Welcome back to BOGObiology! In this
screencast, I'm going to talk about how i
use the flipped classroom approach in my
own teaching practice. Before we get
started, there are a couple of things
that we should keep in mind.
First off, there are a lot of ways to use
this method and my way is definitely not
the only way. My goal in making this
video was to share a method that's
worked really well for me and I hope
that parts of it might be useful to you
as well.
Second, if you like and use a different
version of this method, I hope you'll let
us know in the comments section below.
So now that that's out of the way, here
are the questions that we're going to
address. What is the flipped classroom
method? How can it be useful?
How do i use it? and then What are its
pros and cons? Comparing the flipped
classroom method to a traditional
approach is probably the easiest way of
explaining it. In most traditional
classrooms, the teacher talks and the
students take notes in class. Then, the
students go home and they try to apply
that information to problems for
homework. There are definitely a lot of
benefits to the traditional approach,
however it does tend to put the
cognitive load pretty squarely on the
teacher. If the teacher is doing most of
the thinking in class,
it makes it very difficult when the
students go home and have to tackle new
problems by themselves. With the flipped
classroom method, students do the more
passive work of note-taking at home for
homework, often by watching something
like a screencast. Then, they come to class
and they are challenged to apply and to
use the information with the teacher
ready to guide them, if necessary. When
the students use this class time
actively rather than passively, it puts
the cognitive load on the students
rather than on the teacher.
Our next question is "how can the flipped
classroom method be useful?" and I've come
up with a list of four different reasons
and we're going to go into each of these
in detail. First, this method has
definitely freed up a lot of my in-class
time because, when students are doing
much of their note-taking at home, it
allows classes to be used for stuff like
project-based learning, inquiry-based
learning, class discussions and a whole
bunch of other things that are really
interesting.
When we're doing things like this, it
allows me to interact with my students
much more closely than it does if I'm
lecturing. For me, an added bonus of this
is also that I'm much more able to
notice when students are really
struggling or if they're bored. Second,
this method makes me available when my
students are most likely to need help.
Writing the information down is the easy
part. Where kids tend to get stuck is
often when they have to apply and use
the information, and oftentimes the
teacher is not available to do that. With
this method, they're applying and using
the information in class when I'm right
there to guide them if they need it.
Flipped classroom is also an incredible
resource when it comes to
differentiation because it allows
note-taking to happen at each student's
own pace. When taking notes in a
classroom, the speed that you can get
through the material is often limited by
the one or two slowest writers in the
classroom. If note-taking occurs
independently, slower AND faster writers
can go through the material at a pace
that feels more comfortable. In addition,
it's also great for slower processors, E.L.L.
students, or just anyone who often needs
information to be repeated.
Finally, when it comes time to review,
re-watching the series of screencasts can
be a great resource in terms of studying.
It's also incredibly helpful if a kid is
out sick and they need to get caught up
on what you covered. Our next question is
"how do i use the flipped classroom
method?" So, I'm going to go through the
steps that I normally use. First, I decide
what materials I want to use. Then I
create or select an appropriate
screencast. Third, I find a place to
insert them into the curriculum. After my
students have watched and taken notes
on it,
I check for understanding. Then we engage
in a follow-up activity like a lab, a
project, or a discussion. Now let's get a
little more detailed. When I'm selecting
what material I want to screencast, I
tend to go for things that are normally
really dense, vocab-heavy, or that rely on
a complex diagram that I have to draw on
the board otherwise. I figured out pretty
quickly that the amount of material I
can normally get through in a 45 minute
class period takes me about 12 minutes
to get through when I screencast. A good
example of this in biology might be
something like the Kreb's cycle. It takes a
long time to cover, and the diagrams are
very complicated. However, when i switched
over to presenting this material using a
screencast,
I was able to combine the Kreb's
Cycle and electron transport chain, and
present the two of them in 15 minutes of
screencasting rather than taking two
days of class to do it!
The next step is to create or select an
appropriate screencast for your class.
One of the first things you'll want to
keep in mind is going to be the level
and scope of the content and also the
reliability of the person that made it.
You should always make sure that the
information in the video is accurate before
assigning it to your students. The length
of the screencast is also key. Edutopia
recommends about one minute of video
length per grade in school, so a sixth
grader would be able to handle up to
about a 6 minute screencast. I teach high
school students, and I try to keep most
of my screencasts at about the 10-minute
mark. Also remember that it will take
your students about three times the
length of the video if they're going to
do a good job taking notes. This number
might be even more if you have students
who write slowly, or if the video
includes a lot of complex diagrams.
