Written by I am curious about how to better serve my students’ unique learning needs and how I can allow them to more effectively access the grade six curriculum. I consider myself to be not just a teacher-researcher, but a teacher-experimenter and my classroom is my lab. My hypothesis is that a flipped classroom will allow my students to more effectively engage in concepts and better utilize classroom time in order to receive more support.
Presently, I have recorded two trial videos on commas (part one and part two) that I will assign my students to watch for homework next week. I have also created a Google Form for them to complete after they have watched the video to show their consolidation of learning and more effectively allow me to group students for instruction: if they rock the mini-quiz, they may get put in a support group to simply check in and ensure they understand the new writing concept. If their quiz shows they need some support, they will be placed in a smaller group and receive more focused following up to review the concepts in punctuation.
In order to slowly ease in to this experiment, I will start with basic writing concepts to allow their creative writing to improve through small-group workshops. I will collect feedback from students (and parents, if possible) to decide whether other subject areas (reading skills, social studies) could also get flipped.
Created by Knewton and Column Five Media
I would love to know the statistics on successful flipped classroom experiences by grade and discipline. It seems to me that some subject areas could seamlessly move in this direction and others may demand a much higher degree of differentiation to be successful. Sharing experiences with the flipped classroom would provide some great food for thought; I wonder how many other independent school educators are exploring the possibilities…?
I am excited to see how this program works with a junior school classroom since I have seen it mainly used in the upper school programs. From my experience one of the main challenges is getting the kids to actually watch the video and do the check in quiz which you are basing your next steps on.
As a suggestion, perhaps this might be a way for some parents to get engaged in what their kids are learning. Have the parents and kids watch the video together so that they can generate some discussion about the idea and also ensures that the parents know the concepts being covered. I don’t know what families internet rules are at home, but hopefully the kids are using the computers in a communal space where others are around to engage in the content. It could even be apart of the question survey, who did you watch the video with?
Celeste,
Great find with the flipped infographic. Here is another interesting one: http://blog.sophia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Flipped-Classroom-Infographic.png
I have also see lots of variations on this diagram floating about: http://usergeneratededucation.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-28_1220.png
For me the power of FC comes from what you do with that “new found time”. Simulations, experiments, conferences, ah-ha moments. I am excited to hear how it goes and how the students respond.
Here are a few of my FC resources for you to flip through.
http://www.diigo.com/user/jmedved/flipped