Hello, dedicated educators and champions of knowledge! As we gear up for another exciting academic year, it’s time to reflect on the lessons learned, the challenges overcome, and the fresh opportunities that lie ahead. The landscape of education is ever-evolving, and in 2023, teachers find themselves at the forefront of this transformation. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newbie, here are some key considerations to ponder as you embark on this new journey.
#1: Fostering Inclusivity and Diversity
The world is a vibrant tapestry of cultures, perspectives, and backgrounds, and your classroom is a microcosm of this beautiful diversity. As we step into the new academic year, make it a priority to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for all your students. Embrace multiculturalism through diverse teaching materials, celebrate different holidays and traditions, and encourage open discussions that allow everyone’s voice to be heard. By doing so, you’ll be shaping not only informed minds but also compassionate and empathetic individuals.
#2:Blending Technology and Tradition
The fusion of technology and traditional teaching methods is no longer a distant concept—it’s now a necessity. Embrace edtech tools that enhance learning experiences, from interactive apps to virtual field trips. However, remember that while technology can enrich education, the personal touch of face-to-face interactions and handwritten notes is equally valuable. Striking the right balance between digital innovation and human connection will be a hallmark of successful classrooms in the years to come.As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog post, post-pandemic teaching is very different to what we did before COVID, mainly due to students becoming disenfranchised and disinterested with independent learning tasks that are heavily tech-dependent.
#3: Nurturing Critical Thinking and Adaptability
In an era marked by rapid change, the ability to think critically and adapt is a superpower. Encourage your students to question, analyze, and approach problems from multiple angles. Assign projects that require creative problem-solving and collaboration. By cultivating these skills, you’ll be equipping your students with tools that will serve them well in an ever-shifting world. Check out this blog post of mine about deep learning strategies for ideas to include more critical thinking in your lessons.
#4: Promoting Mental Health and Well-being
The past couple of years have underscored the importance of mental health and well-being. As a teacher, you’re not just an educator but also a source of support for your students. Keep an eye out for signs of stress or anxiety and create a safe space where students feel comfortable discussing their feelings. Incorporate mindfulness exercises or short breaks to help students recharge. Remember, nurturing their emotional well-being is just as crucial as nurturing their intellect.
5. Flexibility in Assessment and Evaluation
Gone are the days when rigid exams were the sole measure of a student’s progress. Embrace a more flexible approach to assessment, including project-based evaluations, portfolios, and real-world application of knowledge. This allows students to showcase their skills in ways that align with their strengths and interests, fostering a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
Conclusion
As you step into the new academic year and beyond, keep in mind that you are not just imparting knowledge but shaping the future. By fostering inclusivity, embracing technology, nurturing critical thinking, promoting well-being, and adapting your assessment methods, you’re not only equipping your students with tools for success but also inspiring them to become lifelong learners and responsible global citizens. Here’s to a year filled with growth, discovery, and countless “a-ha” moments! Happy teaching! 🌟
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Flipped learning is gaining a well-earned reputation as being an effective method for intense, yet engaging, method of knowledge acquisition. The Brookings Institution, for example, describes students in the flipped classroom as viewing digitized or online material as “pre-class homework”, which they complete before they spend in-class time “engaged in active learning experiences such as discussions, peer teaching, presentations, projects, problem solving, computations, and group activities.”
Today, I’ve invited Kiara Miller from The Speakingnerd to share her ideas on why teachers should try out flipped learning for themselves.
With the goal of improving the quality of education and students’ academic performance, many instructional methodologies have popped up. The modern world currently presents a range of innovative teaching methods that can make a difference in any classroom. Besides active learning strategies, flexible learning environments, and personalized learning, flipped classrooms are now a common instructional method worldwide.
Flipped classrooms were introduced by Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams in 2007, who were high school chemistry teachers by then. They elaborately discussed what flipped classroom is and its importance in their book: “Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day (2012)”. At this juncture, we would like to explore what flipped classrooms are and some of the major reasons for teachers to try them out.
