Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Flipping your English Classroom


A "Flipped" Classroom
A “flipped” classroom is, “a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed,” (https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7081.pdf, 2012). This basically means that students watch prerecorded lectures at home followed by in-class exercises the following day. Students no longer go home with a stack of books and try to conquer homework based on skills learned that day with no teacher to ask for help. Instead students view short lecture videos that cover new material at home. Then during class time students can ask questions and engage in projects, discussions and hands-on-activities based on the material covered in the video. 

The reason to create a “flipped” classroom is because when teachers lecture in today’s classrooms they spend more time managing students then they do teaching them. This has lead to the idea of a no lecture classroom or “flipped” classroom. 

In a traditional classroom when students are lectured it the classroom it can be inefficient, non-engaging and students get one shot to absorb and understand the information before they are sent home to individually work on homework based off of the new information they just learned.  

In a “flipped” classroom students watch short video clips at home which is an efficient way of learning and viewing information, the videos can be viewed as many times as needed until the information is understood and absorbed and this method creates free classroom time to do hands-on and engaging activities. 

FIZZ- No Lecture Classroom

Check out, "FIZZ- No Lecture Classroom" Youtube videos to learn more about the benefits and how to's of  “flipping your classroom."

"Flipping" My Classroom
In my future English classroom I see the idea of “flipping” my classroom to be a great one.

To “flip” my classroom I would record a podcast of myself reading a chapter or two out of our current novel, “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” and post it online for my students to listen to. At the end of the podcast would be two or three questions asking about the plot, theme or foreshadowing events of that chapter. The questions at the end of the podcast would be motivation for the students to actually listen to the audio because those questions would be worth points.

During our next class period they would turn in there questions to be graded and then we could discuss any questions about the chapter and work on a collaborated project about World War II and the accuracy of the novel with real events of that time period.

I could make a PowerPoint or video about World War II and then ask my students to make a list of resources they’d like to use for their project.

The next class period students could share their sources with their classmates and we, as a class, could review them and decide if they were credible. There would also be time for the students to work on their collaborated project.

Another way I would “flip” my classroom would be posting a video about blogging. I would explain what a blog is, how to blog, why we will be blogging and how I will grade blogs. I would provide the link to the blog site we will be using so the students can familiarize themselves with the site. I will require them to have three blog topic ideas that are due the next day. The blog topics will be worth points, which would motivate the students to watch the videos and learn about blogs.

During our next class period I would have my student’s turn in their possible blog topics and then have a classroom discussion about the uses of blogs and what topics they came up with. We could then go to the blog site and set up and account. By “flipping” this lesson my students do the hard part, setting up the blog, during class time while I’m there to help them. They also get feedback from their peers about why a topic may be appropriate or not.

 
I think the benefits of “flipping” a classroom are numerous and I plan to incorporate “flipped” lessons as much as possible.







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