Sunday, May 25, 2014
Flipped Classroom in a Math Class
When I came home from school Friday afternoon, my new copy of Professionally Speaking was waiting for me. At our house this can be confusing because my daughter is also a teacher and her copy was there too!
When I read the cover, as I was taking it upstairs to get ready for a night of Report Card writing, an article caught my attention. "On the Flip Side" by John Hoffman was about a topic that we talked about in my 7/8 Math course this year.
When I first heard about flipped classrooms, I thought what was different from when I went to school and we were required to do a reading about a subject to be prepared to talk about it the next day. ("READ CHAPTER 7 for tomorrow-- there may be a quiz" was the battle cry of my youth.) Today, instead of assigning chapters or concepts to read about, students are required to watch short videos about a lesson (or the entire lesson) and work on applying the learning in the class the next day with the teacher.
This concept would hold the students accountable for their own learning. It also states that it is more work for the student but is it? The student is still required to listen to mini-lessons. The student is still required to do practice work on the concept taught. The student is still able to ask questions and receive clarification and descriptive feedback in a timely (and some say more) timely fashion. The student is required to take quizzes and other assessment pieces. To me this holds the student accountable with the same amount of work!
How can I incorporate this in my math teaching? I can go back and assign students to create minds on activities about concepts that are going to be taught. I can then tape the students teaching this for the class and have them downloaded to a private youtube channel where students will be responsible for watching and responding to their classmates. This could be the start of something that can be expanded on as we see the benefits of such activities.
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Although I am not opposed to "flipping' a classroom, I think there are some factors to consider before doing so.
ReplyDelete1.) Student Access – I think we first must evaluate the technology of all of our students. While most students are coming to school equipped with many of the latest toys and gadgets, there are still students who do not have access to computers and/or internet access at home. If we flip our class, we must make sure not to exclude any students.
2.) Accountability – I know that homework completion in my school community has typically been a losing battle as students do not see the importance in completing it. I think there must be some sort of accountability for students to complete the assignment at home or it may not happen.
3.) More computer time – My third concern over flipping a classroom is that we would expect our students to access their learning via the technology, which is typically an isolating individual task (watching a video, completing a survey, etc.). We lose the ability to interact in a personal, collaborative way – there is much value in communicating face to face with others and talking through issues that may arise. Again, I am not opposed to flipping a class but I think we must be mindful that we reach the learning styles of all of our students and that we continue to build in talk time into our classroom.
When I first read about this flipped classroom idea I was certainly sceptical but I have to admit that the more I read about it, the more I became enthused. Having now read many research articles on the topic, I see that your factors for consideration have been concerns/issues for a great many number of educators. I have also come across many ways to deal with them as well...
Delete1) student access-during the mind's on activity students that do not have access can view the video (usually less than 10 min) and usually only a very few students.
2) accountability- I know this is a hard one to swallow but research conducted by Harvard and Penn State show a high level of accountability (much more so than for doing traditional "homework").
3) more computer time- studetns are asked to make their own notes on the videos that they watch. They bring these notes to class, therefore no extra computer time is required.
Thanks for your imput! I agree that we do need to be sure that the majority of students have access to the internet at home. (and the technology itself). If as a parent, I am worried about food on the table and a roof overhead, a working computer with an internet connection may be the least of his worries-- We would have to be aware and acountable as teachers for these students so that they are not left behind or made to feel anyway different, no matter what the reason behind the lack of technology at home.
ReplyDeleteIn our math class we wrote an opinion on the EQAO and I stated that today we encourage collaboration and working in groups (is this not one of the reasons that we do so much group work in our AQs?) and all of the sudden in these tests, they are with out their peers to bounce off ideas on! -- the same COULD be said if we did flip our learning to at home. This should be something that we think through before implementing!