The Most Important Thing About Flipping Your Classroom...

The most important thing about flipping your classroom is not technology! It is not the video that you use, it is not how pretty the production is, nor is it whether you use your own videos or someone else's (athough more on that in another post...)

When talking about the importance of flipping, we need to think about why we flip at all?  Is it because we want to have to do less in the classroom as teachers? I hope not...I hope it is because we want the time to do more! And when I say more, I don't mean more examples, more questions, more drills.  I mean more thinking!  More discussing, working with each other. More real world stuff.  More of what we really want to do as teachers, but claim we don't have time for.  If you're wondering what I mean, check out Dan Meyer's TED talk about Math Class needing a Makeover:

So, the most important thing about flipping is what to flip, and more importantly, what NOT to flip. 

 

What to flip:

• Anything that would have you speaking to, or demonstrating to the studends.
• Here are some examples:
• In algebra - How to use algebra tiles
• In science - How to set up for an experiment
• In english - A video which demonstrates the desired way to write a paragraph
• In hisotry - A video which shows masses of people listening to Hitler speak
• In trigonometry - How to use your calculator to calculate the Trigonometric Ratios
• Basically anything which we would consider a one way flow of information



What NOT to flip:

• Anything that students could talk through with their classmates
• Things that they need your scaffolding/differentiation to process
• Some examples that go with the above flipping examples are:
• In algebra - What patterns arise when you use algebra tiles to multiply binomials
• In science - Students actually carrying out an experiment and comparing results with colleagues
• In english - Students grading exemplars of written paragraphs, establishing common criteria for what a good paragraph looks like, and then writing their own
• In history - Discussing why so many people followed Hitler and believed in his rhetoric
• In trigonometry - What the Trigonometric Ratios mean and how they're derived

So your first step when deciding to flip is not HOW to flip, but WHAT to flip. 

Happy Flipping!