I don't completely agree with the concept of flipping a classroom. If every teacher did it, students would not have enough time at night to watch every video. Plus, most teachers just post a video of themselves lecturing, either in front of a board or on a screencast. All this does is shift the responsibility of teaching onto the students. This can be helpful for some things as a supplement to the lecture, but not every lecture needs to be done this way. Students will lose interest very quickly.
I give my students three objectives each day of things they should learn. At my school, they're referred to as "Learning Targets." These targets start with higher-order thinking terms such as "Analyze", "Evaluate", "Critique", and "Construct". The students take these home and either use their book or resources I provide online (thus, differentiating their instruction as well). When they come back, I lecture on the targets just to make sure they were able to comprehend everything themselves. That way, it frees up a lot of time in class to practice "Historian Skills" like Sourcing, Close Reading, Contextualization, and Corroborating sources to make a story whole and complete. I use the Stanford History Education Group's resources for this. They're excellent and highly recommended! We will also practice map skills with the content (WWII in Europe, Pacific). I am sure I will come up with more variety as the semester moves along.
Possible Pros:
- Frees up class time from lecture for more activity-based learning
- More interesting for students (and the teacher!)
- Plenty of resources to choose from and introduce/experiment with.
Possible Cons:
- Lower-end students will not do targets at home and risk falling further behind
- Some students enjoy structure (i.e. special education and those with cognitive disabilities).
Any thoughts? Please post in the comments below. Thanks!
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