PowerPoints, using online physics resources and her own drawings to illustrate them. She adds audio narrative, speaking in the video as if she were presenting the PowerPoint in the classroom. She posts those videos along with any other background information on the Portal as homework. “The videos are pretty short, so they don’t have to spend a lot of time with them, but that gives us time in class for exchanges,” she says. “We do in class what would have been homework. They get to work in groups of two, or three, or four and they can help each other. So instead of being at home and stuck on a math problem and thinking, ‘What on earth do I do next,’ they’ve got the benefit of me being here and other students being here. They collaborate and that’s the best way to learn.” And, the advantage of putting the lecture material out as a homework video is that students can review difficult material repeatedly on their own until they understand it. “A teacher’s time is limited, so if you present the material in class, you only do it once,” Mrs. Girkin says. “If a student wants to ask you questions, they can come after class and that’s great, but I can’t redo the lecture piece over and over in the classroom, because one student is having trouble. With them watching the video at home, they can repeat it.”
The idea of Flipped Classrooms has been around for a few years but has picked up buzz this year in academic circles across the country as more teachers have had time to develop materials. In the Middle School, sixth grade Language Arts Teacher Laura Adkins may have students watch a lecture or take notes on a grammatical concept at home. “Then, we come to class and work through the concept,” she says. “The students complete activities about the concept in class which helps them synthesize the concepts learned through notes and lectures and practiced in class. Students are assigned to write a blog article about the grammatical concept. I then select one article to post on our sixth grade grammar blog which allows them to comment on each others’ posts.” In the Lower School, Math Teacher Stephen Imwalle has also produced Flipped Classroom videos. At the development level for fourth grade, Mr. Imwalle believes parents still need to be involved in supervising traditional homework, and he wants his students to understand that learning never stops – even when they are not in his classroom. Flipped Classroom techniques work particularly well for fourth graders who are struggling to understand a particular concept, he says.
Students diagram sentences on the Promethean ActivBoard in Laura Adkins’ classroom. As a Flipped Classroom home assignment, they had already watched a slideshow on The Summit’s Portal about the functions of nouns. Mrs. Adkins was able to help students in the exercise, which she could not have done if the exercises had been 13 Summit the homework. L to R: Bella Saba, Robert Sims, JackMagazine Bergeron, Nick McCleary, Evan Hunt, Molly Mambort, Alexis Fee.