What Flipped Classrooms Are!
A flipped classroom is a form of blended learning model where students learn about new concepts at home. They then discuss their findings with their teachers and the rest of the students in a classroom. With this teaching approach, students interact with the course material beforehand and while inside the classroom, they engage in interactive group learning activities.
Students aren’t bombarded with new material, but rather, they come with their own understanding of the concepts. That is through online videos and any other supporting content that can be text-based. It can also be provided by a teacher or students can do their own research.
With flipped classrooms, students get the chance to research topics, develop their own pace while learning at home, assess findings, and compare insights. Within a classroom, students make presentations, perform experiments, and engage in face-to-face discussions.
This helps them share their insights and attain an in-depth understanding of the material. Due to the benefits associated with them, flipped classrooms are now a popular pedagogical approach in many educational institutions worldwide.
They cater to some degree of personalization in learning which improves learning results. But how and why should teachers try out flipped classrooms?
Reasons for Teachers to Try Out Flipped Classrooms
Flipped classrooms can be advantageous to both learners and teachers in many ways. Besides improving learning spaces, flipped classrooms are associated with the following benefits:
#1: Reduce the Pressure of Teaching
Introducing learners to new concepts right in the classroom may not be impactful as letting students research the topics before discussing them in class. Flipped classrooms help students to attain a good level of background knowledge on a topic. They are able to leverage reflection models to assess their learning capabilities in conjunction with the learning mediums that can help them understand the material better.
On the other hand, teachers face a range of challenges that most times impact their mental health, productivity, and lesson delivery efficacy. Introducing intricate topics to students will require a lot of time to make learners comprehend the topics effectively.
Teachers have to explain a lot to ensure that every student grasps the content. A teacher is also tasked to try out different teaching methods to help a class understand better. This reduces the amount of free class time.
However, with flipped classrooms, teachers can optimize classroom time and focus on making topics more comprehensible. For example, depending on the students’ doubts, a teacher can opt for a teaching method that solves problems effectively. For example, leverage a presentation, video, or whole class discussion. This lessens the pressure on teachers and allows them to enjoy their profession more.
#2: Cultivates Independent Learning Skills
The traditional teaching methods heavily depend on teachers’ input. Students largely have to sit in a classroom and listen to what teachers say or observe what they are doing. However, flipped teaching mediums are the opposite. They are a reversed medium of learning and require a student to research topics, assess material and develop a personal understanding of it.
Flipped classrooms encourage independent learning. Learners take ownership of the learning process and are able to track their progress. Commonly, this instructional approach eliminates spoon-feeding which is highly noticed with the traditional learning medium.
Rather, students are able to attain prior knowledge about a topic. Through this, they develop problem-solving skills, critical thinking capabilities, and independent learning skills. With that, they are able to become active learners who know how to apply concepts in real life.
On the other hand, this optimizes student-teacher interactions in a classroom. Teachers are able to deliver more within a single session rather than wasting a lot of time explaining a concept.
#3: Can Improve Lesson Engagement
One of the major challenges that modern teachers face is the increasing rate of student disengagement. It is quite difficult to keep students focused and interested in learning in the modern days. Yet, engagement is key to material comprehension and memorization.
Engagement is important for academic success and over 70% of educators agree with this. Without engagement, students become passive learners. They are hindered from grasping the material to the core or even being creative with it.
However, introducing flipped classrooms to students can boost their morale in learning. It also instills a sense of accountability as they must produce their research in front of the class. Also, as they listen to others’ findings, they are able to competitively make suggestions.
In the long run, this improves classroom engagement and learning experiences. On the other hand, flipped classrooms can pave the way to better classroom management. This happens with the fact that teachers are able to alter learning environments which eliminates monotony.
#4: Teachers Can Reuse Learning Material
The good thing about flipped classrooms is that teachers don’t need to keep on creating study material for the same concepts. Also, students can leverage the material they create afterward. Both teachers and students only need to make improvements in the content as per the latest findings.
