A flipped
classroom is where children are at the centre of learning rather than the
teacher. This concept is being hailed as ‘innovative’ by some educationalists
who believe that learning primarily still revolves around the teacher conveying
information, assigning work, and leaving it to the students to master the
material.
At Nibras
International School, which serves children aged 3-18 years, we are committed
to the concept of flipped classrooms. In order to achieve this leaders are
dedicated to ensuring teachers are trained in methods other than using a
textbook or creating a worksheet. Our vision of ‘learning to learn, be
responsible and to lead’ embodies our belief that for the best learning to take
place, children need to be true participants in their own personal learning
process.
We believe
that with our access to high level brain research and learning theory there is
no excuse for a teacher to still force students to merely be ‘receptors of
information.’ We know for a fact that children (and adults) learn best under
specific conditions and we remind ourselves of these conditions constantly. In
our classrooms, we aim to transform learning be ensuring that:
The students ask the questions - we see this as
crucial for the whole learning process to work. It's not just a feel good
factor. The role of curiosity in effective learning has often been studied
(although perhaps not enough) and we as teachers are aware that without natural
curiosity the prospect of a child meaningfully interacting with others, the
world, texts, and so on, are limited.
In our
classrooms, questions are valued over
answers. We will train our teachers to ‘flip’ the ratio of teacher talk to
student talk 20:80 in order to promote dialogue and questioning which in turn
develops curiosity. This means our teachers will try to talk around 20% of the
time and enable children to talk 80% of the time. We believe it makes sense for
good questions to lead the learning so we place high value on these questions
and students asking them. Rewarding questions rather than answers is a great
‘flip’ which brings significant change.
When planning lessons our teachers will be
encouraged to use multiple and diverse sources including the students
themselves. When teachers and children come across sources which disagree then
they enjoy that moment because they know that is what the world is like, full
of contradictions. Using divergent sources shifts credibility.
Our
teachers will use a variety of learning
models including inquiry-based learning, projects, teacher directed
learning, peer learning, eLearning, Mobile learning, and so on - at Nibras the
possibilities are endless. We feel that no one model is amazing enough to match
the learner diversity in our classrooms. Whilst it is always a challenge to
meet every learner's needs the spin-off is that our teachers will become highly
skilled practitioners and lifelong educators.
We make connections - our vision revolves
around our students and teachers connecting learning to prior learning and
ensuring that everything we teach begins and ends with real life. Our teachers
will plan for connections and often arrange for students to leave the
classrooms for field trips in the school grounds and further afield to support
connectedness with the world beyond.
Whilst many
educationalists see personalised
learning as ‘the future,’ we see it firmly in the present - the here and
now. No longer do we believe that the personalisation is purely the domain of
the teacher. Rather we plan through criteria, language skills, interests,
gender, reading ability, readiness for content, stage of development, again,
the list is endless. We then adjust
the pace and entry points according to each child’s own learning journey so we
support what they individually need.
Our
commitment to ongoing, transparent, persistent and authentic assessment which is never punitive, supports our belief
in ‘flipped’ classrooms. We
constantly ask ourselves why we are assessing students and challenge the
possibility that assessment provides little in terms of benefit to the child
unless it has feedback at its centre. Our students will begin to understand
through careful personalised feedback what their strengths and areas for
development are and how to reach the next step to improvement.
Our
students will not need to guess what success looks like. They will understand
what a cohesive assessment process means to them and they will see feedback and
assessment as an entitlement just as our teachers will see professional
feedback as an entitlement.
With high
professional standards and a commitment to high quality professional
development our teachers will ensure that the best learning behaviours are constantly modelled by the adults in
our school. As a teaching and learning team we will demonstrate curiosity,
flexibility, resilience, persistence, creativity, collaboration, reflection and
great listening. We are all aware that children pick up the subliminal messages
which they see, much faster than the direct ones that they hear - display a bad
habit for a while and see what happens! Children are great mimics.
The essence
of our pedagogy is of course, Bloom’s Taxonomy through which we revisit ideas
and practices, review and reflect and re-evaluate. We try to approach
challenges from different angles, moving from the simple to the complex so that
we all maximise our opportunities to learn and demonstrate understanding of the
content. In short, we aim to provide endless opportunities for children and
teachers to practice their learning
skills.
In
conclusion, we are determined to ensure that our classrooms are well and truly
‘flipped’ and as such we are devoted to expanding on and mastering a range of
material through collaborative learning exercises, projects, and discussions
and are therefore already ‘flipped.’ Our students will have control over their
learning and they will learn at their own pace through a range of approaches
which place learning theory at the heart of practice.
Any further
‘flipping’ at Nibras will also involve the planned development of technology as a tool for learning accessible
to every child at any time through the ‘bring your own device’ scheme and the
use of I-pads in early years. By ‘flipping’ our perceptions of how children
learn best we are able to allow children more time to be children, ensure they
engage positively with learning and make excellent progress. We think our way
of ‘flipping’ is good and the only way to prepare our students for a real
future through real learning.
Christine Simmonds
Group Director of Schools - Middle East
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