to introduce content to students they CAN and SHOULD be used to reinforce what has already been taught.
(See an example of an instructional video I created with Camtasia 2)
The most important part about using flipped instructional practices in your classroom is making sure the students and parents still know who the TRUE educator is. Students in my classroom may have grown accustomed to the soothing voices of LearnZillion teachers or the voice of Sal Khan, but they know I am the primary person who will model, explain, answer, assess, and TEACH the content!
(Click here for this month's Blogger Bonus on how to use Google Voice as a tool to assess students and hold them accountable for the content you are teaching!)