After the Video: Classroom Activities to do In the Flipped Lesson

For some time now I have been making flipped videos for my class. It's great and I love having extra time in class to do more exciting activities. However, I do find thinking of the exciting and useful activities the hardest part of the flipped learning business. Therefore I have decided to document the ideas which I have used (or want to use) with my primary class.

I try to bear Blooms Taxonomy in mind when including activities to my lessons. If it isn't from the top branches, I generally don't bother with a flipped lesson.

                                         

So here are some ideas:

• Create a TV Quiz about the topic...maybe not Numberwang though

• Play Just a Minute

• Create a board game
• Design a lesson for another class about the topic
• Create an Infographic

• Do some Project-Based Learning 

• Make a model of it

• Write an editorial about the topic - evaluating both sides of an argument
• Create a quiz - I love Kahoot for this
  

There are, of course, lots of other great things we could do in our classes. I want to add to this collection - any ideas? Please drop me a line: @DerEyken or mrvandereyken@gmail.com  

Making Flipped Videos For The Primary Classroom

After a few years (how time flies!) of experimenting with this flipped teaching idea, I thought that I would summarise what I have learnt/discovered so far.

First of all, flipping your lessons in a primary environment does work and is worth it. However, us primary teachers have the same children all day, every day and it is not as if we teach the same lesson to groups of different students as our secondary colleagues, for whom flipped learning has more obvious benefits.

After reading this wonderful blog post by Chris Waterworth, I thought it was time I added my thoughts. I know some teachers lie to use videos that they find on the net,but I much prefer to make my own as I can tailor them to the exact requirements of my class. After a few tries, they are easy and quick to make and I would recommend this to all primary practitioners.

So here is my guide to making flipped videos for the primary classroom:

1. Only consider it for lessons where the time saved in class is going to be put to something worthwhile not just extra or harder 'work' - use if you want the class to make something or create a play etc. Perfect to reach those higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy which you might not normally have time for.
2. Don't flip every lesson - everything gets dull after time. I aim to flip a lesson once a week but it depends on my lesson objectives.
3. Videos need to be short and easy to make. they don't expect nor want The Force Awakens: The Fractions Sequel. I use screencast-o-matic to narrate over flipcharts and presentations - you can use it straight from the website or download the app. just plug in your mic and talk. No messing about with transitions, music, titles etc.
   
4. Place videos somewhere safe: Google Drive, Edpuzzle or Blendspace (I love Blendspace) where they can watch safely. Avoid YouTube unless you are 100% sure that all they can see is your video. And even then...
5. Add an interactive element - a quiz or feedback form so you can see what they have understood.
6. It's OK to share in class rather than homework. Took me a while to get this but for younger students, you still save a lot of time if they watch a video individually in class. And they can refer back to it if they get stuck later.
7. The videos make perfect revision resources and ways to inform parents of what is going on in their children's lessons.

We are now increasingly using flipped teaching for homework activities and I find it a very useful tool to create extra time in the classroom to embed and master the subject.

It is also great fun! 

My Flip Videos

I now post most of my flip videos on to my Google Drive and these are automatically shared with my class from there. However, I thought it might be useful to post a couple of examples on this blog as a record of how they have changed over time.

I use 'Screencast-o-matic' to capture my computer screen and it also allows me to record audio. It's also free and you can either download it or it will will work direct from the web. My videos are simple, straight to the point and I no longer worry about making small errors on them. I find that the class need the video just to deliver the key learning point and, in class, we can work together to develop and embed that understanding.

So here is one I made today for our science lesson this afternoon about shadows. In the lesson, the children will be making a shadow puppet of themselves and then creating a puppet play of a lesson that teaches about how shadows work! Should be fun...

I generally find maths is an easier subject to make videos for as it is so fact and process-based. The vast majority of my flip videos are for maths but this is something I am seeking to change. As I teach Year 6 children, I aim to make my videos no longer than 6 minutes long...Year 5 would be 5 minutes etc. I think that is a fairly good rule of thumb.

I'm happy to share more of my videos - just drop me an email at mrvandereyken@gmail.com

BYOD and Flipped Teaching Update

Badly amiss of me not to have updated this blog since August! However, it's been a very interesting term in our development of BYOD in our school and with my class so it's worth a summary,

My new Year 6 class came up to me having used iPads and devices in class while in Year 5 though not to the extent that I had been using them with my previous class. I also found that not all of the class had devices unlike last year. Luckily our school does have a few spare iPads which I could use but I also paired children up to share devices where necessary.

