Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/99816
Is FLIPPING for you? Some say No: It takes too much time to videotape lessons. It���s a lazy way of teaching. Some say Yes: Students can collaborate and work as a team, much like the modern workplace. What do you think? See educators��� comments at cta.org/ ���ipping. Tell us what you think: editor@cta.org. a plastic spoon so students can use a parabolic equation to find the vertex; and using algebraic equations to figure out the finances and production levels of imaginary companies. A FLIPPING SUCCESS Gavin Nickel, Jorge Martin and Hyrum Riddle get handson learning in class after listening to Michael Salamanca���s video lecture at home. ultimately it saves time.��� To view a few of his videos, visit sites. google.com/site/salamancamath/MathClasses/algebra/ video-lessons. Not all teachers in flipped classrooms create their own videos. Modeling or presenting information can take a lot of class time because teachers deal with behavior issues and repeat material to students who don���t grasp concepts the first time around, he explains. But in a flipped classroom, they learn at their own pace. ���If I miss something, I stop and rewind it so I can understand,��� says student Sierra Kresge. ���For me, it���s better to watch on video, and if I need help the next day, my teacher will spend time explaining to me what I didn���t understand.��� To assess whether Salamanca���s students have watched his videos and understand the content, they take daily quizzes posted on Edmodo, a social learning network designed for classrooms. Salamanca groups students by ability; groups change daily according to how students perform on quizzes. ���Before a big test I can go back to old video lessons. I look at them as many times as I want. It���s more fun at school because you can do hands-on things and you learn a lot more,��� says student Kristina Hughes. Upcoming student class projects include creating a garden, planning the dimensions and what goes inside certain spaces for volume and surface lessons; catapulting marshmallows with Once they understand the new approach, parents and children frequently watch the videos together. Julie Garcia, a seventhgrade pre-algebra teacher, says one parent told her it was helpful to watch the videos when she decided to go back to school and needed to take an entrance exam for community college. Garcia creates her own videos and says that it���s a process, not a product. ���After making them, I can tell right away whether I need to redo them,��� she says. ���Teachers are always trying to better themselves; I redo a quarter of my videos.��� (For a sample, go to www.imiddlemath.org.) Julie Garcia ���I have never worked so hard at teaching. I���m not standing at the board, I���m constantly circulating among students for one-on-one attention. It takes a lot more out of me as a teacher to have a flipped classroom, but I would never go back to direct instruction.��� Garcia and Salamanca say a flipped classroom works for most students and not just for higher-level students. But there are a few differences. ���With advanced students I���m able to do larger projects and get through the material faster or deeper,��� says Salamanca. ���With other classes you find a few more holes in students��� learning, so there is more need for tutoring or small-group instruction.��� Salamanca and Garcia are the only two teachers at the school site exclusively teaching backward; seven more partially teach in that manner. The duo has given several trainings in their district and presented at Computer Using Educators (CUE) conferences and at universities. Since teachers on campus started ���flipping��� classrooms, the school had a 43 point jump in its API scores. Salamanca says the scores of his own students have gone up 20 percent. ���One of the biggest pluses in my classroom is that I have a better relationship with my students because I can offer them individual help,��� says Garcia. ���Students help other students. They collaborate with each other. I���ve never felt a bigger sense of classroom community in all my years of teaching.��� December 2012 ��� January 2013 www.cta.org 35