You, or YouTube. Who's the teacher here?
A brief and simple reflection on flipping the classroom
If you aren't sure what flipped Learning is, a great place to start is this article from Lesley University, Boston, MA)
I've been trying to flip my classroom for five years, after listening to John Bergman speak in a YouTube video about his experience of flipping his teaching in the US, then reading his inspirational "Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day". If you haven’t had a chance to read this book then I strongly recommend it.
So here I am five years later, flipping the classroom, embracing my inner geek, experimenting with technology, designing presentations to be more and more interactive, trying to stop myself delivering death by PowerPoint lessons and - most importantly - striving to keep pupils engaged by handing ownership of their learning back to them.
I should point out that I'm just a teacher, like every other teacher. I'm not an academic, I'm not an author, I don't write books (yet anyway) and I certainly make mistakes. My teaching is not perfect and, to be honest, I wouldn't want it to be. What I am is curious, creative and brave in my work - I love exploring and trying new things. In the spirit of Bergman himself, I just "jump in"and give things a go.
In my journey of exploration of flipped learning and flipped classrooms I've learnt a lot of things and I thought I'd share a few of them in the hope it helps others consider their own practice when "jumping in" to the world of flipped classrooms.
I’m not going to reference research here, I’m not looking to wow you with science. I’m just going to reflect on my practice in the off chance you might find an answer to a question you’ve asked in amongst my ramblings!
Should you flip everything?
I started out trying to! Flip this, flip that, flip everything! But the honest answer is no, not everything can, or indeed should be flipped. Complex, technical language can be baffling at the best of times and often pupils will benefit from the introduction of this type of material in the traditional classroom environment. This is especially true for our EAL learners for who jargon or idioms can prove a real challenge.
The best flipped material is short, engaging and thought provoking. Chances are, you're hoping to give over a good portion of your classroom time to discussion and therefore creating thoughts and questions through your material will lead pupils to come better prepared for collaboration and discussion.
How to make your pupils engage with flipped learning.
Often my first activity will be something that leads directly from the material covered outside of the classroom. In this way pupils have to engage with the flipped material or be “found out”. My pupils know why we flip their lessons and understand the benefits. By getting them to buy into it, you reinforce its importance and increase engagement in the process. Giving pupils ownership is a great way to motivate them. Likewise, the implications of not engaging with the process should be no different to those for more traditional teaching and learning.
Isn’t it just watching videos?
Watching material does form a large part of the culture of flipped classrooms, but it certainly shouldn’t be everything. If you do get pupils to watch videos (as I do, regularly) then what is the benefit to them? Do they know “how” to watch a video? Pausing, note taking, reviewing, creating visual diagrams of their thoughts are all activities which will aid the movement of knowledge from working to long term memory. WSQ sheets, created by Crystal Kirch in the early 2000s, are a great way to aid pupils in the process of gathering information and knowledge effectively from videos. The process of Watch, Summarise, Question is of real benefit. You can find out more about WSQ and Crystal’s work here (https://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/)
I have found that there are a myriad of ways in which flipped learning can take place, videos are just a small part of it. https://www.k12dive.com/ identifies seven specific ways in which flipped learning can take place:
1. The Standard Inverted Classroom
Students are assigned the “homework” of watching video lectures and reading any materials relevant to the next day’s class. During class time, students practice what they’ve learned through traditional schoolwork, with their teachers freed up for additional one-on-one time.
2. The Discussion-Oriented Flipped Classroom
Teachers assign lecture videos, as well as any other video or reading related to the day’s subject — think TED Talks, YouTube videos and other resources. Class time is then devoted to discussion and exploration of the subject. This can be an especially useful approach in subjects where context is everything such as history, art, or English.
3. The Demonstration-Focused Flipped Classroom
Especially for those subjects that require students to remember and repeat activities exactly — think chemistry, physics, and just about every maths class — it is most helpful to have a video demonstration to be able to rewind and re-watch. In this model, the teacher uses screen recording software to demonstrate the activity in a way that allows students to follow along at their own pace.
4. The Faux-Flipped Classroom
One great idea EducationDrive uncovered is perfect for younger students for whom actual homework might not yet be appropriate. This flipped classroom model instead has those students watch lecture videos in class — giving them the opportunity to review materials at their own pace, with the teacher able to move from student to student and offer whatever individual support each young learner needs.
5. The Group-Based Flipped Classroom
This model adds a new element to help students learn — each other. The class starts the same way other flipped learning lessons do, with lecture videos and other resources shared before class. The difference is that when students come to class, they team up to work together on that day’s assignment. This format encourages students to learn from one another and helps students to not only learn what the right answers are but also how to actually explain to a peer why those answers are right.
6. The Virtual Flipped Classroom
For older students and in some courses, the flipped classroom can eliminate the need for classroom time at all. Some college and university professors now share lecture videos for student viewing, assign and collect work via online learning management systems. These initiatives simply require students to attend office hours or other regularly scheduled time for brief one-on-one instruction based on that individual student’s needs.
7. Flipping The Teacher
All the video created for a flipped classroom doesn’t have to begin and end with the teacher. Students too can make use of video to better demonstrate proficiency. Assign students to their record practice role-play activities to show competency, or ask each to film themselves presenting a new subject or skill as a means to “teach the teacher”.
Many of these happen concurrently. Often I’ll find ways to combine some of these specifically to suit my teaching groups. Not everything works for everyone and you soon learn what works for individual students. Often I’ll find myself undertaking the same process of differentiation that I would in a traditional lesson setting, when planning my flip.
