Flipped Learning Case Study: Elementary

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me today to discuss a flipped learning case study with the elementary grade level. After today's tutorial, we'll be able to answer the essential question of, what are the elements of a flipped classroom at the elementary level? Let's get started by looking at the case study.

This is a third grade classroom. So the third grade teacher ends the day by telling his students that they're going to begin to study about Native Americans. He directs them to complete the following homework. View the video, Native Americans on National Geographic Kids. Do a chapter tour in their social studies text. And this just means some pre-reading things-- looking at the pictures, the captions, the visuals, so that they can pre-read the chapter.

In class the next day, the teacher does a jigsaw learning activity with the students. Each student has a home group, the students with whom they typically sit. The teacher assigns them to a satellite group, a group that they will join to complete a collaborative study on one aspect of the Cherokee.

One group is assigned to learn about where Cherokee people lived in the 1800s and where they live today. One group is assigned to learn about the Cherokee alphabet and language. One group is assigned to learn about the role of stories and legends in Cherokee culture. And one group is assigned to learn about the Trail of Tears.

After they explore this information in their satellite group, they will go back to their home groups and teach the content that they learned. During class time, the third grade teacher circulates among groups, offering help, suggestions, and resources. Let's look at some key aspects of flipped learning and see how they were addressed in the case study that we just looked at.

The first key aspect is flexible environment. And remember, this means not just a physical flexible environment, but the teacher who's providing a flexible environment so that students have time to interact and reflect on their own learning. One way that this is successfully done in our case study is that the students are able to work in home groups and satellite groups. So they're up and they're moving around the classroom.

The teacher is also moving around the classroom, constantly taking that formative assessment that informs him as to whether or not students need to have misconceptions corrected or if reteaching needs to be done. Next, we have a learning culture. Remember this is when we give students an opportunity to engage in meaningful activities without the teacher being the center of them. And these activities are typically scaffold and they're also accessible to all students.

There's differentiation going on and the teacher is giving feedback. This is definitely happening in this classroom, because the teacher has come up with a creative way to keep the third graders engaged in the content. They've got the content the night before and now they get to become experts in a variety of areas. And they're participating in higher order thinking skills because they're researching a new topic that has to do with what they learned. They're making connections to the content that they learned the night before.

I'm assuming that, in a situation like this, the teacher would have scaffolded the groups so that students who are performing at a higher level are modeling the keys to successful students who are performing at lower levels so that they can also be successful. Or they might have paired students of different strengths together so that one might be very good at navigating different websites and knowing what is a reliable website versus a non-reliable website, while another is really good at summarizing notes. And because the teacher is wandering around the classroom and checking in with students, he's able to differentiate on a one-to-one basis even further.

Intentional content happened the night before when the teacher curated a video for the students to watch from National Geographic Kids about the Indian tribe. And the teacher also used another resource such as the class textbook. He didn't assign reading that the students might get bored with. He had them take a tour of it using a lot of those pre-reading skills they've probably talked about in class.

I think the fact that they use the textbook is really important, because it proves that even if we don't have a lot of technology available to us, we can still use the flipped learning classroom. And then we also need the professional educator. Not a lot of time is spent in this case study talking about the educator, but this teacher is constantly reflecting on what has worked in his classroom, and what hasn't, and how he can change that moving forward.

Let's reflect. What strengths and challenges do you see with this lesson plan? Today, we learned what the elements of a flipped classroom at the elementary level are. That's it for today's tutorial. But 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 towards helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Thank you for joining me, and happy teaching.