Why Flip?
Reasons to consider implementing the Flipped Classroom Model
By Andy Scheel
Change IS good, change IS necessary and in education, change IS a necessity of the good that we produce as educators. After teaching 11 ½ years ‘the fire and brimstone’ traditional model of producing facts and demonstrating usage of the facts in my Economics and Civics Classes at Clintondale High School, I was at a crossroads that teachers face throughout their careers. It was time for a change! Not where I taught, not what I taught, not why I taught, but how I taught. Our Principal Greg Green proposed to me a way to change that truly sparked my interest. It was this ‘Marzano-esque Method’ (Robert Marzano) that totally turned the traditional instructional model on its head; literally, it was the flipped classroom model.
The flipped classroom model is the polar opposite of traditional teaching of content in class and doing assignments at home. Instead it is typically project based assignments in-class and content watched/read at home. At first, this seemed rather overwhelming. I was to take a class and make it the guinea pig. Teach one Civics course the traditional way of the past 11-½ years and use this flipped thing for the other. Instead of teaching the class using the textbook as the primary reference for the course I was in a computer lab using the Internet,
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PowerPoints and Videos all embedded on a blog I created. This was the ‘flipped textbook’. I also created a collaborative network for student correspondence and feedback on Google Groups. This was the sounding board and communication device for daily classroom work. Of course, there were the tests, major projects and papers that the traditional class did too just not the guided reading assignments and note taking that many students of the information/Internet age had tuned out. The results were going to be the ultimate factor if this was going to work and oh how it did.
FAILURES:
Flipped 18% to 0% yes total reduction of failures. Traditional 13% to 15% par for the coursePARTICIPATION:
Flipped classes were using phone to collaborate on assignments
Traditional classes were using phones to get out of class
PERFORMANCE:
Flipped Class Average was 83% from 76% + 7% improvement
Traditional Class Average was 79% from 84% - 5% decline
RIGOR:
Flipped Class had more daily assignments, more activities than the other class by about 150 points.
It was pretty exciting going into this blind and seeing it pay off the way it did. Today Clintondale High School uses the Flipped Classroom Model school-wide. What made it work for me? Technology, technology and technology! We don’t need books to read books anymore. We don’t even talk on phones anymore. We are constantly writing. Writing texts, updating statuses, and creating information. This makes the flipped model. You do NOT need to have widespread technology to have an effective flipped class, but it sure helps. Students who do not have readily available Internet at home may struggle in keeping up with the content at home. We need to make a greater effort to provide these resources to students and teachers so that they can develop the communication and relationships necessary to facilitate learning in the flipped classroom model.
The aforementioned are just ideas into making the model work from one teacher’s perspective. It is not a “be all/end all” of the entire flipped model; after all, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Whatever it takes will be whatever it makes. But when it comes to effective change of classroom instruction, the flipped method IS a real methodology worth considering.
Andy Scheel teaches economics and civics at Clintondale High School and can be reached at
andyscheel1974@gmail.com.
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