Tips to Start Your Flipped Classrooms

1. Get to know your students. What interests them, what technology do they use, what technology is available to them at home and in your school? Consider sending out surveys to find answers

2. Define your approach, method, and personal preference. Be aware of how you prefer to teach and why. Consider what could stand between your favorite teaching approach and what the flipped classroom would require. Be prepared to unlearn strategies and methods and to reinvent your teaching to be relevant to your learners. Be the teacher who is a partner in learning to the students.

3. Create an environment of constructive and communicative learning. This environment should exist both at home and school, should have built-in collaboration opportunities for students, and should provide students with the tools to navigate it successfully.

4.Start Slow. One activity/lesson at a time. There is no need to change all your units at once. Start with one group and one lesson.

5.You cannot overprepare for flipped instruction. For students to work effectively at home and without teacher guidance, students need meticulously prepared materials and activities.

6. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy. Provide experience on various levels. Try to provide instruction for understanding and remembering at home, and reserve classroom time for applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

7. Provide clear instructions. They must be unambiguous and clear to all learners.

8. Make yourself available. It is extremely beneficial to students to be able to reach you after school hours to clear up any learner confusion. Consider virtual office hours or availability via email and phone .

9. Maximize collaboration and s ocial interaction. Consider how collaboration among students can be maximized. Provide technology tools for this purpose.

10. Use constructivist methods. Provide ample opportunity for all learners to be able to construct knowledge in their way and to be able to show mastery.

11. Consider low technology environments. Think of ways that the flipped classroom will work if students do not have access to technology a t home and at school.

12. Teach digital literacy. Infuse learning with 21st -century skill activities . U sing teacher - created PowerPoint presentations will not do. S tudents can only learn digital skills if they can manipulate technology themselves in meaningful learning situations. Connect 21st - century skills and digital literacy to English l anguage instruction.

13. Assess efficiently . Create activities that double as formative assessments. Let students create different products to show mastery.

14. Utilize data. Collect and analyze student learning and outcome data to monitor how successful your instruction is. Revise your processes if needed .

15. Commit to life long learning. Engage in ongoing professional development, even if your institution doesn’t provide it.