Understanding Flipped Classroom as a 21st Century Educator

The Definition Of The Flipped Classroom

As a 21st century teacher,  you’ve undoubtedly heard of the flipped classroom. Flipped classroom remains one of the most popular trends in education in recent memory,

A flipped classroom is one where students are introduced to content at home, and practice working through it at school.

In this blended learning approach, face-to-face interaction is mixed with independent study via technology. Students watch pre-recorded videos or any other relevant files sent digitally, at home, then come to school to do the homework armed with questions and at least some background knowledge.

Benefits of the Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom model drastically changes the way you teach. If you are a teacher that likes to keep up with current advancements in education, and reap their vast rewards, the model is a great thing to try. At the very least your students will have more access to the material. They will also have more access to you, which is the biggest benefit of the Flipped Classroom.

This doubles student access to teachers–once with the videos at home, and again in the classroom, increasing the opportunity for personalization and more precise guiding of learning. In the flipped classroom model, students practice under the guidance of the teacher, while accessing content on their own.

A side benefit is that teachers can record lectures that emphasize critical ideas, power standards, and even the pace of a given curriculum map. It also has the side benefit of allowing students to pause, rewind, rewatch, etc., as well as creating a ready-made library for student review, make-up work, etc.

Key Components of a Result-Oriented Flipped Classroom

1. Consistency: Once you've made it part of your classroom delivery processes, you must not only seek to perfect it, but every effort must be made to continue with it.

Whatever criticism people have of the flipped classroom, does not hold water in real term, as it creates opportunity for your students to initiate learning even before the classroom lesson period.

And since the students are already enjoying it, do not plan to disrupt the flow.

2. Content: Every average teacher understands the need of tailoring every teaching style or initiative to meeting up with the curriculum demand.

You're not sending those videos and web pages to your students for entertainment sake. You must make sure your digital documents sent across to your students are in line with the contents of the scheme of work at the time being. 

When the students know this, it helps see those digital contents as fulfilling educational purposes as against entertainment purposes.

3. Coordination: What do you do to ensure your students are not missing out from the core objective of the flipped classroom model? 

How do you know those who didn't watch the videos or visit those recommended web pages?

The answer to these questions lie in your ability to coordinate what the children do at home with the materials you've sent them.

And you ask how!

Try to integrate smart assessment into the contents you send across, like making some weird statement or hiding some part of the main contents of the material. With this, you are going to check up who discovered the trick and all that. 

When the kids notice that you're always doing this, they'll take those contents serious at home and make sure they grab everything 'grabbable'!

Of course,there are so many ways to profit from flipped classroom, but then, running with these ones is sure to guarantee a thrilling experience for you and your students.

Have more to add, please lend your voice in the comment box.

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