Teachers can also tailor the content to learning gaps. Also, the material can be shared online and reviewed at any time. Students can also revisit the material to clarify areas they never understood properly. This can add to third-party sources such as educational apps that support personalized learning.
These possibilities optimize learning experiences and allow teachers to attain good leeway when it comes to planning and delivering lessons.
#5: Improves Academic Outcomes
When students are tasked to study on their own, it imposes a certain level of responsibility. Flipped classrooms are a good way to help students optimize their learning period and make classroom interactions more productive.
It should be noted that personalized learning cultivates a deeper understanding of the course material. It also improves cognitive skills, for example, analytical and critical thinking. Students are able to dimensionally analyze concepts and learn how to apply them. This helps them perform academically better.
Conclusion
It is a teacher’s responsibility to help students learn and excel academically. With this, the traditional teaching mediums are no longer effective in meeting the ever-changing learning needs. Modern students must possess innovative skills to solve problems and remain relevant in this technologically driven world.
If you’re a teacher looking for some of the best ways to alter your classroom environment, and improve student engagement or online learning experiences, then try out flipped classrooms. They are reliable in helping students get the best out of their study time. On the other hand, they can reduce heavy workloads and optimize the limited personal time on the teachers’ side.
More so, they can help teachers manage learners’ behaviors and student excuses. Therefore, every teacher can try out flipped classrooms to modify learning environments.
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The best definition I have found for what ‘Classroom Management’ actuallymeans comes from Carol Weinstein and Nancy Schafer at Oxford Bibliographies:
Classroom management can be defined as the actions teachers take to establish and sustain an environment that fosters students’ academic achievement as well as their social, emotional, and moral growth. In other words, the goal of classroom management is not order for order’s sake, but order for the sake of learning.
When order breaks down in the classroom, student learning is affected and teachers’ stress levels, burnout and anxiety rise – which sometimes leads to teachers making the decision to leave the profession (McCarthy et. al., 2022). It is therefore in every teacher’s best interest to master the fundamental techniques of effective classroom management.
Today, I have invited Tina Hennessy, Head Trainer at Destination TEFL‘s Siem Reap centre in Cambodia, to share her top tips for teachers who want to improve their classroom managementskills.
I’m not sure if what they say about classroom presence is true or not – either you’ve got it or you don’t! If you do, it’s likely that you won’t have too many problems with classroom management, because more than half the battle is won just by your presence in the classroom. Students look up to you, and you have complete control over the class because you demand high standards from them.
If you need help, here are five tips that may assist with classroom management. As with most ailments: prevention is better than cure. Once you’ve lost their attention, it’s harder to rein them back in.
Here’s how you could prevent problems from cropping up:
Be prepared: Being prepared for your lesson shows in your body language and this reflects in your delivery of lessons, conversely being under-prepared shows too! A good plan, a complete set of resources (from working whiteboard markers and flashcards, to crib notes) – anything you need should be organised and ready for use, without you having to worry about them. As you segue from one stage to the next, your students shouldn’t have time for distractions. If, however, your transitions lead to dead time (time with your back to the class), you’re likely to have bored students who will find something else to do.
Use students’ names: calling out their names ensures they’ll do what they need to do, to not be “called out” for negative reasons. Rather than pointing and saying, “You at the back, please be seated”. (‘YOU’ will probably turn his/her head and pretend to look at another student and pretend they’re not at fault.) Using their names will leave no room for doubt. Learning their names also shows that you care, and knowing that their teacher cares, will give them more reason to stay engaged.
Limit distractions: This could mean anything from distractions on a student’s desk, to visuals in a classroom, to views outside the classroom, to sounds. Try to limit whatever is within your control. Establish classroom routines where students start the class with cleared desks – or have only what is required on their desks – no extra books, stationary, or even water bottles. If your students have phones, request them to turn OFF vibrate mode, or put their phones inside their bags, rather than in their pockets.
