Flipped Learning Case Study: Secondary

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me today to discuss a flipped learning case study in the secondary classroom. The essential question that we will be able to answer by the end of today's tutorial is, what are the elements of a flipped classroom at the secondary level? Let's begin by looking at our case study.

Remember, this is the secondary level, and this is for a biology class. The biology teacher tells the students that they will be studying the skeletal system. She assigns the students two videos for homework, one that she's developed that includes foundational information and post it to YouTube. And one by Molly Stevens, a biomaterials researcher that is part of Ted Talks. It's about the new stem cell application that promotes bone regeneration and produces bone tissue without pain.

Students are to complete a reflection on what they learned from the videos along with what questions they have and post it to the classroom blog. In class the next day, the students discuss the content of what they investigated the night before along with addressing the questions their classmates posted on the classroom blog. Then the teacher divides them into collaborative groups.

She guides them in a discussion of the new stem cell application for bone regeneration. The groups are assigned the task of investigating stem cell research and the controversies involved. Each group is assigned one of two sides of the stem cell controversy to debate.

As the students prepare to work collaboratively, the teacher checks in with a couple of students who have struggled with the content recently and one who did not participate in the blog part of the homework. She reviews some of the most challenging content with them, ensuring that they understand, then sends them back to their groups to work on the debate task. She spends the remainder of the class period circulating from group to group, answering questions, and offering suggestions and resources.

Let's take a look at the key aspects of the flipped learning environment and see how they apply to the case study. The first aspect is flexible environment. And this is creating a flexible environment for students to interact and reflect on their learning, as well as move around the classroom. In a flexible environment, the teacher is constantly creating formative assessments to gauge the understanding of the classroom and reteaching as needed.

In our case, the flexible environment is possible, and we know this through the fact that the teacher is circulating the classroom and having teacher check ins with students who have struggled. This tells us that she's doing the formative assessment. We also have a flexible environment, because the class can move from whole group discussion to small groups that are working together on a project.

Next, we have learning culture. This is when the teacher gives students opportunities to engage in meaningful activities without her being front and center. And these activities should be scaffold and differentiated. And they should be getting timely feedback. The learning culture does fit flipped learning, because the engaging tasks have to do with the reflection the teacher assigned the night before.

We talked a little bit about how the students are gathering the content during homework. Often more meaningful, if the teacher can assign an active learning task, such as what this teacher signed, which was reflection and question writing. So the next day, it isn't just 130 minutes of a discussion or 130 minutes of small group work. But it's engaging them in discussion from the get go, and it's not just discussion, where the teacher is asking the questions.

The questions in the discussion are being posed by the students, and the students themselves are answering the questions of their classmates. Then the teacher does a really good job of checking the classroom. She sends the kids into the small groups to work on stem cell regeneration information. This is an example of an enrichment activity.

And during this time, she's checking in with the students one to one. This leads to intentional content. The teacher very intentionally made her own material to give them the foundational skills for the skeletal system. She followed that up with a Ted Talk, and Ted Talks are always super engaging.

I've used them in my own classroom. Students always really enjoy them, and they're free online. Super easily accessible, an easy way, if you don't have the material you need to create a tutorial. You can always rely on one of these, but furthermore, she gives them the enrichment in the classroom. So she's providing them with the resources, which leads us to her being a professional educator.

She knows who's getting it and who isn't. And it's those children who aren't getting it that she's pulling aside and touching base with to ensure that they have mastery before they move forward to the enrichment portion of the lesson. This teacher obviously does a lot of reflection, probably collaborates with his or her colleagues, and overall is delivering a really great flipped lesson. Let's take a minute to reflect.

What strengths and challenges do you see with this lesson plan? OK, today, we talked about what the elements are of the flipped classroom at the secondary level. Now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video.

The additional resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description, so you can easily target the resources you want. Thank you for joining me, and happy teaching.