2014-01 Toh Wee Kwang

Instructions

Your personal page serves at least three purposes. It is a place for you to:

1. take notes

2. enable your flipped presentation

3. submit your individual assignment

Use the rough scaffold below as a guide. You may add headers and content, but not remove any.

Part A: Imagine that you are submitting a Wikipedia article on the flipped classroom. Draft your article here. Bear in mind that your writing will be public and subject to scrutiny and critique. What would you write to educate others like your school principal and colleagues about the flipped classroom.

Part B and C: You are a manager of other teachers, Suggest a plan for a group of teachers to flip their classrooms. Prepare a flipped presentation in Part C to get formative feedback on your plans.

Refrain from uploading presentation or other files to this space. Instead, host your files in the cloud and embed them in your page. For help on how to do this, refer to the iTunes U courses provided by CeL in the Resources section or search Google or YouTube.

Name: Toh Wee Kwang

School: Temasek Secondary School

Role: SH, Lower Secondary Mathematics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq-WR5DZmPo

Part A: Article on Flipped Classrooms

1. Definition and origins of the "flipped classroom"

The history of the flipped classroom concept can be traced back to 2000, when Maureen J. Lage, Glenn J. Platt, and Michael Treglia published an article in Economic Instruction,"Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment.".

2. What the flipped classroom is/is not

What is flipping a classroom?

The classical model of flipped classroom is a reversed teaching model that seeks to deliver the teaching of content at home through videos that are created by teachers. In place of the time where students are in the classroom to learn what is being taught by the teacher, they complete tasks or homework in class under the supervision of the teacher. Students takes ownership of their own learning.

Benefits of flipped classrooms are many and I will list down a few here:

Benefit #1: Students can learn at their own pace (Every child learns differently and at different rate).

Benefit #2: Teacher can also embed certain additional materials within the video (through ICT) to support students' learning.

Benefit #3: Teacher can spend more time in the classroom to a) support the weaker students, b) facilitate and extend learning for the better students.

What is NOT flipping a classroom

a) It is not just creating video lessons for the sake of creating (deep thought must be given to each video's creation to ensure that the content created are meaningful and useful for the students)

b) It is also not just about increasing curriculum time (1 + 1 not equals to 2). As teachers, it is up to each of us to decide how to best optimize learning for the students.

c) It is also not about 1 size fits all but to cater to different students' needs. Some students learns best watching videos while some learns best doing hands-on practice. it's all about finding the right balance.

d) It is also not about all technologies work. By this, we mean that not all technologies are suited for flip. There are some technologies that is more suitable for flipping and there are some that are not. As educators, we must sieve out those that most fit our purpose.

3. Designing, developing, evaluating, and managing flipped classrooms

Central to learning is a Thinking Skills Taxonomy created by Benjamin Bloom. Termed Bloom’s Taxonomy, it is used by educators and instructional designers at conceptualizing curriculum and instruction for students to ensure that they have access from lower to higher order thinking skills. Each level in Bloom’s Taxonomy becomes progressively more complex and in theory builds upon the previous level. In other words, not only is “creating” a more complex operation than “knowing”, but the ability to “create” also depends on the foundation of knowledge possessed by the learner.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

In developing an Flipped Classroom approach that is based on effective instruction and engaged learning, the Bloom’s Taxonomy would thus be used as a good reference point to ensure that there are well-placed and appropriate junctures either at the Home or Class segments for students to develop these different cognitive skill, thereby also increasing students’ thinking skills and deepening their understanding of the taught content.

4. Flipped classroom issues and solutions

Besides putting in place a rigorous programme to instill in students the requisite knowledge and skills in the learning of Mathematics, the current approach in most schools also sees teachers depending on remediation for weaker students to reinforce learning. With the introduction of FT, it was inevitable that buy-in would be limited as some teachers were adopting a “if it ain’t broken why fix it” mental model.

Teachers’ concerns on Flipped Classroom also rested with the fact that they were not physically “with” their students when their students are learning a new concept at home. They would not be able to monitor their students’ progress, particularly at assessing if their students were cognitively engaged with the material being shared on video, or were just glossing over the video to complete it for completion’s sake.

Another concern on Flipped Classroom also stemmed from how teachers would engage their students in class after the home segment. Some teachers could assume that their students have already grasped the content at home after watching the video, and thus would do less “teaching” and subscribe literally to the classical model of Flipped Classroom by merely ‘completing homework’ with their students when they meet in class. The classroom time could then lapse into a “practice questions” mode where little would be done to check for students’ understanding, or to even stretch what they already know. Students who have not done a thorough study of the content at home would likely benefit least from the class segment of Flipped Classroom, and the problem of failing to completely understand what was taught will snowball when more content and skills would be expected of them subsequently.

4.1 Further thought: Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivational factors

Some intrinsic factors:

- Self-motivation, ignites the love for learning to both students and parents, gives back ownership to students

Some extrinsic factors: TBC

5. References

Part B: Flipped Classrooms in My Context

Outline a plan for mobilizing a group teachers who will flip their classrooms. You might:

• • Describe your context (what levels, what content areas, how many teachers, etc.)

  • Devise plans for communication, buy-in, professional development, evaluation, etc.

  • Provide a timeline

Part 1: Context

Level / Subject: Sec 2 Mathematics

Topic: Pythagoras Theorem

Number of teachers: All Math teachers teaching Sec 2 Mathematics in 2014

Part 2: Communication

My 2014 "Temasek FC Master Plan"

1) Top-down support, bottom-up approach

2) Form core team of flippers (guided by flip mentors)

3) Provide buy-in (show youtube video, FGD, sharing of success stories) for those new in the dept

4) Do target setting as a team (what we want to achieve for FC in 2014)

5) Devise a working FC plan (how to achieve success for FC in 2014)

6) Based on the plan, work with the school management to ensure that support is available

7) Meet up often (during PD time) so that issues can be surfaced early.

Part 3: Timeline

Forming of core team of flippers: Sem 1, 2014

Target setting and FC plan: June Holidays, 2014

Pre-assessment: Term 3, Week 1

Actual Roll out: Term 3, Week 2 to 3

Feedback / Post-assessment: Term 3, Week 4

Part C: Flipped Presentation

If you have difficulty in viewing the above video, you may also view it here (in Youtube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Idt9xyKr0w