Flipping Out About Flipped Classrooms

As a freshman, I attended the South Dakota CTM Conference in Huron; at the very end of the last day, I attended a session by Sheila McQuade, a teacher at O’Gorman High School in Sioux Falls, in which she described her experience of flipping a classroom. 

While each teacher has their own style, in general, a flipped classroom combines teacher-created videos and interactive lessons with help on homework during the hour of class time. Students’ homework is to watch the assigned video lecture and take notes; when they come to class the next day, they are to work on assigned problems, worksheets, etc. and ask any questions that may arise.

Sheila had a presentation prepared about the ups and downs of flipping her classroom. She went through the process of creating the videos, pointing out which software and programs worked best for her. She found that her biggest obstacle was keeping up with making all of the videos for her students to watch and take notes on. The biggest thing that I took away from her presentation was that flipping a classroom takes a LOT of preparation; not only do you make lesson plans, but you have to get the materials necessary to make and edit the videos, and then actually make them (and then maybe remake them if they don't turn out as you expected). 

She advised against flipping a class that you're teaching for the first time; if you made a video lecture without having taught the lesson, it would be hard to anticipate students’ questions and spots of confusion. So, when you’re comfortable with a lesson and how to teach the concepts in it, then you can consider creating a video lesson. She also recommended not flipping an entire year's worth of lessons at once, but rather doing it unit by unit. This allows you to make sure students are comfortable and familiar with material they are learning through video lectures. 

Once the videos are made and available to students, it is important to have students take notes and follow along with any problems worked out in the video. Sheila said that she would check students’ notes and ask if they had any clarifying questions before the start of class, and I thought this was a good way to connect what they learned in the videos to whatever medium of classwork was given to them that day.

 A benefit that Sheila mentioned was that videos allow students to go at their own pace. So, while a video may be 10 to 15 minutes long, a student may need to rewind and re-watch a certain step to the problem in order to fully understand it. This is a huge advantage for flipped classrooms; they allow various kinds and shapes of learners to follow along and understand in a way that better fits them.

After attending this session, I was so intrigued by this idea of flipping a lesson. It is most definitely something I can see myself, as a learner, enjoying, and so I know that I’d like to try it within my first couple years of teaching, even if it’s just one lesson at a time.