Flipped Classrooms

The idea of flipped classrooms is relatively new to the education world and has been made possible by the many technologies we have today. A flipped classroom is exactly that, "flipped." Where a traditional classroom teacher lectures or has some other passive instructional content during class time and sends homework (the assessment) home with students, flipped classrooms take a more active role. Flipped classrooms focus on the more active assessments in class and the passive instruction at home. Two advantages of flipping a classroom are that there is more time for formative assessments and there is more time for individualized and differentiated instruction. Because students are watching the lecture or reading over material at home, the time in class can be spent on applying the material the students have learned. This leaves more opportunities for teachers to have one on one learning experiences with students.

I can see many ways I could use the flipped classroom design in a high school math classroom. I could have students watch my lecture videos at home or even have them read a section in their math book on the topic before coming to class the following day. Then, in class, we can work in stations. Students could get into groups and discuss what it is they learned from the video or reading assignment. After that, we would dive right into the assessment part of things by working in groups to solve a few problems and maybe do a few on the board. If some students are still having trouble, this would be a good time for me to work separately with them while others were working together on example equations or projects.

 

 I learned more information about flipped classrooms through the article called Two Key Advantages of a Flipped Classroom in the online journal Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.