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As she listened to her colleague's description of the rich discussion that had taken place in his English classroom, Mrs. Cohen moaned, "I want that!" When she asked him how such deep conversations are possible in a middle grades classroom, he replied that the students read the chapter the night before, marked in the margins of their books things they thought were important or didn't understand, and then came to class prepared for the discussion.
Mrs. Cohen (co-author of this article) decided to give it a try. She assigned her students the next section of their math book for homework and suggested they take margin notes. She hoped the assignment would help drive the discussion about the new topic she was introducing.
However, her experiment was not as successful as she'd hoped. First, the mathematics text does not have the same narrative qualities as a book such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which her colleague's students were reading. Second, the students had difficulty with the technical terms associated with new concepts.
When Mrs. Cohen tried to engage them in a deep conversation, the students had very little to say. She needed a new tactic. She decided to "flip" her classroom and create engaging visuals for her students to review and react to.
Flipping Instruction
A flipped classroom is one in which students view a video that replaces live instruction at home and do "homework" in class. Thus, class time is available for students to work with one another and in small groups or individually with the teacher.
Jon Bergmann and his colleagues in "The Flipped Class: What It Is and What It Is Not" (www.thedailyriff.com/articles/ the-flipped-class-conversation-689.php) identify several advantages to flipped classrooms:
1. Students are responsible for their own learning.
2. Videos are archived so students can revisit and review material as necessary.
3. Students and teachers have increased personal interaction.
4. Teachers provide personalized instruction.
Over a two-month period, Mrs. Cohen created 30 video lectures: 15 for Math 6/Honors and 15 for Pre-Algebra. Each video focused on a single concept and was between 10 and...