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  

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

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:

More Flipped Lessons in Year 2

Two of our Year 2 teachers have been trying out flipped lessons.

The first one was in maths about interpreting data and was done as a Prezi - you can watch it here

The second one was in literacy and featured the children having access to a PDF file, which it was felt would be easier for the children (and parents) to access.

Read about their experiences here:

'"After the first flipped lesson ran fairly successfully in one class and was unable to take place in another (children had not been able to access the Prezi for a variety of reasons), we decided to do something quicker to produce, easier to distribute and was more easily shared with children along with their parents at home.

The second flipped lesson happened today and was a revelation.

Most children had completed the home based task prior to the lesson, and after a very brief introduction, many of the children went off to work on a task as soon as lesson started. Ten minutes in, all the children were working on the task. We were then able to get them working on another task which would lead into the work planned for tomorrow, although this was not included in the planning for the next lesson. This will allow them to really focus on the next piece of writing and hopefully allow them to produce something of a much higher quality than usual.

The result of this is that we will be able to add in an extra writing session with children conferencing with their peers, teacher or teaching assistant on uplevelling the writing they have produced so far this week." 

The Flipped PE lesson...

Our infant PE specialist teacher recently had a go at doing a flipped lesson with her Year 2 class in volleyball - focusing on the rules about serving. She produced a wonderful video using Lego figures to show the children what they needed to know.

You can watch it here Volleyball for Year 2 

This is her evaluation of the lesson:

' I definitely felt that having 2B watch the video beforehand enhanced the learning in the lesson. The serving rotation in Volleyball is a complicated concept and 2B coming to the lesson with some kind of understanding was great! They all went away with a better idea of how it works and the evaluation at the end showed that a good number (more, I feel, than in previous years) understood it better, with a low amount feeling like they were still unsure. It also enabled much more practical time and less teacher talk. . I continually questioned them through the lesson as well which helped.

I don’t think I would need to do this all the time, but for something that is tricky and difficult to understand it was of definite benefit.' 

Blogging...Glogging

Having bit of a rest over the half term holiday but I have been trying out Glogster as a medium for delivering flipped lessons and as a tool for the class to do their own projects. I think they could use it as a resource for delivering their own lessons too.

Loved making it - it helps to have lots of images and videos etc already saved ready to upload onto your Glog though. I like the idea of uploading a flipped video alongside some key facts and maybe some activities for the class to try before the lesson.

http://robvde.edu.glogster.com/seed-dispersal

So I'm making a flipped video next then going to try uploading it to a Glog with extra information...With a bit of luck, if it all works I may never actually have to get up and go to school again!

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.

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.

First Flipped Video

OK so yesterday I made my first flipped video in preparation for today's lesson on symmetry in triangles. The school have got me sorted out with Ezvid which seems to be easy to use.

It took me  4 minutes to start making my first video from scratch and then 10 minutes to make the first video.

The school firewall made it impossible (at the moment) to upload to YouTube and I learnt that you can't save Ezvid projects and move them from computer to computer - annoying!

Therefore, I made the video again at home and posted it up there. I then emailed my class parents and asked them to watch and give me feedback. You can see the video here.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far. ' The future of teaching' was one comment!

I am a bit worried about my maths lesson which I am doing in 2 hours time as I now think my children are going to way ahead of me. I will have to plan much more challenging activities as they are going to already armed with what they need to know.

I have also ' borrowed'  a webcam so I'm hoping to use that in my next video. I have realised that in making the video it makes me really consider what I say and how I say it. It also makes me very reflective about my own teaching style.

Looking forward to doing the next flipped lesson already!