One of my schools is working on flipping the classroom. With that in mind, I was asked to represent the school division at a forum that our local PBS station WHRO. We had started talking about flipping the classroom towards the end of the year. When I went to the ISTE conference in the summer I looked out for everything that I could find on flipping an elementary room. There wasn’t a lot, but one really good session was helpful.
Flipping at an urban elementary school has not been an easy task. We can’t depend on a whole lot of student work outside of the classroom, so we’ve been working on models that flip instruction within the school day. The primary objective being making the teacher available to work with struggling students while giving the other students activities that allow them to delve further into the concept being taught. My teachers have been using activity menus for a while, so it was easy for us to morph their flipped lessons into something more like the model below.
Using Activity Menus in the Elementary Flipped Classroom from Stillwater Flipped Learning on Vimeo.
Many of my teachers are doing some version of a hybrid class as they use Edmodo a lot as well. Just before I had to speak at the forum, I saw a Webinar at edWeb about flipping at the elementary level and I knew that we were really on track. Here is my outline, in case you are interested: Flipped Elementary Considerations
Are your teachers flipping? What methods are they using?
