(Copied from my class blog here.)

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about the flipped classroom, where the lessons are done at home and the work done in class instead of the other way around. Although it is relatively new as a teaching method, there are a number of articles on the benefits of the flipped classroom. There are drawbacks, notably the amount of time and effort it takes to find and/or prepare thoughtful, useful lessons that students can access at home and the need for internet access (which certain students may not have at home) in order to watch the video(s) or read the article(s). However, there is also evidence that it helps students better understand the concepts they’re learning.

Because of this research, and because I’ve been wanting to try this strategy for a while, my genius hour project during third term is creating a flipped Math classroom. My students will be required to do the lesson at home, using videos that I have prepared with Explain Everything. Like what would have been required were we doing the lesson in class, they’ll be expected to take notes, write down the key ideas and use the textbook’s Communicate the Ideas questions to help them articulate what they’ve understood from the lesson. The actual practice and application of the lesson’s concepts, however, will occur during class time (assuming they use their time in class).

There are a few reasons that I am trying this model. First of all, I’ve found that when I teach Math lessons during our class time, some students are very quickly bored because they understand the concept with little instruction from me while other students, even at the end of the lesson, still aren’t sure they understand. Because I have 28 students at varying levels of understanding, I am moving too slow for some, too fast for others, and more or less at the best pace for the rest. By doing the lesson in a video, students can pause and review as necessary, so that each of them is taking the amount of time that he or she needs in order to understand the lesson.

There will still be students who are having difficulty. By reviewing the Communicate the Ideas questions that were done as part of the lesson, however, I’ll be able to connect with those students who are struggling while those who aren’t are free to continue with the work associated with the concept.

Having the lesson done at home also frees me during our class time to move around the room and help students in smaller groups. The idea is that by doing this, I’ll be able to work with the students who struggle with a concept more often, and touch base with those who have the occasional difficulty – but each student will be able to work at his or her own pace instead of being dragged along because the rest of the class is ready for the next lesson or held back because the others are still working. Instead, when students finish the work, they write their Math journal, hand it in for feedback (which tells me how well they understood the concept after they did the assigned Math questions), and continue on to the next lesson.

For parents, the advantage to this method is that students are doing most of their work in the classroom with the teacher, who can help them understand in the way that the child has been taught. There will likely be some students who don’t finish their work in class, for various reasons – but they (and their parents) can access the video online to help them understand the work.

My goal with this is to have a self-paced Math classroom where each student is working to his or her best ability. I’d like those students who find the work easy to be challenged and those who require extra support to receive it within the classroom setting. No student should have to take a test and feel like they know they are going to fail it because they still don’t understand the concept. Neither should a student be complete bored with school because they knew how to do the work before they even entered the classroom.

I don’t know how well this will work in my classroom. It may be that we end up having students studying too many different concepts. We may find that doing the lessons outside of class impedes the understanding of large groups of students. It might end up being difficult to have students testing at different times.

But as of this week, I have three students who are already working ahead, and two who struggle with whom I’ve been able to sit down and explain the concept one-on-one without them staying after school for extra help.

That feels like the beginnings of success to me.