Erika's Professional Master of Education Journey 

I plan on creating six, fifteen-minute video lessons that will teach the concepts required by the Progressions of Learning for Earth and Space in secondary three science. I will be using a PowerPoint presentation as my visual base, and I will record my explanations to these slides through voiceover. Students will be given a copy of all the PowerPoint slides in addition to a handout that scaffolds how one should approach actively engaging with a video lesson. Students will also be explained this in class as part of the introductory lesson to this unit as we attempt the FLM. Briefly, students are expected to highlight, record any additional notes or any questions that arise that can be addressed during the next class before the planned activities begin. I am doing this to encourage a similar approach to the video lessons as what I know normally transpires in class. These videos will be uploaded to Edmodo, our online platform.

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I plan on creating a Learning Evaluation Activity Package that will involve the application of the content learned from the video lessons through activities that are respectful of the Universal Design for Learning, Learning Styles and Bloom’s Taxonomy to create an opportunity for inclusive and differentiated involvement of the students. More specifically, many of the activities are geared towards visual, verbal, physical, logical, social and independent learning styles. Furthermore, according to the Universal Design for Learning, “teachers prepare the learning environment with flexible means, methods, and materials that will allow them to better meet the needs of every student” (Morin, A., 2019). The activities allow for students to show their learning in three ways including written, oral and visual. Finally, Bloom Taxonomy’s hierarchal order of questioning was utilized to incorporate a mixed variety of lower to higher order thinking skills (Heick, T., 2018). The reasoning behind this was for me to gauge students’ ability to think critically and formulate answers.

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These activities will run over three days. Three of the activities will be supported by my direct involvement. This will give the students and myself the opportunity to engage in meaningful learning through a structured activity but with my close support and participation in their learning. To facilitate these efforts, I will create a flexible learning environment whereby I will “physically rearrange [my] learning space to accommodate the lesson or unit” (Hamdan, N. & McKnight, P., 2013, p.4). I will move the students out of their traditional rows into groups of four. This will hopefully encourage students to work collaboratively as they tackle each of the six activities. In addition, I have incorporated the use of basic skills and relevant real-life scenarios to hopefully show students that there is meaning in the tasks we do in class and relevancy to worldly issues. This will hopefully be my first attempt at really “communicat[ing] the real-world relevance of basic skills to students” and “leverag[ing] failure effectively in the classroom [to cultivate] flexibility in students” (Miller, A., 2015, p.4).

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Assessment of my students will happen in three ways, I plan on assessing students’ level of understanding and ability when working with them at three of the six planned activities. I will also be collecting and evaluating their Learning Evaluation Booklets. Finally, students will have to complete an end of unit test. This will occur after the due date of this assignment, but will nonetheless help with drawing conclusions as to the effectiveness of the Flipped Learning Model.

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This may seem like a monstrous task, but I am doing this because of the need for inclusion, and the STRAFE approach seems like the best approach given the short amount of time allowed for such an experiment. Finally, through meticulous and detailed planning, I am meeting the requirement of the FLM whereby intentional content is being maximized by a skilled educator to support the content learned outside the class (Hamdan, N. & McKnight, P., 2013, p.5). Many changes to my regular approach are being attempted, and to some extent I feel like I am relinquishing control. This, in itself, is risky but viable.

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Part 4: Ideas into Practice

Successes

As I set this unit in motion, I was hopeful for the many successes it will allow and the degree to which my students would make me proud. I was humbled by some of the noticeable successes.

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The opportunity to create an inclusive classroom environment through various activities that were created and adapted from several sources of inspiration while respecting the Universal Design for Learning, Learning Styles and the incorporation of Bloom’s Taxonomy of hierarchal questioning, was definitely possible with the FLM. I appreciated the time I was able to spend with the students in small groups as opposed to the usual direct instruction. I was able to witness how students processed information and approached the task at hand, and I was absolutely able to see any weaknesses students may have. These included reading, interpreting, formulating coherent thoughts, basic mathematical skills, and in one case a severe lack of interpersonal skills. The first time I worked with the students they were hesitant to interact with me which is completely understandable given the novelty of such an approach. However, once we were in the third interaction, the expectations of how to proceed were understood and to this extent “by establishing classroom norms and routines that support a safe environment, we can provide students with the scaffolding they need as they fail forward” (Miller, A., 2015, p.5). Since this was one of the major reasons for attempting the FLM in my class, I am very satisfied that I was able to create a more inclusive classroom. To be fair, the amount of time and effort that went into creating the details and resources necessary for this success, could deter some teachers from attempting this approach. I myself spent a significant amount of time creating the resources and planning the activities for this unit using the Flipped Model. However, I maintain that it may be more difficult and time-consuming at first, but like all other attempts at curriculum delivery, it gets easier with time and experience.

