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I am approaching my final semester of school as preservice teacher at Kent State University. I recently attended a conference with a roundtable section on a flipped classroom. Although the discussion was about college classrooms I was very interested in trying to implement a flipped classroom into my student teaching in a middle school environment. Has anyone tried this? What were some failures and successes? or does anyone have any general advice to offer?

Hi Haley, This [url=https://www.knewton.com/infographics/flipped-classroom/]infographic on the Flipped Classroom[/url] gives a nice overview of the process. Flipped classrooms aren't really new. English teachers have long assigned reading assignments for students to do as homework so that they could come to class prepared to discuss and engage in the material. The advent of the digital age has just made the opportunities for providing lectures and simulations to students in other disciplines practical. I've used a flipped classroom in my high school classes. There is definitely more information on the flipped classroom at the high school and college level. This may be partly due to issues with access to the technology needed to implement it equally. If you are at a school that has a one-to-one program where students will have a device provided to them for use, or if you are in a school whose students all have access to a computer/laptop/iPad/smartphone and have Internet access at home, then there isn't a problem. However, there are few districts where you have universal access, so you will need to have options available for students who cannot reach the content at home. This might be providing content on a flash drive (if Internet alone is the issue) or find time during the day that the students can access the content (if technology at home is the issue). [url=https://www.youtube.com/user/Learning4Mastery]Jon Bergmann's YouTube channel[/url] has a lot of good videos on the Flipped Classroom, particularly for mastery learning. My school uses mastery learning and I find having a "flipped classroom" where students can access content that they need to prepare (remediate) for retesting is a powerful tool. Other teachers provide their lectures online in short (5-8 minute) videos that students are to view and outline or take notes from and then come to class prepared to apply that content. I've attached my Flipped Classroom Collection that has several links to NSTA resources on the topic. Rebecca Falin

Flipped Classroom Collection (4 items)

Science 2.0: “Flipping” Your Classroom

- Journal Article

Science 2.0: A Flipped Classroom in Action

- Journal Article

Science 2.0: Flipping Your Classroom in One "Take"

- Journal Article

View All 4 Items

I'm also a preservice teacher, and I've heard a lot about flipped classrooms! At the end of the day I think the usefulness of them all depends on your subject matter and how they are implemented. A success story I heard about was a high school math classroom full of students who would watch the videos and do the "lessons" on their own at home, and come back excited to talk to their peers about it, draw connections, answer each others' questions, and do the engaging practice at school together. That all boils down, in my opinion, to how the teacher scaffolded everything. One thing to be careful of is always the access to internet/computers/materials outside of school if you are sending them home with the task of watching an instructional video or anything like that. Good luck!