Originally posted HERE Listen to my story in the video above, and then leap into the blog post. The nature of teachers is to teach…I know, shocking, but what is surprising is the number of teachers that don’t use a specific instructional method to meet the needs of their students. The question needs to be asked, “How do you teach your students?” Many teachers would answer that question by saying that they use a variety of methods: small groups, one on one, activities, etc. The truth is, though, small groups, one on one, and activities are not instructional methods. They are groupings for instruction. For years, I delivered content to my students in ways that I thought were effective. I taught, or so I thought. I presented information through lecture, reading, and sometimes we did an activity. These are the most passive and least effective means of teaching students according to the Edgar Dale “Cone of Learning.” It wasn’t until I took FLGI’s Certification Level II course that I realized that there were so many instructional practices: Mastery, Project Based Learning, Peer Instruction, Gamification, Socratic Seminars, Inquiry, Genius Hour, and Station Rotation. I learned so much from this course. I knew about Project-Based Learning, it is kind of “MY THING,” but it was so refreshing to learn about so many other ways of structuring a class. When I first began teaching, my classroom did not have structure. I was always trying to decide what the best way for delivering a particular lesson would be. It wasn’t until I decided that I was going to develop a Project-Based Learning environment that my instruction started to become more effective. All of a sudden I had a focus regarding how I was going to prepare every lesson. Integrating a methodology into your classroom is critical. It allows students to make sense of the content in a constant fashion. When I decided to run a PBL classroom, it worked great sometimes, and then there were other times that it was terrible. Something was still missing: Time. It is the one argument against PBL; there just isn’t enough time to do it and do it right. When flipped learning comes into the equation, everything changes. Flipped learning provides teachers with time. It wasn’t until I flipped my class that Project-Based Learning became a genuinely effective instructional methodology. The fact that I wasn’t trying to balance my instructional time with project time solved everything that had once made Project-Based Learning a challenge at times. Regardless of the instructional methodology you use, flipped learning is the meta-strategy that makes it work even better. I want to encourage you to take a look at your instructional practices and ask the question, “How do you teach your students?” Are you using one of the methods I discussed: Mastery, PBL, Peer Instruction, Gamification, Socratic Seminars, Inquiry, Genius Hour, or Station Rotation? How has flipped learning made your instructional methods more effective?
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Mr. Dan JonesMaster Flip Educator with 13 years experience in the classroom. FLGI Faculty Trainer who trains based on the Gold Standard of Flipped Learning 3.0. Expertise in project based learning. Archives
October 2018
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