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Another success that came from this approach was the acknowledgment by some students that they appreciated the extra support the video lessons provided. This comment pertained to the more advanced students who were more inclined to manage their learning. After participating in the first round of in-class activities, these students went home and re-watched some parts of the video dealing with topics they found they struggled with that day. This was a desirable behavior that I was hoping for, and I was not completely surprised that my more advanced students took advantage of this option. This also gives me hope that through more scaffolding and even peer-to-peer discussions, this type of engagement with the video lessons could potentially gain in popularity.

The final point that I determined a success would be the STRAFE approach that I utilized. A lot was going on in this unit, but this was done purposefully. Through what seemed to be organized chaos, I was able to take note of areas that needed my attention. For example, as I worked with one group of students, at times the other groups were off task. This was a perfect example of the lack of control I was giving up as I attempted the FLM, and thus the risk I was taking. I did not interpret this negatively, rather as an opportunity to adjust my expectations of the students’ work ethic, and made that clear to students. I noticed other issues that involved their basic skill ability. In the future, when I consider this approach again, I need to incorporate even more opportunities for students to improve upon their basic skills. Clearly, teaching involves a great deal of tweaking, modifying and trying again. With the above as the most profound examples of successes using the FLM, I turn my attention to what I deemed as failures.

Failures

It was blatantly apparent that I took for granted the students’ willingness to complete the task of watching the video lessons on their own time prior to class. To be able to measure whether students viewed the videos in an engaged manner, upon entry to class I asked students to show me their copies of the PowerPoint presentation so that I could assess whether they were employing the techniques and recommendations for active listening. If students highlighted, underlined, wrote down additional notes and questions, or did any one of the above-mentioned actions, I called this a success. Unfortunately, only 57% of students in one group and 25% in my other group engaged in active viewing. This was unprecedently upsetting to me. Admittingly, I was not fully prepared for such a low participation rate, especially in the class where only 25% percent of students viewed the lessons. For this class, I decided to work with the six students who had wholeheartedly come to class prepared and assigned workbook pages to the eighteen students who had not. I am fully aware that this decision was more for punitive reasons rather than for the students’ benefit, but I was not prepared to revert back to actually teaching the lesson in class. I felt it would have defeated the purpose of this attempt at a different curriculum approach. For my other section, I divided the class into groups making sure that every student, who had not prepared for the class, was placed with at least two other students who had done the video viewing. I then proceeded with the learning activities as planned for this group. In the future, I would have to come up with a better means of ensuring that the learning is done prior to the in-class activity. However, I do not think the solution lies solely in elements of the FLM. I think that this is the perfect Segway for teaching vital skills that border with self-regulated learning.

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I believe the videos themselves needed improvement, and the fact that they were my first attempt was obvious. My voice was shaky at times, albeit I also had a cold at the time. I felt rushed, and as much as I wanted to dive into greater detail, I felt I would lose the students if I did. I asked students what they thought of the videos and what suggestions they had for me to improve them. In the end, students suggested that I should be filmed in the process of teaching a class as if they were taking part in direct instruction. I can appreciate how important this may be since I feel that a teacher communicates through body language, active use of the smartboard, writing and emphasizing certain key words or modelling examples of problems. These are all examples of the importance of direct instruction and what students have come to rely on. This would be an even greater risk for me to create videos in this manner but, they could be used to assess how I teach and what I could further improve on. I disagree that Flipped Learning “will eventually replace educators”, as some critics seem to think (Hamdan, N. & McKnight, P., 2013, p.5). I am not yet resolved to say that a FLM is highly successful, but I am able to acknowledge that a lot of time and careful effort needs to go into these video lessons and that they are beneficial to some degree. Even if there is a massive shift towards the FLM, the quality of the videos is still a large component of this model’s success. Poor videos equal poor sources of information for the students.

Unexpected Outcomes

Dr. Matson identified the importance of serendipity in the practice of risk-taking. Serendipity “means that new ideas will often come unexpectedly while doing something else” (Tahirsylaj, A., 2012, p. 267). In the case of attempting a Flipped Class, I somewhat unexpectedly became aware of the importance of the student’s ability to self-regulate and the degree to which their critical thinking skills are measuring up.

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“Self-regulated learning is the ability and inclination to carry out assigned tasks in personally responsible, self-reflective ways, and to exercise reasoned judgement in the pursuit of agreed-upon educational goals” (Gini-Newman, G., 2015, p.117). My students were clearly unable to assess their needs, prioritize and carry out required tasks, particularly when they were on their own. Furthermore, they struggled immensely with critical thinking. Although I did not plan on addressing critical thinking skills in this lesson, it became obvious that I will have to in the future. This then opens the opportunity to take the FLM to the next level.