Finally, if you're going to be showing
multiple screencasts over the course of a
unit, think about the way the videos "flow"
together and things like the consistency
of the vocab. The next step is going to
be to insert the screencast assignment
or assignments into your curriculum. I
always like to introduce the topic or
the unit in person before I assign a
screencast. You're also going to need to
prep your students for exactly how you
want them to effectively watch the
videos. Especially with younger students,
you may need to provide something like a
graphic organizer. The students should
understand that they should be taking
notes just like they would in class, and
that they should bring their notes to
class because they will need to use the
information later on. Then you should
pick which day you want to assign the
screencast for homework. Before the
actual day of the assignment, make sure
that all students will have access to it.
Remembering the details is also
important; I know that I've definitely
assigned a screencast and then forgot
my key step like making the video public
on Youtube... (!) Before you turn your students
loose, make sure that they know that they
should bring any questions to class and
that you'll be checking to make sure
that they understood the video later on.
Our next step is to check for
understanding or "CFU".
Did my students actually watch the
screencast? Which parts of it were they
comfortable with? What should we discuss
before we move ahead? What questions
do they have? One way that I like to do
this is to administer a 2-3 minute open
notes quiz on the absolute basics from
the screencast. I like to use an app
called "Socrative", which the students can
do on their phones, because it gives me a
digital print out of which topics they're
weakest on and also which students are
comfortable with and who is struggling.
This is part of the digital readout from
the "Socrative" app after I administered
a quiz. Just by looking at this printout,
I can tell a lot about the results of my
screencasting. Topics 1, 3 and 5 all
seem to be pretty comfortable for my
students. Most kids got the answers right
and those who didn't tend to answer in
the same way.
Topics two and four seem to be another
matter, though. Notice that these students
tended to get these questions wrong and
they also have a variety of answers when
they answered incorrectly.
This means that these two topics seem to
be the most confusing and we should
probably review them before we do
anything else.
Finally, I can also notice which students
seem to be doing the best and which
students are not feeling very
comfortable at all.
Notice that most kids got eighty percent
or a hundred percent and we have two
outliers right here and right here. So, I
would definitely want to check in with
this kid and with this kid because it
looks like they either didn't do the
homework, and/or they're really struggling.
What's nice about using a digital quiz
app is that I can get an instant read on
which topics are most confusing and also
who is having the most trouble.
It also helps me to avoid the deadly
silence that often occurs when you say
"does anybody have questions?"! After you've
reviewed the topics that needed it, now
you're ready to engage in some kind of
follow-up activity like a lab, a project,
or discussion.
Here's an example of how I might do this.
First I would have my students watch the
appropriate videos. Then i would check
for understanding. My students would then
be ready to move on to some easy
questions such as "how is respiration
disrupted if you do certain things?" (like
put an organism in a sealed bag, or
starve the organism). They're still using
the same content, but now they have to
think about it in a different way and
decide exactly what part of the process
be disrupted under each set of
circumstances. Since a lot of foods are
made using cellular respiration, having
students do a lab or a project that
researches how it works would actually
be a great follow-up activity.
Similarly you can also apply cellular
respiration to the medical field.
Virtually any fatal condition or injury
you can think of involves disrupting
cellular respiration in some way, shape,
or form, and students often find this
process of figuring out how these things
work really interesting.
These are just a couple of things that
I've tried in my own classroom and I'm
sure lots of people will have other
ideas about interesting things to do.
Before we wrap up, it's important to
consider the pros and cons of
introducing this technique into your
teaching. Here are four reasons that I really
like the flipped classroom approach.
First, it frees up class time to do
engaging activities. Second, it also opens
up a lot of possibilities for engaging a
wider variety of learners and it's
really easy to differentiate this stuff.
It also makes it much easier for
students to review when it comes time to
take an assessment, and your videos can
be mixed and matched with different
kinds of activities from year to year or
even between classes. The biggest trouble
spots that I can see in terms of flipped
classroom are that it does tend to take
time. In general, student-centered
learning just always takes longer than
lecturing does, and there's really no way
to get around that.
However, this approach does free up a lot
of class time. Remember that you can get
through a whole class period of stuff
with about 10 to 15 minutes screencast.
You also don't have to take hours to
make your own videos; there's a huge
selection available on the internet and
you should definitely try experimenting
with curating playlists from different
sources. Accessibility can also
definitely present a challenge, but there
are ways to work around the fact that
students may not have internet. For
instance, you can load your videos onto
something like a cheap thumb drive and
then check them out to the students who
need them.
You also kind of have to trust that the
students will actually do the prep work, but
I don't see this as all that different
from a normal class period. When i'm
teaching in class, I'm trusting that my
students are listening to what I'm
saying and that they're taking the notes
that I asked them to take. All right, so
that pretty much wraps it up for today.
Remember to leave your strategies for
using the flipped classroom approach in
the comments section below, and don't
forget to subscribe!