From January 21016, each child in Y2-Y6 will need to come to school with an iPad. Whereas Y5 and 6 have been using the since February 2015, it is going to be a radical learning curve for a lot of our teachers/students/parents in a few weeks time. Therefore, this term, we have been undertaking a lot of training and experiments so that we are ready for January. Google EdTech team have been out for a training day as Google Drive forms the backbone of how we intend to use technology.

My classroom practice has developed this term as the initial euphoria about iPads and devices has worn off and I have noticed that these devices have become much more seen as an everyday tool by the children - sort of a very expensive pencil case.

I have become much more selective in how I use them. Google Drive I find is by far the best way to share work and messages with my class. I have a shared folder for my class which contains subject folders; activities fro each lesson and sometimes a tutorial or flipped video.

The use of Drive also changes how my class communicate with me. This may not to be every teachers liking but they use Gmail to message me in the evenings and at weekends if they are stuck about their work. I could choose not to reply but I think this accurately mirrors how work is changing in the real world around us so I am usually happy to reply if I have the time.

I have learnt that very quickly your Drive becomes full of work shared by the class so I have begun using Google Classroom (bundled with Drive) as a means of setting and monitoring tasks. I love this as it automatically creates a folder in my drive for each activity and saves their work with their name in it! It's also good for sending messages to my whole class.

I have been using apps much less. I now rely on just a few. i have found that many apps can be great for a one-off 'Wow' effect but they soon wear off and I found that I was teaching how to use the app rather than the curriculum content.

I use video a lot for my class to make videos of their work - recording their poetry and such. I also ask them to occasionally make a video explaining how they did some work in their boos and then QR code it which is then stuck into their book with their work. I never ask them to write using their devices - more trouble than it is worth! 

I still make flipped videos although i now use them in my class rather than doing my usual spiel at the board or I use them as a resource for he children if they get stuck. As they are on drive, they have access to these all the time.

I have begun using Edpuzzle which allows you to add questions to your videos as well as to narrate over videos which you have found elsewhere such as YouTube. I really like this as it makes the watcher an active participant and you can also monitor their progress. 

I am hoping to use Edpuzzle more next term for flipped videos and homework activities.

I do occasionally use other apps but only if I feel that they enhance learning. For example, we recently went on a trip around Bahrain to learn about the ancient Dilmun civilization which was here 3000 years ago and the children had to write a summary of their learning. I used Thinglink for this as it enabled the children to easily incorporate all the videos and photos they had made of the trip and to share them to the rest of the class and their family. Sometimes I feel technology can obscure the subject learning so I have to choose how to use apps and software carefully - high impact, low effort!

You can see this Thinglink at https://www.thinglink.com/scene/727463012406919168

Online assessment is still a key feature of my use of technology. I still use Kahoot - especially getting my class to design their own quizzes. This works really well with spelling lists as they have to come up with incorrect but plausible spellings! Increasingly we are using Socrative as it is better at keeping data and enables you to set a wider range of questions - we are presently transferring reading comprehensions on to Socrative for use next term.

Next term, my aim will be to develop flipped videos using Edpuzzle. Flipped teaching has taken a bit of a backseat recently but it is something I now want to return to as I feel that iPads are now firmly established in the day-to-day running of my class.

Flipped Teaching Reflections

For the final two terms of last academic year, my Year 6 class all brought in their own smart mobile devices - iPads, Android, phones, tablets...

The year saw me implement all that and also have to present ideas to parents, staff and governors. It was a busy year!

The BYOD project enabled us to use digital resources on a daily basis. This year, we are going to go with every child bringing in an iPad. It was insanely busy implementing this technology and updating my blog suffered. By the summer holiday, I never wanted to see another iPad let alone write about them!

However, a new academic year beckons and it's time to reflect on how the technology has been used and my plans for the next year. It would be impossible to list and discuss all the apps and strategies that I used last year but I will try to focus on flipped teaching.

Strangely, I probably didn't do as much flipped teaching as before, despite the abundance of technology. There was simply too much other 'new' stuff to absorb, try out and evaluate.

However, I did still flip my classroom at times. With all the children having access to Google Drive, it meant sharing the videos was easy. I ended up using Screencast-o-matic to video my lessons and then pushed them out on Drive one or two days before. Screencast is free and so easy to use - it doesn't make all singing and dancing videos but it does the job and after experimenting with iMovie, VideoStudio etc, the feedback from my students was clear - short and simple. Very quickly I built up a library of lessons on Drive which included a flip video and activities to go with it - the students could access these at any time - in the lesson and for revision. And I can use them again this year!

