Flipped Classroom-Reflections and Changes for Year 2

I recently finished the second year of a flipped classroom for AP® Environmental Science and my students did very well on the AP® Exam. I have a lot of first-time AP® kids that aren’t the typical honors student. Flipping helps not only these kids, but all students learn content at their own pace.

For year two, I changed a few things.  (You can read about how I flipped the first year here and you can scroll to the bottom for a sample week’s assignments). After the first year, student feedback indicated that an overwhelming number of kids liked and learned well from this method, but 10% hated it. They explained that they thought there was more homework (there wasn’t), learned better from an in-class lecture, were used to copying homework, and/or were too lazy to do notes at home.

My goal this year was help all kids understand and embrace a flipped classroom since it can be very helpful to students and the vast majority of my students love it. And, more importantly, kids learn more and achieve higher scores on exams.

Caveat: A flipped classroom is not for every teacher, class or school. It can only work if students have access to resources at home. I work with the 1-2 students each year without computer or internet access to provide them with an individualized, easy solution (borrowed device, videos on a flash drive, etc). I also don’t think its good for NGSS where most learning is inquiry with labs or via literature, not lecture. 

Changes

• Communication. This year, I constantly referred to Bloom’s taxonomy, Depth of Knowledge and AP® Science practices (which are posted in the front of the room) when explaining an assignment. The AP® Exam is 2/3 higher level thinking and I tell them that. I reiterated periodically to students that they don’t have more homework with a flipped classroom, just different homework. For example, some days, I told kids at the beginning of class that they have today’s class time to do this lab write-up since notes are at home.  Notes are the “easy stuff”, skills and AP® Science Practices are the “hard stuff” and will be done in class. More about communicating to parents and students can be found here. Communicating worked, sort of. I still had 9% of my students who didn’t embrace flipped (shown on the graph below with a 1 or 2 ranking), but they didn’t say that they felt that I gave more homework.The great news is that more kids chose a 5 below which indicated that they understood why this method works for their learning.
  On the graph below:
  1: No I didn’t learn well this way.
  5: Yes, it was great to learn this way.

Here is a sampling of why they chose the number they did.

Overall, I am still very pleased with a flipped classroom. The kids learn well from it and enjoy class time more.

• Lecture/Notes before reading assignments. On the suggestion of my students, I switched the order of homework after the first few months. I used to have students read at home and do in-class reading quizzes for homework and then do lecture notes (I do sticky notes) for homework using Edpuzzle for accountability. Then, I switched to doing lecture note videos first for homework, followed by reading assignments and in-class quizzes.  This was their feedback.

I think that kids understood material in the book better when I went through the chapter via sticky note lecture before they had to read it. I plan to continue with this method in my flipped classroom.

• Gave less reading quizzes by combining sections. My textbook has about 4 sections per chapter. I used to give one section to read and a few little Edpuzzle videos (2-3 minutes) for homework followed by an in-class, open-book, timed, randomized, online reading quiz the next day. I started combining sections for the quizzes. I still gave only one section per night, but a quiz every other day (I am on a traditional schedule where I see the kids for 55 min each day).  This forced kids to read more carefully.
• Check and give credit for notes 2 ways. My sticky note lectures are on Edpuzzle. Students must get most of the questions correct for credit. The questions are embedded from what I say, not what I write. This ensures that they actually LISTEN to my lecture instead of watching it, taking notes and listening to their own music. In addition, I do a note-check the day before the exam (two chapters at a time) to make sure they did the physical notes. These count for more credit.

Sample Week for a Flipped Classroom in APES

• Weekend homework: Chapter 9 Sticky Notes on Edpuzzle
• Monday class: Lab Set up
• Monday homework: Read 9.1 and watch 3 mini Edpuzzles (ones that give visuals for 9.1)
• Tuesday class: Math review and practice
• Tuesday homework: Read 9.2 and watch 2 mini Edpuzzles
• Wednesday class: 9.1/9.2 reading quiz (open-book, 10 questions, 7 minutes, randomized). Discuss results of quiz and misconceptions. Gather lab data.
• Wednesday homework: Read 9.3 and watch 3 mini Edpuzzles
• Thursday class: Finish lab data and questions, plan for group lab report on Flipgrid.
• Thursday homework: Read 9.4 and watch 4 mini Edpuzzles
• Friday class:  9.3/9.4 reading quiz. Film flipgrid with groups
• Weekend homework: Chapter 10 sticky notes on Edpuzzle

Students like the flipped more classroom and more importantly, they learn from it. Here’s some feedback this year from my students:

By the way, I also ask them ways I can improve…but I didn’t post those here. 🙂