Flipping

by M. Steele,
Teacher of Maths

Flipping. Not water bottles or glue sticks but all of Maths class 9u4. What could possibly go wrong?

“The time when students really need me physically present is when they get stuck and need my individual attention. They don’t need me there in the room with them to yak at them and give them content; they can receive content on their own.” (Aaron Sams, “Flip your classroom”)

Much has been written about flipped learning and I was keen to give it a go; whatever the students were going to learn in class is done at home leaving ‘homework’ to be completed in class. The idea is that students consume lesson materials at their own pace rather than being bound to a pace set by the teacher, bringing back to the classroom specific questions about anything they may have struggled with. Back in the classroom the teacher is present while students apply new knowledge, meaning there is no need to turn in an incorrect homework or having to wait for help to complete it.

Here’s how it went…

I found a nice online video that explained to students how to factorise a quadratic expression and put this together for them to take home:

The start of the next lesson had a bit of an unusual buzz about it, most students waving their hands in the air to answer the first few (easy/non-mathematical) questions from the sheet. One student then volunteered (without her notes) to teach the class how to factorise the expression that was given in the video. I took a back seat, everyone was listening and I was impressed by what I saw. A nice start.

We quickly worked through the remainder of the questions from the sheet and then I gave the students a choice of task based on how easy or difficult they had found the examples so far:

Some students went straight for the ‘Hard’ questions but many went for ‘Easy’. Walking around the room the questions from students did seem very specific, proof that they really had tried to get their heads around the topic for themselves. I could also see this in the notes that they made at home.

This was a short exercise (less than half a lesson) and a first attempt at flipped learning. Here’s a selection of student feedback. I’m not hiding anything; the negative comment came from a student who had done nothing at home. I take on board that having only one night to look at this was a little harsh!

I have many thoughts and questions, especially around how to manage ‘flipped’ classroom sessions effectively. Am I brave enough to try again and scale things up a bit? Absolutely!