Tag: flipped classroom

Flipped Classroom for Grad Students

We’re now almost half way through the semester. This means I am almost halfway through my experiment in using a flipped classroom with my graduate students. In all honesty, so far I’m loving the experience, even though there are things I’d do differently next time and kinks I still have to work out.

Flipped Classroom Love

Students do the reading for the flipped classroom

After a couple of rocky sessions where some of the students came unprepared and unable to complete the tasks, I’m now sure most of them are coming having done the reading (or at least having skimmed it–there’s too much reading. Not sure how to fix that yet). Having to apply the concepts immediately gives the reading a purpose.

Student engagement

One thing I’ve really loved is how engaged students have been. During activities in our flipped classroom they are discussing, planning, reflecting, and asking questions. They’re referring to class texts for reference the way I would want them to while planning in the field. I’ve even started to see debates and discussions about their in class lesson planning assignments.

I did a standard lecture just before Spring Break. It was terrible. Granted, it was on the one course topic I have never lectured on before and I was very nervous. I’ll concede that this might not have been me at my best. At one point during the lecture I looked out to blank stares. It felt awful. The only reason I hadn’t changed it was because it was an extremely busy week and I couldn’t make the time. I knew it would be better and I should have trusted my instincts.

Checking for Understanding

Checking for understanding has become much easier. Because students are getting a video where I model or describe a process and then applying their new learning in a controlled setting (guided practice) in the classroom, I can really monitor what they’re doing and how well they are understanding the course concepts and how well they are able to implement skills. I can also monitor growth. For example, every assignment involves crafting objectives. With each assignment I can see their ability to create these objectives improving, and can then see that improvement transferring to their work in the reading clinic.

Flipped Classroom…meh…

Work Now, Reap the Benefits Later

Since this is my first time doing (or trying to do) a fully flipped classroom, there’s a lot of extra work. I need to choose different resources, make videos, create application assignments. All of that takes time. So. Much. Time. That means I don’t always have the time to make the video the level of quality I’d eventually like it to be. Or sometimes I don’t have the time to make a video at all. And the more I do, the better at it I get. However, that means I’m definitely remaking some of my earlier videos as I learn more about how to craft them and about what makes a good video (and even discover some tech tools I didn’t know existed!)

I’ve been teaching this course for what feels like forever. All the other changes I’ve made have been slow.  This has been fast and big. It’s been so much work and I feel like I’m barely keeping up. Classes feel better, but I don’t know if I can keep up the pace. There were two weeks where I sort of gave up and did my usual lecture. And I need to learn to be OK with that. I can’t do everything all at once.

Managing Time

I’ve been overly ambitious with my assignments. When I go back and revise them, I need to make sure that I think about how much time I actually have–after making announcements and checking in with students, and before they meet with supervisors. Not how much time is scheduled for the class. I also need to make sure I’m actually making announcements at the beginning of class instead of jumping in to things.

It’s easy to get into a rut

One thing I’ve noticed is that most of my assignments are the same. Instead of making assignments different, I’ve been making them all pretty similar. Probably because of time constraints.

Flipped Classroom: Will I do it again?

Yes. I’ve put in a lot of work, but it’s not just because of that. I’m really seeing the benefit for my students, and I’ll find out once I look at the results the midsemester evaluation form I sent out, if they feel the same way.

Flipped Classroom Mini-PLC

Image by DuEnLiJu; Creative Commons 1.0
Image by DuEnLiJu; Creative Commons 1.0

This year I’m not in a classroom as much as I was last year. I’m not teaching a core content class, I’m only doing small group intervention. That means that I have more time to coach, but I still miss the classroom. A lot. So, when I went to a workshop about using flipped classroom methodologies along with mastery-based learning, I was really excited. But I was also really disappointed. Where could I possibly use this? Certainly not as a coach.

But then! A math teacher I work with, Robin, came to me with a problem: Her students had a wide range of abilities, and she had exhausted her toolkit of differentiation techniques and activities. We talked for a while about what she wanted her students to achieve, what she had tried already, and why she thought it wasn’t working. It came down to students being in very different places in terms of their content mastery. No matter what type of instruction Robin tried, someone always felt frustrated. Kids who got things quickly didn’t feel sufficiently challenged. The kids who struggled were overwhelmed by homework and needed more coaching and support to do things correctly. Jumping in and trying to put together a flipped classroom and looking at mastery learning seemed like a great idea.

Reading About the Flipped Classroom: Starting a Mini-PLC

Our first step was to do some research together. I had dabbled in using flipped classroom techniques, but had never done it fully. She had never done it before either. After some quality time with Google and looking through the resources that I had from the workshop, we settled on the book Flipped Learning for Math Instruction by Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams (ISTE, 2015). We each ordered a copy and agreed to read it over winter break.

If you are a math teacher and thinking about using the flipped classroom model, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It is clear and concise, and gives plenty of real examples from classrooms. The book is organized in a helpful manner, taking a teacher through a logic progression of beginning to implement the flipped classroom model and all the way through extending the model to using it as a part of a mastery learning environment.

Taking The Next Steps for a Flipped Classroom

As Robin and I mapped out how she would implement the flipped classroom for math, I started thinking about how I could apply it to my own teaching. I’m still not sure if I can make it work for intervention, but I can try it out in my graduate class. So we’re trying it out together and supporting each other along the way. I’m excited to work together with Robin, even though we’re implementing the flipped classroom model in vastly different settings!