Flip Your Classroom

Flip Your Classroom

You are ready to try flipped learning, but you do not know where to begin. The first step is to examine what to flip. You likely have information that you want to present. In many classrooms, this comes as direct instruction. You stand in front of the room, talk, and write on the board or show a PowerPoint presentation. Ask yourself, “How can I make the most of my class time?” Is it critical that your students hear this directly from you in the classroom, or is this something that you can record and let them view before class? Many teachers find that flipping direct instruction is the easiest way to start.

What to Flip?

What are you asking students to do with this information? What knowledge or skills do your students need to be able to demonstrate? Can some of these skills be done independently or do they require more assistance? For this, we will look at Bloom’s taxonomy. You will see that skills associated with Knowledge (or remembering previously learned material) and Comprehension (demonstrating understanding of facts) are at the lowest level of critical thinking. These are the skills that most students will be able to do on their own. Now some students will still need help in these areas, but these are the areas that should require the least amount of help.

The skills at the lower end of Bloom’s taxonomy are activities that can be flipped. After watching a video or interactive lesson of direct instruction, your students should be able to recall the lesson and explain what they learned in simple terms on their own. How many of your homework assignments use the following action verbs? These are activities that your students can do before they come to class.

Knowledge	Comprehension
Arrange	Classify
Define	Convert
Describe	Discuss
Duplicate	Estimate
Identify	Explain
Label	Express
List	Extend
Match	Generalize
Memorize	Give examples
Name	Identify
Order	Infer
Outline	Locate
Recognize	Paraphrase
Relate	Predict
Recall	Rewrite
Repeat	Review
Reproduce	Select
Select	Summarize
State	Translate

Where to Flip?

Flipping a lesson looks different in an elementary school than in a middle school, high school, or college. Elementary students are more dependent on their teacher, but this does not mean that flipped learning will not work with them. You simply need to alter when and how flipped learning takes place.

Flipped learning for elementary students is often embedded into the classroom through workstations. Begin with an area where students struggle or you feel like you have to repeat often. Make a short two to three minute video of yourself explaining the topic. You can also create a short interactive lesson if you can find one or know how to create one. Make sure that the flipped presentation is no more than ten minutes long. Most teachers create learning centers where groups of students watch a video or work on a computer while the teacher is working with other students. Require the students to take notes or recall what they learned. This direct instruction can also be placed on the web for students and parents to access from home, but do not assign it as mandatory homework. Some students may not have access to the internet at home or their parents may not let them on sites like YouTube. Often these flipped lessons take place in the middle, rather than the beginning, of a lesson with elementary students. This allows the teacher to connect with the students and prepare them for the flipped experience.

Older learners can work on a flipped learning experience outside of the classroom. Flipped instruction for older learners is usually front-loaded at the beginning of a lesson. More mature students can complete more work on their own before coming to class. With older learners, direct instruction and lower level critical thinking skills can be performed outside of the classroom to create more time for higher level thinking activities once the students arrive. These higher level critical thinking skills are more appropriate for practicing with an instructor present:

Application	Analysis	Synthesis	Evaluation
Apply	Analyze	Assemble	Argue
Change	Calculate	Collect	Assess
Choose	Categorize	Combine	Conclude
Compute	Compare	Compose	Defend
Demonstrate	Contrast	Create	Discriminate
Illustrate	Criticize	Design	Estimate
Interpret	Diagram	Develop	Evaluate
Modify	Differentiate	Formulate	Judge
Predict	Experiment	Plan	Justify
Produce	Model	Rearrange	Support
Show	Question	Revise	Value
Solve	Separate	Rewrite
Write	Test	Summarize

When to Flip?

There are several options for flipping direct instruction. The easiest way to to videotape yourself presenting the information. You can draw on the board or record something on a document camera. If you are skilled with technology, you can narrate a PowerPoint, capture your movements on your computer through screen shots, or even create interactive flash video using authoring software such as Captivate or Articulate. Completed lessons can be loaded onto a DVD and sent home with students, placed onto a class website, or more public sites such as YouTube. Interactive lessons can be saved as executable or uploaded to learning management systems such as MOODLE.

Rachel E Kovacs, 11/2013

References

Flumerfelt, S., & Green, G. (2013). Using Lean in the Flipped Classroom for At Risk Students. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 356-366.

Herreid, C., & Schiller, N. (2013). Case Studies and the Flipped Classroom. Journal Of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 62-66.

Millard, E. (2012). 5 Reasons FLIPPED Classrooms Work. University Business, 15(11), 26-29.

Pearson, G. (2012). Students, parents give thumbs-up to Flipped Classroom. Education Canada, 52(5), 46.

Roehl, A., Reddy, S., & Shannon, G. (2013). The Flipped Classroom: An Opportunity To Engage Millennial Students Through Active Learning Strategies. Journal Of Family & Consumer Sciences, 105(2), 44-49.

Sams, A., & Bergmann, J. (2013). Flip Your Students' Learning. Educational Leadership, 70(6), 16-20.

Semple, P. (2013). It's Never Too Late to Flip!. Internet@Schools, 20(1), 8-13.