Use non-verbal hand signals: Avoid students calling out aloud to request permission to use the toilet, for example, by having a hand signal for the same. Design similar signals for other circumstances too. When the student gets your attention by doing the signal, a simple nod of your head will grant permission. Rather than him asking you a question and having you answer it – thereby distracting the entire class and possibly diverting your train of thought.
Call and response: We know all too well that even at the best of times, you’re going to have situations when you’ve lost their attention, the class is loud and they’re bouncing off the walls and you do actually need to try and rein them in! Here are my favourites:
T (teacher): “Yo! Yo! Yo!” Ss (students): “Yo! What’s up!” (Great for middle-schoolers.)
T: “1-2-3” Ss: “Eyes on me” T: “1,2” Ss: “Eyes on you“
Start the chant and continue till the whole class is responding. The first few times you do this, maybe some students won’t join in. Carry on – even if it means you’ve said it 8-10 times, and the rest of the students will egg on the “stragglers”.
And, finally, when all else fails, and your voice won’t work – stand still and silent with your right hand raised over your head. As you make eye contact with the students they must raise their right hand, stop doing whatever they’re doing and stop speaking. They make eye contact with the others who must in turn do the same. Think of this as the opposite of a flash mob. Once the entire gathering is quiet, you have their undivided attention.
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The phrase ‘Flipped Learning’ means exactly what it implies: things are flipped.
For instance:
Homework is done prior to a topic introduction, rather than after it. Children are assigned some reading or research to do prior to a lesson and they then bring questions to class which can be used in follow-up activities.
Pace of learning is more student-controlled, rather than teacher-controlled
Flipped Learning was first conceived as a pedagogical technique in 2007 by Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams who set out to answer a big question: What is the best way to use face-to-face class time?The answer they came up with, in essence, was that students should be involved in some well-designed discovery tasks at home/outside the lesson prior to deeper exploration (in which the content they’ve learned is reinforced, related and extended) in the classroom.
One reason why Flipped Learning has gained extra traction in the past five years especially is that it has been demonstrated to enhance metacognition, if used periodically.
Putting theory into practice
Most teachers have a good understanding of what Flipped Learning is as a theoretical concept, but difficulties arise when the time comes to apply the theory to a real lesson.
Is it really just as simple as getting the kids to read-ahead?
In today’s blog post I aim to aim to answer that question (the short answer is no, by the way). I will also describe some practical, actionable ways in which Flipped Learning can be utilized across subject areas.
One little warning I’d like to make about Flipped Learning before I start is that I do not believe that it should be used every single lesson – that would overload the students with too much independent study (especially if they are in lower secondary school or below). However, regular Flipped Learning (e.g. on a bi-weekly basis) can be a great way to facilitate deep learning in your subject (as opposed to just surface learning).
The 6 Steps of Flipped Learning
I cannot take the credit for creating or even describing the six steps you’re about to read – that goes to this excellent web page by Michigan State University. What I will do, however, is give my own spin on the steps as you read them. Enjoy!
Plan your lesson – an obvious first step, but make sure you’ve thought about learning outcomes and the resources you will use. See this separate blog post of mine about the planning process.
Record or supply a video – videos seem to be a kind of cornerstone of the Flipped Classroom/Learning model. In my opinion, it’s not always necessary to to actually make a video yourself – you may be able to find something perfect that’s been made already on sites like Vimeo and YouTube.
Share the video with your students. Make it clear that the video will be discussed and utilized in class, so it might be a good idea to make a few notes on it.
Change: Leave the video behind. We’re not watching that again. Now the students have to use what they’ve learned from the video in some kind of deep learning activity.
Group the students and do some kind of activity that allows greater exploration. Ideas are given below.
Regroup – get the students to present their individual group work to the whole class in some way. This could be a Google Slides presentation, a drama/acting session, an infographic, etc.
Once all of these steps are complete, reinforce the content with review tasks, revision and repetition.
