Flipped Classroom

I first saw the phrase "flipping the classroom" on Twitter a couple of years ago.  In fact, for a while I felt like it was the only topic on which educators in my feed wanted to comment.  The first explanation I read made no sense:  "Learning happens at home, homework happens at school."  While this is a somewhat accurate description, I feel that the words learning and homework were misleading.  When I read that description, I first thought that I'm not sure if my students can handle learning on their own at home.  I was thinking about them reading information, though.  Also, for third grade, I don't really give a ton of homework, it hasn't been a successful method in the past.  If I give any homework at all, it is just practice over something we have already learned.  It is never an assignment for a grade. 

After studying flipping the classroom, I realized that learning doesn't just happen at home.  In fact, it seems to me that most of the learning still happens at school.  Students get the information at home, via videos not reading textbooks, but then they learn by participating in assignments (not necessarily what I consider homework) at school.  While I had researched this quite a bit already, I had not seen the infographic at http://www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/.  The information at the bottom was the most eye-opening.  Not only had the number of students struggling with concepts dropped, but the number of discipline cases dropped by almost 500 cases.  The first theory I have on why those discipline problems dropped so drastically is that the flipped classroom is more engaging for students.  Asking students to be responsible for taking in the instruction outside of class gives them personal responsibility, requiring them to be accountable for their own learning.

In the past two years, I have been on both ends of a flipped classroom at school.  Last year my principal started sending us videos from Teaching Channel as a way of incorporating more PD.  We would watch them on our own time and then either discuss during a future PD session or send her an email containing our thoughts and reflections.  This has allowed me to see into other teachers' classrooms and watch how they teach different subjects.  It has been an excellent tool.  One video that I have viewed more than once is  Reasoning about Multiplication and Division, which is about teaching the thought process behind multiplication and division - something the Common Core stresses in third grade. 

I have also begun to experiment with the flipped classroom approach with my students.  So far, I have used iPad apps such as Educreations (free) and Explain Everything ($2.99) to create videos that my students can watch.  I enjoy making these videos and the kids seem to enjoy watching them.  It should be noted that I don't exactly follow the flipped model in my 3rd grade classroom.  Instead of having students watching the videos at home, I have them watch the videos on our iPads in class.  I do this for two reasons.  First, I have several students who don't have internet access at home.  Secondly, I am not sure how many of my students in third grade are quite ready to go home and watch the videos by themselves.  They still require some motivation and monitoring in class. 

My experiment with flipping the classroom will continue this year..  Now that I know about Screencast-o-Matic I am excited to experiment with it and get even more videos out to my students.  I also want to try to have the students who have internet access watch the videos at home and see how it goes.