But what I found much harder was thinking of what to do in the actual lesson if they had seen and watched the video. And also ensuring that they had LEARNT from the video. So I used Kahoot online quizzes to check for learning from the flip video (sometimes I just used pen and paper). But I was finding that the result of the video was often me just setting harder work - nothing wrong in this itself but not really creating the more exciting learning environment that I wanted. In all the literature that I read about flipped teaching, the most important message is that it is not about the video - and this is what we all worry about so much.

Jon Bergmann (http://jonbergmann.com) and Aaron Sams talk of using the flipped model to create 'mastery' so that learning is deeper and embedded. But I think the one area that I have struggled with with is how their idea ties in with a UK primary school as they worked in a secondary US school which (and I may be wrong here) seem to have more modules and formal assessments than we do. This makes our learning environments rather more ethereal - we don;t really do a test to check that they have mastered the Battle of Hastings. I did find myself doing more quickfire tests though and this is something that I will try to develop this year.

However, I did increasingly begin to use the devices to engage the students in more original ways. They began to record their work in video and images much more. The children created the island from Kensuke's Kingdom in Minecraft then used Thinglink and PuppetEdu to add text and video to their islands; they wrote and performed poetry based on the work on Suli  Banks, they used Booktrack Classroom to write their own stories with a musical soundtrack...but a lot of this happened without flipped teaching.

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/665477341471834113

This year I want to use the flipped model to prepare the class in advance for these types of activities. The reason I didn't do flip videos for all this was, well, because i didn't know how to use the apps myself!

I have been sort of evolving my own theory of flipped teaching for the primary model. Our lack of formally assessed modules seem to make flip teaching more of a tool for certain activities than perhaps a model to flip your whole classroom - my class don't want videos all the time. So, I began to use the videos in place of my usual lecture bit at the start to every lesson (I talk too much so it seemed a good way for students to access the 'facts'quickly). I like this idea as it is still quick and students can listen at their own pace and you can monitor them as they are in front of you and not at home. My videos are 6-7 minutes long - in a traditional classroom introduction, the same information can take 20-25 minutes to get across so the time benefits are still there. I think this may be more primary-friendly and easier for teachers to manage with younger children.

For ideas of how to use ICT, I am ever so grateful to Mr P Teaches ICT blog which has a wealth of ideas and resources.

 Chris Waterworth is a primary teacher in the UK who I was fortunate enough to hear lecture at the Digital Education Show in London in June and his website http://videoformyclassroom.blogspot.co.uk/  is also very interesting. There don't seem to be many primary teachers using flipped teaching but I expect that to change and Chris is championing this effectively through social media.


                                                                     Targets

1. Keep this blog updated - I have found it very useful to record my process even if no-one else reads it
2. Keep learning: Socrative, Nearpod, Google Classroom are all on my list to use in the next month
3. Use social media to make links with other teachers across the world. Please follow me on Twitter @DerEyken 
4. Incorporate growth mindset and the work of Dweck and James Nottingham in my flipped lessons

Back to the Flip!

It's been a while since my last flipped lesson - report writing, assessment time all played  apart but, also, I felt my class had reached a saturation point with them. Therefore, I decided  to take a break, do some more research and reconsider where to take the project.

I found that fewer and fewer of the children were watching the flip videos and I wondered why this was. I believe it was partly due to there being too many in too short a time but also because I wasn't using the lesson time as effectively as I could.

I read a book called Flip your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams and this really helped refocus my flipped teaching project - the flipped lesson itself has to be creative, stimulating or, at least, challenging. I think my videos became just another way to impart information than as a way to preserve time for an exciting learning experience in school.

Reading the book reignited my enthusiasm, but also made me more conscious of picking the lessons which I chose to flip more thoughtfully.

So, this week, I made a video all about the Water Cycle for our science lesson. All but 3 students watched it (it was exciting again!) and we spent our science lesson making dioramas about the cycle. The ones who missed the video had to go through the flipchart with me, while the others brainstormed everything they could remember from the video.

I would never have had the time for this in a traditional lesson. It was great - all on-task for the last 2 hours of the last day of the week, superb high-level conversation using scientific language, collaboration, creativity...we had a great time!

Children Producing a Flipped Video

At a recent parent-teacher interview, I suggested that the children who may be struggling with a concept, make a flip video about that concept to teach others. The idea behind this was that then they would have to revise and practise that concept so thoroughly that they themselves would understand it.

I have just received my first one - about equivalent fractions - and I thought it was brilliant. We actually all watched it in our maths lesson rather than as a flip video although I could have done either. Her it is - the glass analogy I thought was particularly clever...

