Blended Learning - The Flipped Classroom Model

            The research that I looked into for blended learning centered around the idea of the “Flipped Classroom” model. This idea of the flipped classroom interested me primarily because one of the major things I will be trying to balance as a new teacher is the pacing of the classes I will be teaching. This is something I really want to work on during my first year of teaching because I know that I will have a wide range of student abilities in my classes and I must ensure that all of my students are successful. Thus, I feel that if I can incorporate some principles of the flipped classroom into my own practice, my students will be able to work at their own pace and I can create opportunities for them to study and learn about topics that interest them.

            While I like the idea of implementing some principles of the flipped classroom into my own teaching practices, I feel that there are still many questions I have about properly implementing this teaching method. For example, one are article I read stated “for most teachers (and students), videos are the method of choice for delivering the out-of-class portion of the instruction” (Herried & Schiller, 2013). While I do believe that videos definitely can make for engaging activities for students to complete while at home, I also accept that not all students enjoy analyzing and working with videos. Some other ideas that I thought would fit into a flipped classroom would be having students work with news articles and other current event material at home and then working on making past/present connections in the classroom. While these are two examples that I know can be used in a flipped classroom, I know that I could not simply rely on these few strategies to ensure that my classroom would be interesting and engaging for students throughout the school year.

            Finally, when looking up research on the effectiveness of flipped classrooms and how they could be incorporated into the traditional classroom, there was one question that I could not find a solid answer to. While I see that the flipped classroom model can have benefits for students, I also wanted to know if ideas of the flipped classroom could be incorporated with other teaching practices as well. While I see the benefits of having students learning at home at their own pace, I also know that the flipped classroom model may not help every student, which is why I would want to incorporate it with other teaching practices as well.