Collaboration Activities suitable for the Flipped Classroom
Put the students into groups (before the pre-reading, videos, simulations or other prep work, if possible) and when the students come back to class get them to create something from the information they’ve already researched. This creative process will naturally involve further exploration. Consider these activities (and let the students choose what they would like to do, if possible):
Podcasting/recording an audio clip: Once the sound file has been created, the students can then send that to the teacher in any way that seems appropriate – via e-mail, Google Classroom, uploading to YouTube (which requires another process that the students will have to learn), etc.This blog post describes some steps students should take to create the audio file.
Groups create a short lesson that contains some kind of practical element:Interestingly, some research shows that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach the topic that you have to learn. So, quite simply, ask your groups of students to prepare a lesson which they must teach to the whole class. To spice things up, the students could build a model, demonstrate an experiment, pass objects around the class or do anything that stimulates touch, smell, and, maybe, taste.
Groups create a quiz:Quizzes can be a really fun way to test student knowledge, and when done via a group-creation project they can be much less stressful for students than traditional testing. Furthermore, there are a number of great, free multiple choice and graphic quiz creation tools available on the web, such as Kahoot!, Quizlet, Blooket, Quizizz and Wordwall. Perhaps each group could be given a different quiz app to use, or perhaps each group could choose two or more platforms to create several quizzes for the class to complete.
Groups create models from everyday materials: Get your students to build things. Materials like plastic bottles, bottlecaps, cardboard, coloured paper, plasticine/modelling clay, straws, shoeboxes, egg cartons and even old rope/string can all be used creatively by students to make models of the concepts they are studying. I’ve used this technique across my teaching in Science to get students to create everything from atomic models to figurines of predators and prey in Biology. Furthermore, this is a great way to reinforce ideas about sustainability, reducing single-use plastic and recycling.
These are just some ideas you may wish to consider (and they happen to be some of my favourite ones!). For a more comprehensive list of group activities you can use, with detailed descriptions, please see this blog post I wrote on the subject.
Other Activities Suitable for the Flipped Classroom
Class debate – this is perfect when there are polar opposites to discuss (e.g. ‘For’ and ‘Against’) or two different ways of solving a problem (e.g. factorisation or the quadratic formula in maths). Just make sure that every team member has a role to play in the debate. Get as many students talking as possible (this is so crucial in these post-pandemic years).
Peer instruction – Get groups to teach each other, especially when each group has explored something slightly different.
Get your students to implement some spatial learning activities, such as the ones listed here. These are great for getting your students moving and grooving!
I’m currently working through an excellent online course offered by the University of Queensland via EdX. The course is entitled ‘Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy‘. It’s absolutely fascinating and I would highly recommend the course for any teacher who is serious about helping students prepare for examinations, catch-up on missed work or understand complex content.
In today’s blog post I aim to share:
What I have learned about deep and surface learning from the course so far
Some practical ways in which deep learning can be encouraged in the classroom
So, get ready for a deep dive into this compelling topic!
A brief history behind the development of deep learning practices (and why surface learning is no longer enough)
The course began with brief history of schooling, and how technology has been a key driver for the need to educate children. The point was made that surface learning (e.g. memorization of facts) may have been sufficient in the past. However, for our learners today, facts can change very quickly. Skills need to be upgraded regularly and throughout one’s life. As a result, teaching has seen a massive shift from teacher-centred approaches to those which are learner-centred. Contemporary pedagogical approaches, such as constructivism (where students are active participants in their own learning and construct new knowledge based on links to current understandings and prior fundamentals) have an important role to play in this new, digital age.
It’s important to remember throughout today’s blog post that effective and active learning are two sides of the same coin: to be effective, learning must be active. Research shows that learner-centred approaches to teaching that change and develop student thinking get better results in terms of student learning outcomes than traditional information transmission methods.
What is deep learning, and how is it different to surface learning?
Deep learning means asking big questions. When students have the opportunity to explore a topic: asking the why, what, where, when and how behind some concept, idea or process, they learn a plethora of different things and extend their knowledge and understanding.
