Flipped JLC Classroom?

I am so excited about the concept of a Flipped Classroom.  In a flipped classroom the teacher posts what would be traditionally a lecture as a 5-10 minute video for students to watch as "homework" so they can hop right into an activity or application of the content in the classroom.  It has been used for a few years in high schools in math and science classes and is recently getting a lot of attention in the education universe.

I don't teach in a high school.  I don't teach chemistry or math.  I am the director of a synagogue based supplemental school program for K-6 and I can't stop thinking about the implications for my program.

This year at Adat Ari El we are piloting a new program.  We have moved away from the traditional classroom model of "religious school" or "Hebrew school" and we are encouraging the students to explore and create.  We have even stopped calling ourselves a school, instead we are the Jewish Learning Community of Adat Ari El and our pilot year is going swimmingly.

So what about the flip?  I'll get there.

Well, our new program focuses on allowing our students (and their families) the space to live engaged and committed Jewish lives.  We travel to Camp Ramah in Ojai, CA three times during our school year (twice for 4th to 6th graders and once as an entire community of parents, students, facilitaors, siblings, rabbis - everyone) to celebrate Shabbat and engage in Jewish practice.  We spend Tuesday afternoons together at Adat Ari El exploring, cooking, making videos, dancing, creating art, singing together among other activities.  We have factored in the time spent at camp as part of our yearly learning hours and have replaced our Sunday (with the exception of 6 spread out during the year) mornings with that time.  Our focus is on "doing" and not on sitting passively and learning - but we have to be sure to be intentional in our instruction.

Our time together is meaningful and important.

Also, our time together each week is brief.

The Flipped Classroom model will allow us to share important content with our students outside of our limited class time.  Students (I am thinking 3rd and up, probably) will be required to view content with their families, and who knows, maybe the entire family can benefit from the video.  I imagine Monday nights as viewing nights where families sit together for five to ten minutes and learn together.  This quick burst of content can go a long way in extending our desire to create a community of learners.  Behrman House just created a whole online learning portal where we could house our own video content then direct students to do some independent Hebrew practice.

What if they don't watch the videos?

In the supplemental model lack of participation is always a risk.  What if our kids don't show up to school for several weeks in a row?  What if the baseball schedule suddenly gets moved to Tuesday afternoons?  Posting content and asking our students to watch it before school is a "what if" that I'm willing to risk.  Allowing our teachers to act as facilitators of self directed student learning rather than the teacher from Peanuts sounds pretty awesome to me.

Stay tuned.  I'm pitching this idea at our staff meeting on Sunday.  Of course I'm going to ask them to watch a video on Flipped Classrooms first and let them do the talking at the meeting....