The Differentiated Flipped Classroom

A Practical Guide to Digital Learning

Eric M. Carbaugh, Kristina J. Doubet

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781506326375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Metodi di insegnamento

Ensure personalized student learning with this breakthrough approach to the Flipped Classroom! This groundbreaking guide helps you identify and address diverse student needs within the flipped classroom. You’ll find practical, standards-aligned solutions to help you design and implement carefully planned at-home and at-school learning experiences, all while checking for individual student understanding. Differentiate learning for all students with research-based best practices to help you:

• Integrate Flipped Learning and Differentiated Instruction
• Use technology as a meaningful learning tool
• Proactively use formative assessments
• Support, challenge, and motivate diverse learners

Includes real-world examples and a resource-rich appendix.

Chapter 1 Flipping and Differentiating Finding Common Ground

• A Teacher in Action
• Flexibility—Both a Blessing and a Curse
• Overview of a Flipped Classroom
• Brain Research and the Flipped Classroom: Implications for Practice
  • Knowledge
  • Processing Opportunities
  • Community
• Overview of a Differentiated Classroom
  • Personalization and Differentiation
• Brain Research and the Differentiated Classroom: Why Differentiation Matters
  • Knowledge-Centered
  • Assessment-Centered
  • Learner-Centered
  • Community-Centered
• Differentiating and Flipping: A Harmonious Match

A Teacher in Action

Ms. Velazquez was an “early adopter” of the Flipped model in her middle school. To her, it made a lot of sense to let students spend “homework time” introducing themselves to new math content via video. Students were more motivated to watch videos for homework than they were to complete practice problems; additionally, she enjoyed the extra time she gained in class to answer questions and supervise students as they practiced and extended what they’d learned at home. Her school’s one-to-one initiative ensured that all students had access to a laptop at home; those who didn’t have Internet quickly adapted by either downloading videos onto USB flash drives before they left for the day or by using their smartphones to access videos via a cellular network. Although she had started off using Khan Academy videos for online instruction, she quickly embraced Adobe’s “Captivate” technology and began making her own screen capture videos. She liked that she could use that forum to personalize her instruction, and she knew most students were watching the homework videos because they would often mention her attempts at “math humor” and the way she incorporated student names into the math scenarios featured in her videos.

But not all students were watching. And even those who were watching often remembered her jokes more than they did the math. Ms. Velazquez knew that students could pause, rewind, and re-watch portions of the videos if they became “stuck,” but she had no assurance they were doing so . . . or that it helped if they did. Furthermore, the increased flexibility she gained during class time by flipping was losing its power as she struggled to determine how best to build in accountability measures for “homework” and to adjust instruction for the varying needs of students who showed up in class each day with different questions, levels of understanding, and degrees of motivation. She often felt her students were disconnected—from her and from each other—and that instruction was, at times, disjointed. In short, the flexibility that had begun as a source of inspiration was slowly but surely turning into a source of exasperation.

Those who didn’t have Internet quickly adapted by either downloading videos onto USB flash drives before they left for the day or by using their smartphones to access videos cellular network.

Flexibility—Both a Blessing and a Curse

Flexibility is generally considered to be an asset. When we are flexible with our travel plans, we may experience less stress. When an employer is flexible with how and when employees accrue required work hours, those employees experience more freedom. Likewise, if a teacher is flexible about the rate or manner through which a student masters established learning goals, students may experience more success. However—as is true in all three examples—being flexible means the person in charge relinquishes a bit of control over the process. John Bergman (2013) asserts that teachers who flip their classrooms yield some of that control to their students as they assume more responsibility for their own learning. But, as Ms. Velazquez found, that shift in responsibility often shines a spotlight on variance in student learning needs. This is good news if teachers are interested in moving all students forward; being aware of what students need to succeed is the first step in helping them achieve! But it does present new challenges, because teachers must be more proactive in their planning to make sure those differing needs are met. In other words, flipping instruction presents teachers with rich opportunities to differentiate instruction.

Both flipped and differentiated classrooms require investment and proactive planning. Both models require employing a student-centered approach to instruction, and both models require shifts in paradigm and structure. Fortunately, these shifts do not run counter to one another; in fact, flipping and differentiating a classroom are very complementary transformations. This book explores what is vital to each model and how teachers can use those models in concert to better meet the needs of all students.

Both flipped and differentiated classrooms require investment and proactive planning. Both models require employing a student-centered approach to instruction, and both models require shifts in paradigm and structure.

