Flip teaching a novel way of teaching.
Flipped classrooms or flip teaching refers to students learning through watching videos, usually at home. The classroom studies are focused on doing homework and hands on work related to the topic being learnt. Teachers have to video record the content of the lessons. Usually the children learn through the videos at home and practice in school.
This concept of teaching is not new in colleges especially for foreign language courses, but for elementary through high schools it is a very new methodology. A handful schools in USA have adopted this and are seeing promising results.
Khan Academy has become a household name in education. Flip teaching is similar to the Khan Academy, only difference being the teachers from the child’s schools would make the videos then help the kids practice and learn concepts in classroom.
Many parents are not equipped to teach kids –either because of lack of expertise or lack of time. Flip teaching could be the answer in such cases. In schools where this methodology has been adopted parents have reported to learning with the kids and discovering new subjects together.
Often, we find kids struggling with homework, and with little or no help at hand, they often give up. This kind of becomes a vicious cycle- they have not been able to learn well at school, have not completed the homework –hence the cycle continues and in the end results in low grades.
Clintondale community schools, based out of Michigan have adopted the flip teaching method and their scores in the standardized tests have been improving. Principal Greg Green at Clintondale High took a big risk by flipping his classrooms (as his test scores were dropping and disciplinary rates were on the rise) it paid off. In just one year, the failure rate at their 9th grade center reduced by 33% in English, 31% in Math, 22% in Science, and 19% in Social Studies — plus the discipline rate dropped by 66%!
This concept is sure to catch on –just a matter of time. Schools that catch onto this concept early on will have motivated and better learners.
www.cte.cornell.edu is a good website for the schools and teachers to learn the ways they could adopt flip teaching.