Reflecting on Professional Educator

The fourth and final pillar of a Flipped Learning Environment is Professional Educator. Reading through the statements, I feel that any good teacher should be doing this whether you have a traditional setup of your class or are doing a flipped model. It is just good teaching.

I make myself available to all students for individual, small group and class feedback in real time as needed.

 

When I was teaching math, I often had at least one other teacher in the class with me. This was invaluable to being able to reach all the students. On great days, I also had the ESL assistant in my class, who was a wiz at math and able to explain the math to our ESL students in both their native tongue as well as in English.

Moving to a flipped model, just makes doing this easier because you have more time for those interactions with students during the school day.

 

I conduct ongoing formative assessments during class time through observation and by recording data to inform future instruction.

 

 I was constantly assessing the students. I was constantly looking at what they were producing to see their level of achievement. I would give mini quizzes that were only worth a couple of points (too many would rush if it wasn't worth something) that told me whether I could move on to another topic or if I needed to spend more time on the topic.

I could definitely see myself making units and putting them up on an LMS and attempt to do a mastery flipped class. I do think that I would have to have some deadlines in place so that students could keep a certain pace or some of them would never get a unit done. I don't remember if I read this or if it was said in one of the webinars but I liked that this person had short deadlines (end of week), medium deadlines (in a couple of weeks) and then end of the 9 weeks deadlines (it might have been Troy Cockrum). That really stuck with me. 

 

I collaborate and reflect with other educators and take responsibility for transforming my practice.

This is huge!! I was the only teacher at my school that taught what I did. Luckily, I was the district trainer for the math and science departments and was able to talk with others across the district when I did training.  I have also found groups of teachers online, particularly on Facebook, to collaborate with. This allows me to interact with teachers not only in my city, but across the world! I looked for a flipped classroom group and couldn't find one, so I just created one of my own. If you would like to join, you can find us HERE.

 

Reflecting on Intentional Content

The basis of Intentional Content is what any good teacher would do. They determine what they need to teach and what materials are needed for students to learn. The difference with a flipped class is that the teacher needs to determine what materials are needed for the students to explore on their own. The idea is to maximize the classroom time in order to have student centered activities in which they participate in active learning.

I prioritize concepts used in direct instruction for learners to access on their own.

When I begin thinking about how I would flip a math class, I think that I could spend less than 5 minutes on direct instruction. In a typical classroom it would take longer than that because I would have fielded questions and done more examples as the students needed them. With the flipped class, you just need to get the facts out there. The next day is when you would field questions and do more sample problems in small groups as needed. I honestly think that math would be the easiest class to flip just because of the nature of it.

Since I also taught science and social studies, I've thought about what I would do for those classes as well. In Social Studies, I thought that I might have students take their notes on a foldable for their INBs. Then class time could be used for discussions and projects. I would love to have them create presentations using one the of green screen apps. Science class might be similar except on days before labs. I think it was in Jonathan and Aaron's book where I read that the night before they recommend having students do pre-lab activities in preparation of the next day. This sounded like a very good idea to me. 

I create and/or curate relevant content (typically videos) for my students.

This is pretty straight forward. I've already started making some of my own videos for math and have created a resources page of YouTube channels that teachers can use in a flipped class.

I differentiate to make content accessible and relevant to my students.

This should be going on in every classroom, but unfortunately it's not. We are adopting a new LMS and I believe that it will make this process easier on teachers in my district. The LMS will allow teachers to assign assignments to an individual student or groups of students.

Reflecting on Learning Culture

The second pillar of Flipped Learning is the Learning Culture. In a flipped class the "teaching" switches from the teacher to the student. The class now has a learner-centered approach where the student uses class time to explore topics in greater depth that creates richer learning opportunities. This results in students being involved in their knowledge construction in which they participate in and evaluate their learning making it mean more to them.

I give students opportunities to engage in meaningful activities without the teacher being central.

When I was in the classroom, I would often give the students projects in which they had a set of guidelines. This is probably the most freedom I would allow them in the classroom other than teaching them multiple ways to solve something and giving them the option of choosing the method that worked best for them. But even then, sometimes that was too much for some students and they floundered without the structure they were use to in school.

Looking at this from my new position (training the teachers), the first thing that comes to mind is that I need to tell them to start out slowly. Don't try to do it all at once or even in one school year. As I've heard others say who have implemented a flipped class, this is something entirely new to most students. The students have been so used to being told exactly what to learn and how to do it, that I think a lot of them are going to struggle with having the freedom to make some choices of their own. There is be some that will thrive with this new way of learning right from the beginning, but I honestly believe that they will be in the minority.

To get this to work, we have to start at the bottom and work our way up each year. If we can start with students in kindergarten, then that will be the only way they have learned, this idea won't be foreign to them when they reach the intermediate grades or middle school. But from what I have seen, there are very few primary grades using this method to teach. I've been trying to find some primary teachers to go observe and see how they implement a flipped or even a blended class. I can't find anyone.

