Technosaurus's Library

 Flipping Classrooms

To summarize flipped classrooms in easy terms we can say; flipping classroom is basically saving the time of solving tasks in class and dedicating this time basically for students' interaction. This premise states that teachers assign students a video or an article to prepare at home before coming to class, so that they come to class ready for discussion and more interactive work. Based on Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams definition of flipped classroom, it is  allowing that 'which is traditionally done in class is now done at home, and that which is traditionally done as homework is now completed in class”.  Throughout years of research, student-centered teaching has proved to be of great efficacy for its premise of allowing students to produce their own learning in an engaging and interactive environment. That being said; flipping a classroom is undoubtedly one of the very well renowned approaches in implementing the latter, and here are two reasons why it is recommended:

One of the most appealing features of “flipped classrooms” is the fact that it develops and taps on students’ metacognitive skills. We all agree on the fact that flipping classrooms allows students more time to pace their learning, and us teachers, to expand the topics in class and individualize our instruction for those students who need this kind of dedication. But before moving from point A to point B, let’s shed the light on this lapse of time after students get access to the material and before coming to class where students get the space to develop awareness of their own learning processes. In other words; students get to think about what they see, raise questions, evaluate their understanding, evaluate their listening skills, assess their background knowledge, and pace their own learning through the endless times they get to monitor themselves, allowing them to become self-aware of their learning abilities and capacities, strengths and weaknesses, and thus developing bunch of metacognitive skills.
With learning becoming student-centered, and with students developing their own learning processes, we as teachers get to experience the versatility of the several roles that a teacher can assume in class, and that H. Douglas Brown talks about in his second edition of his book; Teaching By Principles, starting, from being a prompter, moving to the facilitator, and ending with the mentor. Based on the above, students stop seeing us –teachers- as lecturers only, and Krashen’s affective filter is lowered in the less interactive pupils, allowing them to be more engaged both at home and later when the process of learning moves into the classroom walls.

Another point I would like to shed the light on is the accessibility of the learning material. How many times do we get phone calls or e-mail messages from students’ parents asking us how exactly they should help their child approach a certain topic? And how often do we find ourselves encountered with the confusion of some absentee and their parents about what the former has missed?
Flipped classrooms allow both students and parents to access the learning material at any time to get a better understanding, or at least to have an idea about what has been discussed in class. Its benefits go beyond that; basically everybody can go back to the material just at any time they want, even after class, or months after class! This helps students to reinforce what has been expanded by the teacher as well as double-checking points that they didn’t understand in their first attempt, allowing them to monitor their listening/reading skills. Not to mention that it allows parents to monitor their kids’ learning and evaluate the quality of the latter.

Since this class encourages us to blog and is showing us the importance of blogging, I would like to provoke a small discussion with a few questions:
Does the efficacy of flipping classrooms mean that it should be an approach we use in all of our EFL classes? Are we relying so much on students’ actually accessing the assigned material? Are we unconsciously eliminating their creativity by cancelling those probing questions and guesses for them to figure out what the topic will be about? And are students really the masters of their learning when we are constantly the ones who are assigning the learning topics and material?

Thanks for reading and sharing!
Citation:
Acedo. M ( 2019, January 28). 10 Pros and Cons of a Flipped Classroom. Retrieved from: https://www.teachthought.com/learning/10-pros-cons-flipped-classroom/