Short, Simple and Snappy!

The very clear feedback I am getting from the class is that the videos must be kept shorter.

The initial enthusiasm for watching the flip videos has gone now, so I think this is imperative if I am going to keep them watching. Therefore my next one about area and perimeter is only 1min 45s long.

It will be interesting to see how it is received and how useful it is - I am hoping that they will pause the video at certain points to practise the learning points and make sure they understand.

One of the great side-effects of the project has been my own learning about ICT and video-making. For this latest video, I used Corel's VideoStudio to make a flipchart (using one of the templates in the program). I just took screenshots of each of my flipchart pages then stuck them into the template. Added a few speech bubbles and that was that. Didn't take long at all...

The other great side-effect has been how it has led on to other great apps and programs - my class are now regularly using Animoto (to show their spelling lists, make animations for literacy etc). Presently, they are working on a 'glog' (from www.edu.glogster.com) project in science. I wouldn't have used any of these unless I had done this flip teaching project.

Here's the video:

Class Make First Attempts at Flip Video

I have had the first flip video submitted by a child in my class!

She decided that she should do one about mean, mode and median averages. She is a very confident mathematician so this was a topic she felt happy with.

We had a few problems as she used Moviemaker and I couldn't play it at fist as she did not attach the pictures and music which went with it in the memory stick. However, she then took it away and converted it into an Mpeg 4 and it worked brilliantly.

I think the video is great but it was also amazing how she had exactly the same thoughts as me - takes  along time to do the first one (took her 4 hours); steep learning curve about ICT but also that it is great fun! I really hope that it inspires other children to make one.

See the video below:

In other news, our Year 5 team of teachers have been making a video all about the story of Lord Lucan which is the basis for our Literacy topic on persuasive writing. Because of the confidence and knowledge I now have with video, I am making it using chromakey green screen techniques. Still working on it but I think it's going to be fantastic and the children will love it! It was certainly fun to make.

Flipped Teaching Evolving...

I think I'm beginning to really get the hang of video-making. Not saying the videos are any good but they are taking less time to film and edit.

I have become more self-critical of the videos and redo them if they don't look good to me. I have set my class one flip video to watch this week about our upcoming lesson on persuasive newspaper articles. I find that literacy requires longer videos but I am mindful of my children's feedback that they should be short and snappy!

I try to limit them to 12-13 minutes. I now realise how long I must drone on for in lessons!

I certainly feel that the process has led me to making other activities more creative and engaging. I dislike doing 'normal' lessons now, but I think there is still a place for the more traditional one alongside the videos.

I have been really pleased that a couple of my children have taken up the challenge to produce their own flipped videos. One has made a video about finding averages which is a topic coming up next week. Another child is making one about how to make a recorder from a drinking straw as part of our work on pitch in our sound topic in science.

There are technical problems with this - they are using software which doesn't run on the school equipment etc so I think I may do a lesson on producing videos so they can all have a go.

Latest Flip Video...after brutal feedback!

My class have been keen (a little too keen!) to say what they think of the flip videos.

Overall, they say that they like them, find them useful but they are too long. Also, one pupil said that I talked too much. Fair point.

So..my latest one on reflecting over a mirror line is 100-second one with no narration. I used Activepresenter to make a series of slides using screenshot capture I then added text bubbles to each slide to explain what was happening. So far, this one has gone down the best! It was hard to find any song to go with it featuring the word symmetry!

However, I actually taught my lesson on calculator word problems today following the video I made earlier in the week. I felt it went very well with over half of my class working on problems at a higher level than I would normally expect. Some also went on to design their own calculator word problem maths 'test'.

The Literacy one didn't work so well. I find it harder as it is a more open subject whereas maths has  a specific method. I think literacy flip videos might work with grammar and spelling.

Homework, Security Concerns and More

One of the side-effects of flipping the class has been to make all of us much more IT-literate. Suddenly, my class are having to read our blog, follow links to the video storage site and post comments back about the videos.

This has led to us thinking about internet safety and what they can and cannot post. I am definitely staying away from YouTube at the moment - there's nothing wrong with it but I like having a secure place where just my class can visit and where I know only work which I have placed there can be found.

My class have also been using the sharing function of Google Docs to show what they have done at home after watching these videos. I don't set work based on the videos as flipped teaching isn't about that but I have found that a lot of the children are keen to follow up the videos with some work of their own.

I really like the sharing nature of Google Docs and the class love the way they can collaborate with others in the class so easily. 

