Reflecting on Flipped Learning

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me today to discuss reflecting on flipped learning. The essential question that we'll be able to answer by the end of today's tutorial is, what ways can I reflect on the concepts of flipped learning? Let's begin by having a flipped learning recap.

Remember, that in a flipped learning classroom, homework and classwork from a traditional classroom are flipped, meaning that the homework students have is where they're actually getting the content through online videos that are either created or curated by the teacher, as well as some enrichment activities. And the classwork is where the students are actively engaging with the content in the school setting, while the teacher facilitates. This really opens up the classroom for PBL and other engaging learning strategies.

The flipped learning environment is built on four pillars. And those are flexible environment and learning culture, as well as intentional content and the professional educator. It's important to remember that the teacher acts as a facilitator, so the role of teacher is changing. They're still the expert in the content matter, but they're not delivering it with direct instruction in front of the classroom. It's being delivered through online tutorials, and classroom time is spent, like I said, on enrichment activities.

I wanted to provide some lesson plans that can guide us through ways to reflect. So this is a lesson plan example, and I've divided it in to homework and classwork. OK, so the homework for this is, students learn about the water cycle by watching teacher-created and teacher-curated videos. They also read their online textbook chapters and create a flow chart detailing the cycle. And for the reading there, it doesn't have to be read pages 50 through 65. It can be a pre-reading thing, or it could be a tour of their online textbook where they're looking at headings, and they're looking at graphics, and they're looking at vocabulary words, and they're looking at pullouts, instead of doing a close reading of the textbook.

For classwork, students will further research the cycle and create science projects with hypotheses and participate in the scientific method. Students will participate in field research. And students will use webcams to discuss their findings, et cetera, with students from other parts of the country.

So the goals of this lesson are many. One, we want the students to learn about the water cycle. We want them to understand why cycles like these are important. Secondly, we want them to engage in the scientific method. We want them to hypothesize about something, and then we want them to systematically test their hypothesis through an experiment.

We also want this learning to reach outside of the classroom. And we're going to do this twofold. One way is that they'll be doing field research. So they'll be collecting water samples by going out to local wetlands. Another part is through discussing their findings with students from other parts of the country to compare and contrast their findings with students from another part of the country.

Now, we're going to look at the principles of flipped learning and see how they apply to the lesson that we just discussed. One of the first principles is the flexible learning environment. And this allows for students to reflect on their learning and to get misconceptions corrected, to work with small groups. It allows the teacher to provide peer scaffolding in the classroom. It allows the teacher to differentiate because the teacher in a flexible learning environment is walking around, doing formative assessments, observing his or her students, pulling students aside for either remediation or enrichment.

Then, we move onto learning culture. And this is just, are the students actively engaged? In our situation, the ways that they're actively engaged are by creating their own science project, testing that hypothesis, doing the field research, having an authentic audience to present their findings to, because they're going to be presenting them via webcam to other students in the nation. The content has to be intentional.

The teacher needs to find really great websites, and resources, and tutorials to help the students learn about the water cycle. But the teacher isn't going to just rely on the online textbook. She's going to create the video as well. And she's going to be very intentional with the graphics she puts in the video and what she says in the video to make sure that the points she wants to get across to the students are, in fact, being taught.

And then we move on to professional educator. And this is where we just assess, is the teacher reflecting and are they collaborating? This teacher definitely is. They're reflecting by looking at what's working in the classroom and what isn't, and immediately remedying the what isn't. And they're collaborating with their co-workers, because maybe the same assignment is being done in a traditional classroom, and some of the ideas or projects might be the same.

In order to have the flipped classroom work, you need to be doing feedback constantly. So a great model for this is the 2 plus 2 feedback model. And this just means you identify two things that went well, and why they worked, and how do you know. Then, you think about two things that need changing. And then, what were some challenges associated with these two things, and how can we change them?

So with our lesson we just did, two things that went well and worked are use of the online tutorial to get across the content. I know that it went well because I'm taking those formative assessments, I've actually given the kids an exit ticket at the beginning of class, which sounds a little bit silly, but it's their exit ticket for the content aspect. And I'm able to tell by just quickly looking at those exit tickets that they got what I was talking about.

I also know that they got it by walking around and listening to the discussions that they're having and seeing the sorts of hypotheses that they're generating for their projects. Another thing that went well was the field research. The children really enjoyed being outside, and collecting water samples, and observing how the water cycle works.

Two things that need changing. One thing was relying a little bit too much on my online textbook. I found that it wasn't quite as in-depth as I wanted it to be. So the way I can change this is to preview my online textbook before I assign it, and make sure that the concepts that aren't fully delivered through the online textbook are delivered through the content I create for my tutorial.

Another thing that needs changing is the webcam conversation. It didn't go quite as well as planned. There were a lot of technical glitches. So this happens sometimes with technology. And a way that I can do this is try to preview the webcam ahead of time, maybe try to do a webcam with the teacher I'm partnering with, and then we can troubleshoot from there, so that things can run smoothly in the classroom.

OK, let's reflect. So what are some strengths with evaluating flipped lessons using the four pillars checklist? And what are some strengths with evaluating flipped lessons using 2 plus 2?

All right, today we talked about, what ways can I reflect on the concepts of flipped learning? And we talked about two ways, specifically. We talked about using the four pillars as guides for reflection and using the 2 plus 2 model.

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. Thanks for joining me and happy teaching.