Classroom to Improve Student Learning
PhotograPh Courtesy of Jen hegna.
educators are notorious for jumping on passing fads and chasing the newest innovations, from the open classrooms of the
1970s to the one-laptop-per-student
initiatives of the past decade. It’s not
surprising that when the next new
thing—the flipped classroom—hit the
hallways of America’s schools, it was
met with hesitation and skepticism
from teachers, parents, and educational critics. The “flipped” part of the
flipped classroom means that students
watch or listen to lessons at home and
do their “homework” in class. But is
it just another fad or an instructional
design worth keeping?
Pioneered just a few years ago by
science teachers Jonathan Bergmann
and Aaron Sams at Woodland Park
High School in Colorado, USA, the
flipped classroom now has a conference, several websites, and a professional learning network of more than
3,000 teachers (see Resources, page
17). Bergmann and Sams also have a
book coming out in July called Flip
Your Classroom: Reach Every Student
in Every Class Every Day (see What’s
New, page 44, and read Bergmann’s
Point/Counterpoint response, page 6).
Some of the most enthusiastic ad-
vocates are the math teachers at Min-
nesota’s Byron High School (BHS),
which was the 2011 Intel winner for
high school mathematics. Their story
suggests that, at least for this dedi-
cated group of educators, the flipped
classroom is an educational innova-
tion with legs, if not wings!
A Peek into a Flipped Classroom
Students from Troy Faulkner’s Calculus
I class shuffle into his classroom. Along
with the usual hum of conversation,
you can hear the melodic sounds of
iPads, laptops, and smartphones being turned on as well as the clatter of
furniture being shuffled around as students create informal clusters. Faulkner
welcomes the students and talks about
the day’s task as he puts a couple of
key problems on the electronic white-board to check for understanding on
last night’s video lesson. He gives the
students time to work on the problems,
then discusses the solutions with his
students. After a lively exhange, the
students get down to work at their own
pace and in their own style.
Some choose to work in groups,
while others prefer to sit alone on the
floor or even out in the hall, plugging
in their earbuds to block out every-
thing and everyone around them. The
expectation is that they all watched a
video of Faulkner teaching the lesson
the night before and are ready to dem-
onstrate their understanding using the
day’s problems. Some review the video
lesson as they work, while others
breeze though the problems at a fast
pace, then move on to the next night’s
assigned video.