I've thought of choosing an elementary school and helping them implement a flipped learning environment. Then when others ask for help in implementation, I can refer them to this school as an example of it working in the elementary school. I have the ok from my boss, but we still need to get the approval from the higher ups...

I scaffold these activities and make them accessible to all students through differentiation and feedback.

This is huge in the education world today, not just in a flipped class, although I do think that with the use of an LMS and a flipped classroom, it would make it a lot easier to implement. This is definitely an area that I would like to learn more about as we implement the LMS across the district. How does this look in an LMS? I would love to sit down with a teacher that uses a flipped model as well as an LMS at each of the following grade levels:  k-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. Most of the people I have come across are all high school teachers...

Reflecting on a Flexible Environment

Reading the assigned articles really made me think about how I ran my classroom when I was teaching. So many new ideas about how I could have done things differently are still running through my head.

 

I establish spaces and time frames that permit students to interact and reflect on their learning as needed.

I had students reflect on their learning, but I know that the reflection didn't go very deep. All I had them do at the end of the lesson was to give me a thumbs up, sideways or thumbs down to show me how they felt about their learning. I would always take note of the students that gave a sideways or down thumb and make sure that they got additional help the next day. If I was still teaching today, I think that I would do something similar but take it a step further.

On a 1/4 sheet of paper, I would still have them give me the "thumb" that fits how they feeling their learning went, but I would then have them write why they chose that specific one. Maybe they chose the thumbs up because they were able to get all of the sample math problems correct. If they give me a thumbs down, they might tell me where in the lesson they were lost.  Now my hope is that I would catch something like this during class, but unfortunately that doesn't always happen.

We are soon going to implement a new LMS. I think that I would give students the option to submit a recording as their reflection or even submit their "paper" in digital form.

As for establishing spaces, last summer I was thinking of getting rid of most of my desks for the upcoming school year. I had seen several bloggers that had done this with primary grades and I thought it would work with my 5th and 6th graders. Every time we would get into groups, the majority of the groups would go somewhere and sit on the floor together. While there were some groups that did move the desks together to form a large workspace, they were in the minority. I think with a flipped class, this concept would have worked even better. I wouldn't have needed everyone to sit in their seats so that they could see what I needed to teach them. They would have already gotten the lesson and would be either working in groups or individually on an assignment.

As I told one of my colleagues...with everything I'm learning in my new position, I wish I was still in the classroom to implement all of it. But this new position does allow me to share these new practices with the district and not just keep it to myself in my own classroom.

I continually observe and monitor students to make adjustments as appropriate.

This was something that I was pretty good at. Whenever students were working, I was walking around the room and observing what they were doing. If I saw someone struggling, I would either get them a peer buddy (if I was the only adult in the room) or work with them one on one.  If there was a small group of students that needed help, I would give a small tutoring session for those students.

We also had what se called Success Time. I often gave mini quizzes to the students that would have 8 math problems on it, covering a couple of days' topics. Based on the outcomes of those quizzes, I would do re-teaching during Success Time. I usually had at least 2 other adults in the room with me and we could break off into smaller groups with the students. This worked really well. When state testing time came, my students' score would be some of the highest in the district and for most years, were higher than the state average.

I provide students with different ways to learn content and demonstrate mastery.

While teaching, I would always provide multiple ways for students to learn the material and I think with the implementation of the LMS, I think that I could go even further with that. I look forward to learning more about this through this class and my own research.

Now when it comes to demonstrating mastery on a standard, it usually came in the form of a test that the whole class took (ESL and Sped students had modifications per their ILP/IEP). I'm looking forward to learning other ways to test for mastery through this class and my own research.

These questions have really made me think about how I ran my classroom and how, if I was still teaching, I would do things differently. But I can still effect change for my district with my new position. During my training sessions, I can being up these points and have other teachers reflect on their own classroom environments and what they can do to make their students' learning more meaningful.

If you've made it this far, thanks for letting me ramble....

 

Initial Thoughts on Flipped Learning

I just recently left the classroom after 18 yrs of teaching. I am now the District IT Training Developer. We recently picked a new LMS after having Angel for many years. We will begin implementation this spring.

 

With the new LMS, I think a flipped classroom is a natural fit for our district. I've done some reading on it and talked to a few friends that use this format in their own classrooms, but I really wanted to learn more about a flipped classroom so that I can help my former colleagues start to implement it in their classrooms. It makes sense to me to use this type of learning environment in our district because of the need for more small group interaction with the students. When I was teaching, not a day went by that I didn't wish I had more time to work in small groups with certain students. Had I flipped my classroom, I could have used that extra time to work with the struggling students and gotten them to grade level faster than I had.

 

During this class, I want to learn more about the different types of flipped learning that I have read about: flipped classroom, mastery flipped classroom, and an in-class flip. I want to be able to train the teachers on all three types so that they can find the one that fits their needs.