Overview of a Flipped Classroom

A Flipped instructional model takes advantage of technology to promote a more flexible learning environment. Through the recording of direct instruction—traditionally utilized as an in-class tool—teachers using a Flipped model assign these materials for students to process at home. This facilitates a more learner-centered in-class experience (Bergman & Sams, 2012), while providing students with preinstructional experiences to better prepare them for at-school learning (Hattie & Yates, 2014). Teachers who flip a lesson can assign small group or individual activities in class, freeing up time to monitor student progress, check for understanding, and provide feedback and assistance when necessary. Essentially, the classroom experience becomes much more focused on student processing and the development of ideas, moving away from students as passive receivers of information.

The Flipped model discussed in this book adheres closely to the Flipped Learning Network’s 2014 definition of “Flipped Learning”:

A pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter. (Yarbro et al., 2014, p. 5)

We believe, however, that the quality of the learning experience is important regardless of the “geography” of where it occurs; therefore, we focus on how to create dynamic interactive learning experiences, both at home and at school. Our discussion of Flipped Learning capitalizes on what we know about student learning, in general, from recent brain research and couples this information with the importance of creating a responsive classroom. The intent is to expand the structure of traditional schooling and provide teachers with additional flexibility to better meet the needs of their students. It is our belief that the most effective teachers can use flipped instruction to flexibly and proactively respond to the needs of their students. Our goal is to show how full or partial classroom flipping can help make teachers more effective at meeting the diverse needs of students.

Flipped Classroom: “Basically, the concept of a flipped class is this: 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” (Bergmann & Sams, 2012, p. 13).

Brain Research and the Flipped Classroom: Implications for Practice

We now know a great deal about how the brain takes in, manages, and retains learning. Of pivotal importance is nature of the knowledge, processing opportunities, and social context afforded to students during their learning experiences (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Therefore, in a flipped classroom, teachers must be sure to pay particular attention to the following when designing tasks and assignments:

Knowledge

Our brains work best when finding patterns and identifying relationships. When learning something new, students need opportunities to connect it to prevailing structures or neural networks—to “hang” new knowledge on the scaffolding of existing knowledge (Hattie, 2012; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011). Thus, any flipped classroom should facilitate the development of connections and relationships among the concepts being learned, while avoiding teaching the same concepts in isolation. Rote lectures—live or recorded—absent of connections to previously learned material or personal relevance will not capitalize on the neural growth and retention associated with more engaging learning.

Processing Opportunities

Time for reflection and practice are essential to move information into long-term memory storage (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011). This is particularly important in a flipped classroom because, even if students are watching lectures, they should be focused on specific learning outcomes, actively processing and reflecting on the content being presented. Much as a classroom lecture should include instructional questions for students to pause and reflect on ideas being presented, so too should a flipped lecture. In other words, teachers must provide the necessary time and structure for students to actively process learning and avoid the assumption that students are engaged with and retaining material simply because they are “watching” it.

Community

Learning experiences are most powerful when they are implemented in collaboration with others in a safe, orderly, and flexible community of learners (National Institute of Health, 2005; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011). In-class learning activities, therefore, should take advantage of opportunities for students to wrestle with content in the company of peers who can both support and challenge them. As Hattie and Yates (2014) note: “Schooling is an inherently social process, and the attitudes of peers exert a strong impact on the individual” (p. 4). With the addition of the “virtual environment,” the flipped classroom provides two forums for such students to work together—at home and at school. In other words, through the use of technology, even at-home learning experiences can occur within a collaborative environment.

While these three principles provide a vital and defensible foundation for any flipped experience, they also reflect one of the greatest challenges facing teachers who are interested in flipping their classrooms: how to “best utilize additional classroom time” in a flipped setup. In fact, Project Tomorrow cites this concern as one of the biggest barriers to implementation (Yarbro et al., 2014, p. 15). How do teachers ensure that students are actively processing important contextualized concepts in a collaborative fashion? We believe the answer to this quandary lies in adopting the principles and practices of Differentiated Instruction.

Differentiation: “[T]eachers in differentiated classrooms accept and act on the premise that they must be ready to engage students in instruction through different approaches to learning, by appealing to a range of interests, and by using varied rates of instruction along with varied degrees of complexity and differing support systems” (Tomlinson, 2014, pp. 3–4).

Overview of a Differentiated Classroom

Like the teacher of a flipped classroom, the teacher of a differentiated classroom strives for more flexibility in instruction, recognizing that one size certainly does not fit all. The quest to know students—who they are, what they are passionate about, how they learn best—drives the teacher’s instructional decision making about how different students will access and master these ideas. Teachers in differentiated classrooms persistently seek to discover learner needs, and then persistently seek to find ways to meet those needs by adjusting content (what students learn), proce...