Hello, and thank you for joining me to discuss Creating a Flipped Learning Lesson, Part 2. By the end of today's tutorial, we will be able to answer the essential questions of, how do I create a flipped learning classroom? And what does the new classwork look like?
Let's talk a little bit about classwork in a flipped learning classroom. If you'll remember, in a flipped learning classroom, homework is how the students receive their content through an online video tutorial. It's the classwork where the students engage in the content in a meaningful way. And it's where the teacher takes on a facilitator role rather than that of someone who's standing in front of the classroom instructing the students.
A couple of benefits to having classwork that's devoted strictly to active engagement with the content is that it really allows for a problem-based learning and collaborative activities as well as individualized instruction. If you'll remember, problem-based learning is where the teacher might propose a problem to the students, and they have to figure out ways to solve that problem. It's a way to enrich our learning and actively engage in the content along with scientific method, et cetera.
Problem-based learning is almost always a collaborative activity. Students will work in groups. And these groups will probably include mixed abilities and students with different abilities as well.
Another benefit is the individualized instruction. Because we have a flexible learning environment in the classroom, it allows for the teacher to walk around and gauge what students have learned and what they haven't learned. This also helps the teacher identify students who need some individualized instruction because maybe they didn't fully grasp the content from the night before.
There are a couple key aspects to new classwork. And this is that the teachers can provide small group or one-to-one instruction. This is important.
You're going to see small group in PBL. But you're also going to see one-to-one. Again, it goes back to having this flexible learning environment. The teacher can group some kids in a small group and then meet one-on-one with the students who are still struggling.
And it doesn't have to be one-on-one for students who are just struggling. One-on-one meetings are beneficial to students of all levels of understanding. They might want to meet with you to discuss the project that they're working on that shows mastery, et cetera. So these one-to-one meanings are really invaluable. It also really helps the teacher get to know the students on an individual basis, which is important, because that helps the teacher recognize the student's strengths and areas of weakness.
Meeting with the students one-on-one or in small groups is a way that teachers can differentiate instruction, because all students, regardless of a disability or an English language proficiency or even if they're the top-performing student in the school, they all have different needs. And with small group or one-on-one, we're able to meet those students with the different needs.
Another key aspect is that students can demonstrate and apply their knowledge in real-world problem-solving situations. This is where we go back to the problem-based learning. A couple of examples of a real-world situation for demonstrating mastery might be the students create a publication that's distributed to the entire school. Or the students do some field service with professionals in the science arena because they're working on an experiment.
So they have an actual audience. They have an actual product. It's just very beneficial. And it's going to keep their engagement high, because they're not just doing schoolwork for the sake of doing schoolwork. The schoolwork they're doing has a purpose.
The classwork aspect of a flipped classroom also includes a lot of discussions. And these are meaningful discussions where students are working on problems. They're engaging in debate. Maybe they're participating in the scientific method of experimentation and more.
And a flipped classroom is going to provide lots of enrichment activities. And these enrichment activities are designed to promote students' continued interest in the content. And this is just ways for students to extend their own learning. But the teacher is the one providing the new resources.
A flipped learning classroom is also characterized by the teacher acting as a facilitator. She's constantly having formative assessments, which can either be little assignments or just taking the temperature, like I said, gauging where students are at based on observations. And the teacher's also grouping the students so that there's mixed ability groups that provide for scaffolding and also mixed ability groups that can provide for some differentiation.
Let's look at some examples from across the curriculum. So remember, for each of these examples, the students are learning the content at home. For a science class, the students might be participating in a scientific method. So maybe for homework, they learned about the water cycle. And now they're back in the classroom doing some experiments that have to do with the water cycle.
They might be doing field research. This is another example where the biology class would really come in handy. They're going out, and they're collecting water samples.
They might be having a Socratic seminar. This goes back to discussion. Maybe for homework, they read some online newspaper articles. And now the next day they're going to have a Socratic seminar about those articles.
Again, we're going to have PBL, problem-based learning. Maybe a problem has been proposed to the students that they want to have a better way for people to pay for parking meters in their town. How can we troubleshoot that? And the students are going to come up with solutions.
And then also, we're going to be having class discussions. And this would really fit for any grade level or any content. It's where students are sitting around and they're thinking the questions, comments, and connections that they had to the learning the night before. Another option is, they could be debating.
Let's take a minute to reflect. What is one suggestion or example you have for new classwork? And what are some limitations you foresee with implementing the new classwork? To review, today we talked about, how do I create a flipped learning classroom? And what does the new classwork look like?
For more information on how to apply what you learned in this video, please view the Additional Resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The Additional Resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. Thank you for joining me. And happy teaching.
Overview
(00:00-00:13) Introduction
(00:14-04:02) Classwork Overview
(04:03-05:04) Examples
(05:05-05:23) Reflection
(05:24-05:54) Conclusion
TED-Ed
These high quality educational videos are available on a variety of topics and can serve as a supplement to flipped videos you create.
http://ed.ted.com/videos
How to create a 'flipped' video lecture for at-home study
This post by April Brown provides a brief overview with video explanation of video authoring. This is a helpful how-to as you get started on screencasting and video creation for your flipped lessons.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-to-create-a-flipped-video-lecture-for-at-home-study-2/