It must be fun
Flipped lessons, self guided study, technology based learning, should all be fun. The idea is to engage with pupils in their world, on their terms, in ways that they can relate to. Edutopia.org identified Edpuzzle, Padlet, Quizizz as examples of tools that can help you design individualized learning experiences for all of their students. I would also add kahoot, everlearner and TED-Ed to that list and a really comprehensive collection of flipped learning tools can be found at commonsense.org/
Gamification is really current and trending all over the world in Education, as well as in many other areas of life. Kids love to game and engaging their learning and gaming together can be a real productivity booster. In my academic PE lessons we use a UK based platform called everlearner, which is a traditional flipped learning tool but with an element of gamification built in. Challenging the pupils to see who can do the most, achieve the most, score the most, in a visual but non threatening way encourages them to push that little bit further than they would otherwise do. I certainly see greater engagement in tasks that lead to boosting scores, points, leaderboard positions than those that don’t.
How does it change my lessons though?
Once pupils have gathered knowledge on a subject prior to attending a class, they are in a much better position to engage in “learning” once back in the classroom.
I love this diagram, designed by Zach Groshell, as it really sums up the benefits to my classroom when I don’t have to deliver as much in the way of content and fact. My students can discuss, they can debate and they can collaborate around the knowledge already implanted in their memory prior to the lesson. It makes lessons feel more alive, more organic and it certainly saves me time developing presentations and activities that meet the needs of a wide variety of learners. You are facilitating the development of knowledge rather than imparting the basics of fact.
The simple fact is that lesson content is still lesson content. Teachers have always facilitated discussion, led debate, asked questions and encouraged question
ing, but flipped learning allows more time for these knowledge application activities which in turn leads to a deeper thought process and increased cognitive processing within the classroom. Indeed the whole idea of flipping pupils learning effectively turns Bloom’s taxonomy on its head, with the simplest cognitive learning happening before the lesson and higher level activity facilitated within the classroom.
I find my lessons contain less of me, which cannot be a bad thing! If you came into one of my GCSE PE lessons you would see a combination of:
- A variety of group work and peer activities
- Pupil led questioning in class
- Pupil driven activities
- Debate and discussion
- Researching and sourcing of evidence
- Deeper thinking around a topic or subject
And hopefully if you observed me, you would see teacher facilitation and checking engagement as my main focus. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t happen all the time. There is certainly still a place for chalk and talk but I aspire to lessons driven by the things above, rather than my laptop and a presentation.
Don’t we all already do this?
In theory yes we do - We flip activities all the time, often without realising it. Everytime a teacher sets work for homework that extends learning beyond that knowledge covered in the lesson we are engaging in the practice we label as “flipped learning”.
We do it in PE all the time. Whenever we play a game at the start of a lesson we are effectively frontloading kids with skills and knowledge before breaking down skills and looking at them at a deeper cognitive level. We’re just doing it all within the lesson, although you could certainly set practical learning activities prior to class with the right access to facilities and equipment. Researching the work of Christina Polatajko - A PE teacher in Australia is a really good place to start if you’re interested in learning more about frontloading practice.
The difference is that when we make explicit effort to flip pupils learning then it becomes something more. It changes the dynamic of lessons from instructor led to pupil driven. As Cliff Goodacre talks about in an excellent blog article “As a flipped educator of over 5 years, I can admit I needed to learn how to relinquish the power of holding students accountable. I started by checking daily work with students and making sure they watched video lectures. What I quickly learned, though, was that students knew what they needed better than I did.” https://flippedlearning.org/syndicated/why-change-how-you-teach)
Flipped classrooms are challenging to get right and they demand a different skill set from instructors accustomed to lecturing - but they can draw out skills and abilities from pupils that we don’t look for often enough. If pupils control their learning and engage with its processes then we can use our time to cement that knowledge in their long term memory for recall when needed later.
So I just use Youtube right?
No. Create your own material. Don't rely on YouTube or the internet alone. While it is an amazing resource, your pupils can find a hundred times more information on a subject than you could! Your pupils deserve a teacher and a flipped learning activity should still be led and guided by you. By all means embed or reference other things. By all means point pupils towards TED-ED talks or pre-created videos but make sure they have your stamp on them. When I first set out to try this, pupils would consistently question why I was using other school’s presentations, or other people’s videos! In reality It's no more work than prepping a traditional lesson and as your actual lesson is pupil-led anyway, hopefully you are actually being more efficient. The other important thing from your perspective is that everything you create is yours. It becomes part of your personal portfolio. You can share it, use it, pass it on but it’s yours forever.
If it’s so good, why don’t we all do it all the time?
There is a huge volume of material out there about how wonderful flipped learning is. In fact I’ve just created some more of it! The reality is though that it doesn’t always work. In reality, flipped classrooms’ effectiveness is sometimes limited.If your pupils aren’t motivated. If there are time limitations and distractions or if pupils are challenged beyond their reasonable capabilities then flipped learning can leave to disengagement, just as any form of learning can. Studies have shown that pupils' engagement increases the more exposed to flipped learning they are and, in turn, pupils at the beginning of their flipped learning journey are the most likely to resist or disengage. Careful, gentle encouragement and expansion of exposure to flipped learning is preferable to cold turkey deep diving into anything new. Clear and simple explanation of why and what will help to give your pupils an understanding of the benefits of flipped learning to them. Remember we are trying to give some of the power over their learning, back to them!
I’m no expert when it comes to flipped learning, flipped classrooms and the science and research behind it. I’ve explored it and experimented with it. I’m still learning about it and I make as many mistakes as anyone, but I have learnt to believe passionately that this is a pedagogy that genuinely works, makes significant contribution to pupil learning and enhances the educational experience of the pupils I teach. As with any pedagogy there is much in the way of research, discussion and debate over flipped learning and it is evolving all the time. I would encourage anyone with an interest in technology, pedagogy or just giving their pupils a new and potentially beneficial experience, to go on and read a bit more about flipped learning. You never know you might learn something you can take back to your classroom!