Some of the lessons I designed for this course were based on a traditional classroom model rather than a flipped class. Next year I will demonstrate the skill not as a whole class but rather with small groups (5 students or fewer) so I can be more responsive to the individual needs of my students. Research about student-centered, constructivist classrooms show increases in students’ higher order thinking, learning, motivation, positive attitudes about science, levels of engagement, and enhanced non-cognitive skills (Keiler, 2018). My flipped class is student-centered and it did not seem natural or normal for us to all be doing the same thing at the same time because that is not what my students needed from me. According to a study by Odom & Bell (2015), there were positive correlations between student-centered learning and student performance as well as student attitudes toward science. More frequent teacher demonstrations resulted in lower post test scores. Therefore, in the future, I will trust my own teaching style and will deliver direct instruction to small groups of students at the moment when they are ready to take that step, not as a whole class.
A flipped class offers more opportunities to personalize learning in a culturally relevant student-centered class. CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE to learn more about how to flip your classes from the experts at the Flipped Learning Network. Bild von farioff auf Pixabay
It takes time to establish the work flow of a flipped class. Many students approach learner-centered classwork hesitantly, waiting to be told exactly what to do they could get the right answer. A school culture that values student compliance presents an obstacle to open and guided inquiry (Robelen, 2006). After all, we take away their ability to decide many of the simplest things for themselves by requiring school uniforms, by using gestures to dictate body postures during class time, and by awarding zeros for late and missing work. My chemistry classes that are flipped for mastery are structured very differently from the rest of my students' prior learning experiences. Students must take much more ownership in the learning process than they are used to. In particular, a class that is flipped for mastery requires students to think and act much more independently than they are accustomed to doing (Chen & Chen, 2014). Learners' initial hesitation and confusion was a logical and reasonable consequence to the shift from compliance to inquiry. Rather than rescuing students from their confusion, I offer think time, processing time, and intentional questioning strategies to help students make connections to prior knowledge. It is easy for a teacher to be misled that students understand isolated skills when we keep the skills isolated from one another (Ausubel, D. 2001; ScholAR Chemistry, 2010; American Chemical Society, 2018). For example, on a worksheet or quiz entitled “Writing Formulas for Ionic Compounds” students can show 100% accuracy with writing the formulas, but when given a more thorough assessment of their skills, where they have to decide for themselves which naming convention to use, ionic, molecular, or acidic, students reveal the weaknesses or misconceptions in their approach. This is reflected in the grading scale, where a 2 (C-) is awarded for correctly writing the name of a simple ionic compound, but in order to achieve a 3 (A-) or a 4 (A+), the student must decide which naming system is appropriate and apply it correctly (Maze, Bunnell, Brookens, Bustos & Eger, 2014). This kind of error, where students fail to apply a skill they once had mastered, is common across all content areas and skills. Learners sometimes forget, so it is important to spiral content and use spacing as a learning strategy to aid in recall and retention (Agarwal & Bain, 2019; Brown, Roediger & McDaniel, 2014). It is tempting to jump in and provide the right answers when it is obvious that a group is struggling, that would undermine all of the previous training in independence and student agency that I have been working towards for an entire school year. Desirable difficulty helps students engage in the more difficult tasks of retrieval and the brain remembers information better if they have to struggle to learn it. It is important to build a high level of tolerance for frustration, for instance using growth mindset language and questioning strategies, to develop persistence as a part of the class culture.
Assessment and grading practices must also be adjusted for a class to truly become student-centered. By providing multiple means and opportunities to demonstrate mastery, the learning target becomes constant for all learners, while the time it takes to get there becomes the variable. Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
In my class there is not a penalty for turning in work late in my class because I enter grades on skills rather than points for doing assignments. Students who asked for more time to work through a concept may be granted a “stay of execution,” which means that I don’t mark the assignments as “Missing” and alert their parents to a problem, until the next class. Offering students flexibility in meeting a deadline helps to put the focus on learning and mastery rather than points, percents, and compliance. Those who are most eager to accomplish the work are students who have an immediate and relevant need for the information, so building relevance into each assignment helps maintain student interest and engagement. For this reason, I am very interested in finding ways to make my classes more relevant to my students' lives outside of school. Finally, I would like to work more closely with my colleagues to develop interdisciplinary units of study, especially where critical thinking skills of supporting claims with evidence and reasoning overlap. For example, my chemistry students need to see how the error analysis comes together in the conclusion section of a research report in a logical and coherent paragraph. Since their previous lab reports revealed conclusion writing and error analysis to be a weakness, it makes sense to extend this activity and provide more scaffolded support in this area. Drawing conclusions and communicating their ideas clearly and logically is not isolated to science classes only. It would probably pay off to take their analysis a little deeper by collaborating with their other content area teachers. Then when students write conclusions, have a peer review process, and publish their findings to their digital portfolios, they are submitting work that they can be proud of.
Listen to the perspective of renowned assessment expert, Rick Wormeli, as he discusses assessment and grading in the differentiated classroom (Sternhouse Publishers, 2010).
References
Agarwal, P., & Bain, P. (2019). Powerful teaching: Unleash the science of learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ausubel, D. (2001). The acquisition and retention of knowledge: A cognitive view / response. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 668.
Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe
Brunsell, E. & Horejsi, M. (2013). Science 2.0: A flipped classroom in action. The Science Teacher, 80 (2), p. 8 Chen, Y. Wang, Y., & Chen, N.S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead? Computers & Education, 79, pp. 16-27
Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. (2013). The 12 touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying focused every day. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Keiler, L. (2018). Teachers’ roles and identities in student-centered classrooms. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(1), 1-20.
Maze, J., Bunnell, H., Brookens, P., Bustos, G. & Eger, N. (2014). Chemistry course objectives. Unpublished working paper. Retrieved from https://www.cde.state.co.us/sites/default/files/documents/coscience/documents/science_hs.pdf
Odom, A. L., & Bell, C. V. (2015). Associations of middle school student science achievement and attitudes and science with student-reported frequency of teacher lecture demonstrations and student-centered learning. International Journal of Environmental & Science Education, 10(1), 87–97.
Paivio, Allan. (2014). Intelligence, dual coding theory, and the brain. Intelligence, 47, 141.
Stenhouse Publishers. (2010, December 14). Rick Wormeli: Redos, Retakes, and Do-Overs, Part One [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/TM-3PFfIfvI