Surface learning involves rote memorization, and I saw a lot of this happening when I worked in China. Examples included colleagues who had very high-level credentials from top universities in Asia, but who were unwilling to perform classroom practical tasks/experiments with students because either ‘the students didn’t need to do that to pass their exams’, or the teachers themselves felt nervous due to inexperience. This seemed to really show itself in one subject in particular, however: mathematics. Students would be trained to learn lots of formulae, and would be given an astronomical number of drill questions to do for homework. However, when it came to applying the mathematics to an unusual or real-life problem, many students struggled.
Since taking the online course with the University of Queensland, I’ve learnt a number of interesting facts about deep learning:
Deep learning often involves revisiting and reviewing a topic, and can be achieved through tasks in which students are involved in active problem-solving.
Neuroscience teaches us that the brain is plastic, and that chemical changes actually occur during deep learning. Deep learning involves consolidation of knowledge, and is driven by protein synthesis in the brain. Animal studies have shown that when protein synthesis in the brain is blocked, only surface learning occurs.
Deep learning is a process of integrating new facts we learn about the world into our existing semantic framework.
Deep learning can be achieved when students are given the opportunity to discover content, knowledge and skills for themselves.
Deep learning Involves an analysis of the information being collected, allowing a more complete understanding than surface learning can provide.
In contrast to deep learning, surface learning concerns itself only with the knowledge, ideas and content present in a curriculum. Deep learning is all about relating or extending all of that. This surprised me to some extent, as I thought that learning high-demand content (e.g. redox equations in IB Chemistry) would be considered deep learning, when actually it’s just surface learning (even though the content may be considered ‘advanced’). Deep learning would occur when the student is able to apply their knowledge of, say, redox equations, to unfamiliar or extended contexts – such as when the student is tackling sub-sections of an IB HL exam paper in Chemistry, or designing and implementing an experimental investigation into the topic.
It’s important to note that there isn’t a clear-cut distinction between surface and deep learning: rather, there exists a gradation between one and the other. A progression is made from having an idea to having many ideas (surface learning), to relating and extending those ideas (deep learning).
Whilst the progression from surface learning to deep learning follows a continuum, it is also cyclical – as students begin to relate and extend ideas, they come up with new ideas which brings them back to the surface learning part of the cycle.
What kinds of activities can teachers do in the classroom to encourage deep learning to take place?
The Flipped Classroom: This was something completely new to me which I discovered on this course, and it was really enjoyable to learn about this novel approach to teaching and learning. The basic idea is that pre-reading is done at home and homework is completed in class! The students come to class already prepared with some fundamental knowledge, and then complete activities based upon what they have read. Collaborative activities (e.g. using Padlet) are really good for getting students to reflect on their learning. In terms of the pre-reading to be done at home – this doesn’t actually have to be reading. Short, 5 minute videos that the students have to watch may be enough.
Give students some prompt material (e.g. a website to use, an information sheet, etc.) and ask students to CREATE something from it. Good things to create include a Google Slides presentation, a Google Site, a Google Doc summary, an infographic, a stop-motion animation, a quiz (e.g. a Kahoot!) and so on. Please note: If you ask students to create something, then make sure they present it to the class in some way (e.g. a short talk). Students can work in groups for activities like this. I’ve written a separate blog post about encouraging creativity in the classroom here.
Since deep learning can be achieved through revisiting and reviewing content and skills regularly, journaling and past-paper practice can meet the necessary requirements. With past-paper practice, however, make sure that the students make full corrections, and can somehow articulate why they made made mistakes. The process of completing, correcting and reflecting on past-exam paper questions (or exam-style questions) is a problem-solving sequence in and of itself – hence a deep learning activity.
Practical work that allows students to explore an unusual context, or an extended part of a topic, can definitely encourage deep learning to take place – especially if the students have been involved in the creative design of the task themselves in some way. Think about opportunities you can create for students to design and implement their own experiments, presentations, model-building and practical/hands-on work (e.g. welding together an iron gate, making an item of clothing, building the circuitry for a small radio – it will depend on the subject you teach, of course).
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