Flip Your Students' Learning

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

Summary:

Authors Aaron Sams and Jonathon Bergmann start off the article with two sentences that set the tone for the whole piece, "Flipped learning is not about how to use videos in your lessons. It’s about how to best use your in-class time with students." They go on to explain that having students go through the lecture at home allows for the teacher to have more one on one time with the students in the classroom. This kind of approach may not work as well in classes that are heavily inquiry based and instead those that have more didactic information. Teachers should think about how they could use flipped learning to increase the face-to-face time with students.

After having decided on where this could come in, the next step is to think about the how. The article lists multiple real examples from classrooms along with links to the videos. Some of the ideas for how to do this are as follows: videos to preview units, videos to pose questions, to review concepts that are needed for upcoming lessons. They go on to explain that the idea of sending students home with something to do in order to be prepared for the upcoming lessons is not anything new. It simply helps to create a more student centered approach where teachers a free to help more students one on one.

Bloom's taxonomy being looked at in conjunction with flipped learning can help to take some of the lower levels of work outside of class, in turn pulling the higher levels back into the classroom. To add on to that, as teachers create a library of lessons, a mastery approach can grow out of Bloom's as well.  In their classrooms, they have students move on to new objectives only once they have shown that they have mastered them. This then changing how assessment works because students need to prove that they have mastered something.

After having done some reflection based on the Universal Design for Learning, Aaron and Jon determined that watching videos was not always the best way for all students to learn. Instead of them being a requirement, they were added to other resources as an option for students to choose what best suited them. Something else that became tied to more choice was the traditional assessments. Students still needed to show their understanding, but they got to choose how to best show their understanding. The authors then explain scenarios from classrooms with varying students, subjects, and needs.

The next section on the article focuses on ways for teachers to get started with flipping, Jon and Aaron explain that they didn't develop their approach in a year and learned new things along the way. One word of advice that they had was to think of the flipped classroom more as flipped lesson, flipped learning, or flipped thinking, because they don't convey the idea that flipping lessons is a 100% kind of thing. Instead, they suggest that teachers implement the videos and other aspects when they are necessary, and to start slowly. Maybe flipping one lesson or unit each semester, quarter, etc.

In the end, the explain that a flipped classroom gives teachers the ability to meet the varying needs of their students in a flexible way. A student-centered way.

Reflection:

I enjoyed reading this article because while at first glance you might think that it will be all about how to make videos for all of your lessons, it really delves into the reasons behind flipping lessons. More so than flipping them just to have students working on application in the classroom instead of listening to lecture. What it all boils down to is using the flipped lessons as yet another tool in the tool kit for helping students to determine in which ways they learn best and to work through things at their own pace. I think a major underlying message in this article, and something that is important for me to remember as well, is that there is no one perfect solution, or tool out there. It is a combination of lots of different approaches with the idea that students have some choice and say in their learning as well.

As I move to another grade level of language arts that I haven't taught before, but keep my two Spanish classes this year, I struggle with which classes I want to try some of these ideas out with. I don't want to take on too much, trying to jump in with these ideas full time in all of the different areas. Two different grade levels,  and three different curriculums (all which are still being written) for language arts, Heritage Spanish, and Spanish 1 are a lot to handle. I will have to keep reminding myself that it will not be perfect in one year and that taking on too much at once can have the opposite effect. Like Jon and Aaron suggested, I can use videos and resources that are already created and set a goal to start recording some lessons instead of trying to set of goal of recording all possibilities.