Deja Vu and Flipped Classrooms

Homemade-merry-go-round.jpg ‎(640 × 429 pixels, file size: 69 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)From USDA, http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/01di1370.htm

When I first heard about flipped learning, my thought was, wait, I've done a variation of that before, but I didn't know what it was. So, a story...

About eight years ago,  I lived in Northwest Indiana, I came across a group called HS Life.This group had been started by Karen Sellers, who had moved from the Indianapolis area and wanted to re-create the dynamic opportunities for homeschoolers which she had previously known.The group started with field trips. The main requirement of membership was that each member planned a yearly field trip.One of Karen's many strengths was an insistence that instead of one person doing all of the organizational work, each person should contribute. She was very gentle and flexible in how each person contributed. This was a wonderful model which served the organization well as it expanded.

When I joined, I craved more group time and started the process of convincing parents to start a co-op. First, I started small, with art classes and holiday cerebration on a monthly or bi-weekly basis, my favorite being a Chinese New Year Celebration as a fast food play place. One of the main goals of these get togethers was simply to get used to meeting. Talking with parents, I bounced the idea of a co-op around, and one of the moms mentioned a need for more of a focus on history. We talked about the possibility of using Story of the World (2006) by Susan Bauer, as a basis for a co-op, and we put the plan into place the following year.

Some of the advantages of using Story of the World as a base text, were: the chapters are short and pleasant to read, activity guides have already been made which teachers could use when needed, and it is a four volume set which the group could take on at the rate of one volume a year.

In planning the co-op, I was juggling not just various ages, but variations within each age groups. What I decided to do was have the academic material be covered at home. I made a schedule of what topics were to be covered each week, and explained that it didn't matter how they were covered. They could do the assigned readings or different ones about the same topic. This gave parents the opportunity to differentiate as needed. One family got an audio recording which they could listen to in the car. 

Meanwhile, in the groups, parents took turns presenting hands on activities which related to the time period studied. Mock Archaeology digs, henna painting, lots of cooking, and art projects were included. We also had a guest speaker come and talk about his trip to Egypt and went on a field trip to the Oriental Institute. I had various guides for parents to plan ideas, but also gave them room to come up with their own. This gave a nice balance to hand holding those who needed it and giving freedom for those who didn't. All parents were expected to take turns leading activities.

One of the advantages of doing the hands on activities in class is that those are exactly the types of messy, demanding activities which parents often don't want to deal with at home, but still want their children to do. (Also, if you're going to go through the work of doing such an activity with your own kids, you might as well share it with others!)

Time for lunch was included which gave parents a time to socialize and brain storm. We also set up quarterly academic fairs. It was a wonderful experience, and the group has greatly expanded their offerings since I was there. I am very proud of what they have done.

While I think we had a good design, the only reason the co-op worked was because of people involved. Hollina Lischalk took over HS Life in general, while I was the main organizer for the co-op. Hollina is an engineer and used her way of thinking to re-organize the websites so they more functional. She is also a boundless source of can do attitude and good cheer. Carol Chesak had been a high school physics and math teacher before leaving to meet the needs of her two gifted kiddos. (One of which is going to college next year, sigh...) She is brilliant, sweet, pragmatic, and a little hesitant about getting in over head. In consultation with her, we decided to divide the group into two basic age groups. She was the main teacher/ organizer for the older group and I took on the younger group. She also took over the organization as a whole after Holli and I moved on and has proven an excellent leader. Close at her side was Christine Maloney, who loves creative projects, gardening, and cooking. She also knows how to get kids to clean. By my side was Holli, helping my with the littles. We also had other wonderful parents involved, each with their particular gifts.

Some clear differences exist between what I experienced and what flipped learning is considered now. One difference is that my experience did not necessarily involve technology, although it easily could now as there are so many resources online available. The spirit of flipped learning is the same I think whether the material is covered in a low tech or a high tech way. (There was some tech involved as there was a yahoo group set up specifically for families to work together on the days they were not at the co-op). The other difference is simply the degree of parent involvement outside of the classroom. Because we had this, the material was differentiated for each child and there was an adult keeping the students on task at home. These were both positives, and I think a teacher working with younger children would definitely benefit from getting the parents involved. For older students it would be fairly easy for teachers to set up something similar to what we did, if they created an online list of various resources which students could choose from to study each topic.

One thing we missed is that we were teaching history appreciation more than history thinking. This could be fixed easily though, by integrating appropriate projects into class time which helped develop historical thinking. One of my favorite books right now in developing historical thinking is simply Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction (2008) by Nicki Mandell and Bobbie Malone.

OK, now that I've told my story, I can share what I learned from twitter. This is the first time I have used it, as I use my cell phone as little as possible. It's nice to see that it can be accessed from a computer. I set up an account, made my first tweet to no one. Unfortunately, I missed the live chat due to a dentist appointment (no cavities, yay!) Afterwards, I decided to look at: LTHE Tweetchat ‏@LTHEchat  18h

18 hours ago

Here is this week's storify for #LTHEchat on Flipping the Classroom with the wonderful Dr Dave Smith @dave_thesmith https://storify.com/LTHEchat/lthechat-4-learning-and-teaching-in-higher-ed-cha …

I feel both annoyed by the shortness of the tweets which don't give me a clue about whether they are worth investigating and the length of the storify I just mentioned, which is 587 tweets long.

It does contain interesting leads, such as...

http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2013september/flipped-classroom-inverting-lectures.asp

tweeted from Anna Wood: http://learningfrome-learning.blogspot.com/2014/05/flipping-pedagogy-its-not-just-about-in.html


Once we get to the main part of the discussion, people share that flipping gives them time to do meaningful activities (which involve active rather than passive learning) in the classroom.

Anna Wood mentioned that she used peer instruction. Will Haywood says he uses flipping to make sure than only the students who need it are required to cover particular content.

I like Sam Lancaster's advice later on, "Don't flip because it's trendy. Flip because lecturing doesn't work and you need time for something that might. #LTHEchat"

He also explains that an easy way to flip is to record your lectures one year and use them in a flip the next.

From both my own experiences and those of the chat, I think the biggest challenges to flipping are preparation (which just takes work) and getting everyone on board. Flipping doesn't work if students won't actually do the work before class. However the strength of flipping is that it gives an opportunity for students to own their learning (and ideally differentiate) and have a rich class experience with peers.

References

Bauer, Susan (2006). Story of the World. Charles City, Virginia: Peace Hill Press. 

Flip Class Twitter Page [web page]. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23flipclass&src=typd

HS Life [web page]: http://www.hslife.org/

HS Life Co-op [web page]. Retrieved from: http://www.hslife.org/?page_id=15

Mandell, Nicki & Malone, Bobbie (2008). Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction. WI: Wisconsin Historical Society.

The Oriental Institute [web page]. Retrieved from: https://oi.uchicago.edu/

USADA, Homemade-merry-go-round.jpg ‎[picture], Retrieved from: http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/01di1370.htm