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  

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.' 

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.

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.