Flipped Learning

After two years of teaching traditionally, I was not happy with the way I was teaching.  We would spend the first 30 to 45 minutes going over homework from the previous day.  Most of the students were bored during this time because either they understood it and were ready to move on or they copied their homework off their friend and therefore didn't want to ask a question in the fear that I might find out that they copied.  I would then lecture for 45 to 60 minutes with breaks of practice.  I lectured this long because I wanted to go slowly through the material.  Many students have complained that other teachers went too fast, so I go slow.  Again about half of my students were bored.  The top quarter were bored because I was going too slow and the bottom quarter was lost.  I couldn't meet their needs because I was stuck in the front of the classroom.  I would then send them home to apply these ideas and know that many of them wouldn't get it, so they would copy off a friend.

Flipped Geometry
This year I have "flipped" my Geometry class.  I recorded 15 minute videos for each lesson and posted them on a youtube channel, a class website, and our school's intranet site.  I was surprised that the lessons only took about 15 minutes, which means that around 30 minutes of my class was spent in silence waiting for students to write down what is on the board.  The students were asked to watch the video, take notes, and then try some problems from the textbook.  Then watch the next video, take notes and so forth.  They could do this at home or in class, but they need to keep up with the pace of the class.

I am not using mastery, which is something that many teachers who flip do.  I saw my students procrastinating their math too much to go to mastery.  I decided to have all of my students test on the same day, and eventually even quiz on the same day.  Therefore there were deadlines every few days that they needed to keep up with their math.

The Results
There have been pros and cons with flipping my class.  I love that almost all of my students are engaged and active during class.  They are either working on practice problems with a friend or watching a video and taking notes.  I have to keep them on task, but they are all engaged, which I love!

It has been much easier to differentiate my teaching.  I can have my lower students simply skip some sections so they can focus on the more important concepts.  The more advanced students don't do any math at home, they breeze through the work and ask for more.  And I have more time to sit one-on-one with my struggling students and help them.

One of the changes that I am not proud of is how many students don't pass my tests.  I decided to let my students retake tests and quizzes if they aren't happy with their grade.  So I didn't curve my tests like I did the previous year.  The average grade tends to be around 68 or 70 percent, which is lower than it should be.  In the future I will be making my tests easier or curving them a little bit so I can raise this percentage.

There are also a vocal minority of students who hate the flipped learning style.  I would ask them to articulate what they don't like about it or how we can adapt it to meet their needs.  And they wouldn't have an answer to either question.  I'll address this more in my next post.