Day 5

Flipped Learning? 

Today's post is a reflection of what I would like to share with teachers not just from my school but from all over Singapore about how we can better prepare ourselves for a hybrid learning environment where teachers and students will be placed on LOA / QO now and then.

Hi everyone! I'm recording this video live in my quarantine room as I've been put on QO due to a confirmed case in my school. And so in today's video I would like to share my reflection during the time here. The reason why the title of this video is Flipped Learning is because I believe that the concept of flipped learning has an even more significant meaning now than ever before. Because, as we live with COVID-19 as an endemic, it will mean that students and teachers find themselves forced away from the classroom anytime and without any prior warnings. So how do we ensure that learning continues no matter the situation we find ourselves in? I believe that the answer is in Flipped Learning. 

Now for those who have never heard the term flipped learning before, let me give an elevator's pitch of  Flipped learning. So in flipped learning we ask ourselves one fundamental question, "What's the best use of my face-to-face time?" And often you'll hear teachers saying that the best use of their face-to-face time is by getting students to be active and applying what they have learned. You will rarely hear teachers saying that giving a 30 minute lecture or direct instruction is the best use of their face-to-face time. But we still do it because we still need to deliver content. So what if we can deliver content (which is the easy part of learning by the way) out of class time, so that class time is used for those higher order thinking activities that gets students thinking and discussing the content they learned at home. That's flipped learning!

So if you have been regularly flipping your class, when students go into QO or LOA, you don't have to worry about delivering content because your content is already online and students can access it anytime and anywhere they are! You only need to think of how you can get them to do think and discuss and apply their learning remotely either asynchronously (i.e. at their own pace) or synchronously (i.e. via zoom). That's half the battle won already!

Plus, when students are used to flipped learning, they tend to be more independent because they know how to learn on their own and acquire the knowledge before they come to class. You are setting your students up for success when you flip your class.

Finally, in all my years of flipping my class, the true benefit of doing this is really it allows me the freedom to walk around my class and to get to know them better. So it doesn't matter if they are in school physically or not. I can still build relationships with them because I am not worried about how to deliver content! I just need to make sure they are learning! And isn't that the ultimate goal of education? Students learn how to learn?

Thank you.

Here's the video version of this post.