I was having lots of problems with Ezvid as we couldn't upload the videos to YouTube (this is the only export function of Ezvid) so we have now switched to Activepresenter. I really like this even though it is a bit more complex to use. It has a great function of being able to make slideshow captures and add annotations so you can make a video showing how to use a certain piece of software. It's really impressive.

Tomorrow is my first literacy flipped lesson so I am looking forward to seeing how that goes. I began thinking about how I am going to get the class involve din making videos themselves: at the moment I am thinking of putting them into groups of 4 and giving them one topic which we are covering in the near future.

I want the 4 children to consist of one subject specialist (for researching the topic), an ICT specialist (making the video), a writing specialist (script) and a creative specialist (artwork, titles etc). They then collaborate at home for their homework to make a video to show the class in that lesson.

Sounds exciting...

Freshly-made Flip Videos

Just made a new maths and a new literacy flip video.

You can see these at http://5est-chris.mediacore.tv/

I like this site as my class can see the videos without visiting YouTube. I have set out some of my flipped videos in a  public folder so anyone can see them but there is also a password-protected section where just my class have access. I think it works well.

My maths one is about using a calculator and I know it is too long. However, I did learn how to insert 3rd party video clips into my own video and also how to trim these clips. I'm also experimenting with adding text.

The literacy one on persuasive writing is yet to be posted by Mediacore (they moderate all the videos - great thing!) but it is much simpler and to the point.

Really looking forward to next week's teaching and it's been a long time since I could genuinely say that!

One Thing Leads to Another...

Since starting this experiment on flipped teaching, I have also come across lots of other ideas for the creative classroom and different approaches to topics. I have lost track of all the conversations with colleagues about 'flipping' that have included the phrase, "Oooo, you could.." or "I wonder if you could...."

A lot of these ideas haven't been new and I am sure a lot of teachers are using them all the time but I seem to have placed them on the backburner. Flipped lessons make you think about using the lesson time more creatively and imaginatively - you have so much more of it!

Therefore this post is not about flipped teaching but about some of the ideas which I am now using/considering in my lessons.

I also like going to www.sparkyteaching.com as it has a fresh approach to the classroom and some wonderful resources. They always make me consider how I teach and questions that I ask. If you like their stuff, I'd also recommend http://www.independentthinking.co.uk/ which is the home of Ian Gilbert and others. To this day, he delivered the best INSET I have ever attended.

Anyway, following links from Sparky, I found Animoto which has to be the easiest animation slideshow program ever and it makes wonderful quick shows to share with your class. I tried the free trial first but you can only make 30 second videos with that and, after one go, I really wanted to do more so I went for the Plus account. You can see my first result below. One of our teachers came up with the great idea of teaching our Persuasive Texts unit around the case of Lord Lucan so I made a slideshow to introduce it.

Flipped learning/teaching has made me worry about coming up with exciting activities in lesson - I find it hard to do this consistently so I asked Jon Bergmann who is a leading figure in the 'Flipped' movement (I hope he doesn't mind being described as such!) via his website here. He reassured me that sometimes you can just focus on activities and stretch the learning - it doesn't always have to be designing a video game, making a film etc etc. Phew!

Anyway, I have some more links to explore and I am about to make another flip video for next week. If you do read this, please say hello or add any flipped stories of your own. Thanks.

Flipped Lesson Number 2

Did my second flipped lesson today, also in maths and focusing on proving/disproving a general statement. The video link is posted in a previous post.

At the beginning of the lesson, I asked who had watched the flip video and about 75% of the class had. I gave them the option of watching it again with those who hadn't seen it and half of those chose to do so.

It certainly enabled my more able to get stuck into tasks quicker and I think all the class faced a higher level of challenge than they would have in a 'normal' lesson.

However, I learnt that you can't rely on the class to watch the video and ensure they really understand it. They might watch it but won't necessarily explore areas of uncertainty on their own. For example, they didn't really understand square numbers which was mentioned on the video and this led to difficulties in the tasks later on, as some of the activities referred to square numbers.

Therefore, I think that you have to give some input as well as the video and really check for understanding. The children also fedback that it would be really useful for me to model an answer to one of the tasks on the video so they could see exactly what the expectations were.

I think that the flipped lessons might work best for more simple-concept lessons that deal with one skill. There was too much high-level mathematical vocabulary going on so they struggled working independently (some of them). I think with a short input session from me as well, it would have been a great success.

However, I think it was engaging and challenging and that the class gained a lot from it. It wasn't outstanding but also not a disaster.

Next time, I want to try an English lesson as I have done two maths now.