Reflection 11/19

Upon thinking about the idea of a flipped classroom, so many questions come to mind. How do you ensure that your students are engaged and interested in your subject? How do you know your students even watched the video? What happens when a student doesn’t have access to the internet, or if a student’s internet is not working for one night? With a flipped classroom, how in the world are you going to keep your students motivated to succeed in your classroom? I think about sitting through class all day long and then having to go home and having to watch videos of the next lesson, and I don’t think that sounds appealing at all. Yes this may allow a teacher to have more time working with individual students as opposed to just standing in front of a classroom and lecturing, but who says those are the only two options. I think it is crazy to try to teach a student a lesson with no opportunity for that child to interact or ask questions. By having lessons that are based on student discovery we see that teachers can promote whole class discussions and lead student learning, while avoiding lecture style teaching. Furthermore, how would we reach students who have no interest in learning or succeeding in school? By creating lessons that are interesting and engaging we are pulling all students into the lesson, while telling a student to watch a video every night is not going to be successful for all students. I think that those in favor of flipped classrooms are just comparing it to a typical lecture style classroom, but that is not the only other option. As teachers, we need to focus on reaching every student by having lessons that are engaging for every student and lead by student discovery.