A lot of my efforts have a common denominator: moving away from the teacher who tells, to the enabler who’s students are doing. That sounds prosaic I suppose, but generally as I plan lessons one of my guiding questions is: ‘what are the students doing for most of the lesson?’ If the answer involves something passive like ‘listening’, that generally means I am adopting a one-size fits all method of teaching and likely my students are not only not getting the best lesson they can get but may be becoming increasingly demitovated.
So generally if the answer is ‘my students are listening for most of the lesson’ it means I need to rethink that lesson.
In a mixed-ability classroom, and in any classroom where students are seen as individuals rather than a faceless ensemble I suppose, the flipped classroom is arguably the best tool for helping all students reach their best potential…in the ideal situation at least.
To date my only issue with the classical notion of the flipped classroom is that to me it seems to shortchange students who are somehow disadvantaged in their after-school reality…and yet the flipped classroom model is just too good to miss out on. So, even though I rarely implement the “classical” flipped classroom model, elements of it have found their way into my practice…I suppose as they naturally would in any student-centred learning.
To a great extent, a lot of the pedagogic journey described in this blog is in fact the journey of a teacher finding her voice as a guide on the side because she knows the sage on the stage has no place in the 21st century classroom.
I’m not there yet. I have to find more ways of inverting the classroom dyad , or rather I need to make this more of an innate practice rather than the conscious effort it sometimes is.
“Flipping the classroom is more about a mindset: redirecting attention away from the teacher and putting attention on the learner and the learning.”
Aaron Sams, Flip Your Classroom
When a pandemic flipped my class for me
The early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing school lockdown meant we found ourselves in a quite unprecedented situation where the flipped classroom seemed the best solution. Particularly within realities where not all households had one device per child and internet connections were not always reliable, I found myself using live sessions in much the same way that class sessions are used in the flipped classroom.
See my lessons on Teleskola.mt (Computing – Year 9 – Input & Output Devices, Strage Devices) for some material that can be implemented within a flipped classroom reality.
The change of the structure of option subject lessons to 2 in-class and 2 recorded lessons per week was also a situation that in itself lends itself to the flipped mindset.
Blog entries which lend themselves comfortably to the flipped classroom:
Trivial Pursuit
In ‘A New Culture of Learning’ the authors highlight how play is not only key to childhood but can be central to adults thriving in the twenty first century: and this is just one of a myriad arguments for a gamified approach to learning. A sense of continuity and purpose to students’ work is a…
Computer Games
A teaching activity designed to give just-in-time knowledge can keep learning relevant to a problem being tackled and the sandbox in the early stages of learning can give students the confidence to experiment…and that is essentially the type of learning games provide. Hence, I like to introduce students to a topic via a game. Often…
Beyond Copy/Paste
Introduction One of my major concerns is helping my students improve at research: facile as it seems, they need to be able to not only find and copy/paste information: they need to be able to filter and apply information to synthesise their own work. I have tried to engage students with research work in various…
Class Projects
Project-Based Learning allows my students to learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. It provides them with a context in which to grow by creating a product for a real audience. In our project work, I make an effort to introduce elements of the emergent curriculum by ensuring that the project itself…
You made it!
One awesome thing about having internet-enabled devices at hand is that it is so easy (and affordable!) to implement a ‘take your own route to making it’ approach to assessment, allowing students to work their way towards correct answers without being penalised for their mistakes on the way. Of course the element of trial-and-error necessitates…
Blog 4 Coding
Teaching coding to a mixed-ability group can be very challenging. However our blog allowed me increased flexibility as outlined here. Providing resources for self-learning Self-learning is not only a 21st century skill but a particularly key skill for any programming. This lesson structure allowed me to encourage self-learning in my students, started from the very…
Beyond exam marks
This exercise aims to increase the learning value of Half-Yearly Exams/tests etc, and is generally carried out in the first lesson after the exam/test session or as close to it as possible. Part 1: Paper Review Students are given a blog link with the marking scheme for the exam as well as a hardcopy exam-review…
The Code Factor
I don’t do enough peer reviewing and the main reason is that I am apprehensive of the impact it could have in a mixed ability group. I felt more comfortabel using it in a pull-out session for students who opted to participate in a coding competition. These students were ‘academic peers’ and I thought this…
class4d21st.school.blog 