Creating a Flipped Learning Lesson: Part 1

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me today to discuss creating a flipped learning lesson-- part 1. Today, we'll be able to answer the following essential questions.

How do I create a flipped learning classroom? And what does the new homework look like?

OK, let's get started by looking at homework. Remember that homework is how the teacher delivers the content. The students are getting it at home. So that when they come to the actual physical classroom, they're doing meaningful learning activities and the teacher is more of a facilitator.

So the homework is where the direct instruction takes place. And it's really technology-heavy because it's a technological pre-learning. Specifically, most of the students are going to be watching brief video tutorials outside of class.

So there's a couple of key aspects to this new homework. And it's important to remember these. So you're creating video tutorials for your students. And you definitely don't have to create them. You can find the ones that already exists.

But you want to make sure that when you find them that they're brief. Definitely, they need to be less than 10 minutes. And this might include chunking large content into smaller pieces.

If you have a topic like writing, I mean, that is just a huge topic. You can't really fit everything a student needs to know about writing into a 10-minute video.

But just like you wouldn't go into your classroom and lecture about writing for an hour and a half or 45 minutes, you would probably do many lessons. So the idea is that these video tutorials are the same things. They're tiny, little 10-minute mini-lessons. And together, they might create a larger unit. And that's perfectly fine, but you want to keep them brief, or you're going to lose student engagement.

Next, we want to talk about create or curate. So with create, this just means that you're going to create your own video tutorial. This is really a key to the flipped learning classroom. It's really more meaningful when the teacher is the one creating the content because it really reinforces that you're the classroom teacher. And even though you're in a facilitator role, you are the expert on this content matter.

If you can't create a video, it's definitely all right to curate a video. But you don't want to do this all the time. You don't want to rely on content that other people have created. It's really important, again, to establish yourself as the expert in the classroom by creating the videos.

Something that makes the flipped learning classroom unique is that the students watch the videos at home. Now you might have some students who don't have the ability to do this, and that's OK. This is where we get to the accessibility and equity issue. Not all students are going to have internet at home. Not all students are going to have devices at home.

So we need to make sure that, if this is the case with your classroom, you're setting aside time at the beginning of the next class day where they can watch the video. Or, if you're at the secondary level where students maybe have a study hall or time before or after school, make the video accessible for them at those times as well so that they're prepared.

Continuing on, videos in a flipped learning classroom usually include the following. So the videos are going to be how-to videos where they're talking about how to do something. Or, the videos are going to have straight content.

It's also a good idea at the end of a video to give the students some suggested web sites to go to and to include an online chat room for your classroom. Online chats can happen in two ways. You might want to link your tutorial up to an online chat that's just happening on the internet with a panel of experts, or create your own online chat in your classroom using Blackboard or another platform like that.

And then it's also important to remember that, even though this homework is where the content is being delivered, and most of the active learning is going to be taking place in class the next day, you still want to have active learning techniques incorporated into it. So students aren't just sitting there watching videos. They're interacting with their learning.

So this might be that they are going to watch a tutorial and then fill out a graphic organizer or a timeline. Or, if you're like me, I love to do Socratic seminars after we have homework the night before. So we're going to write out the questions, comments, or connections that we have to it to ask in class the next day.

Another really popular active learning technique is for them to reflect on what they've learned and what they've watched so that we can have these conversations, and that they're practicing a little bit of metacognition where they're thinking about their own thinking. And then, maybe upon reflection, they're realizing they didn't really get it. They can bring that into class the next day and have their misconceptions corrected.

And lastly, we want to archive these videos so that they're always available. It's really important to remember that flipped learning really puts the student in the driver's seat. So if they need to review a topic, they shouldn't be at the mercy of the teacher making it available again, or coming in for office hours. It needs to be available online for them to watch at any time.

So let's talk about a couple of examples from across the curriculum. For a science class, we might have the students watch a teacher-created video explaining the water cycle. For a writing class, we might have students visit sites like the Owl at Purdue or citationmachine.net for practice with citations and plagiarism information. You might have students complete a reading online for a history class, and then generate questions for Socratic seminar the next day in class.

You also don't, like I said, I have to always create your own content. Another example is using an online textbook. A lot of the textbooks that schools order today have an online companion.

And then I mentioned Blackboard earlier. There are definitely a lot of platforms teachers can use so that we can have that chat and interactive learning aspect of our homework. And some of these include Blackboard. And another popular one is Edmodo.

Let's take a minute to reflect. What is one suggestion or example you have for new homework? What are some limitations you foresee with implementing the new homework in your own classroom?

So today we talked about how do I create a flipped learning classroom. And what does the new homework look like?

To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the Additional Resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material.

Thank you for joining me, and happy teaching.