Flipping Fantastic! - Head's Blog

Posted on: 02/11/2018

Every day I am in awe of how engaged our pupils are with their learning and how they strive to take their learning beyond school, but this week I feel the need to share a particular example of this!

As the pupils go through the school, the learning that we expect the pupils to do at home has a different emphasis; the children are introduced to ‘Flipped Learning’.

Flipped Learning inverts the traditional classroom model by introducing concepts before class, allowing teachers to use class time to guide each student through active, practical, innovative applications of the principles. The teacher provides resources such as videos so that the core concepts may be covered by the children at their own pace before the lesson. A quick quiz or other feedback from the children informs the teacher of their level of understanding so that the appropriate level of support for each child can be provided in class. Time previously spent addressing the whole class is spent supporting individuals as they solidify what they have learnt, test their comprehension and master the content.

This method of home learning ensures that pupils are able to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a subject but also that they are extending their learning skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication and perseverance with a greater depth of responsibility.

Our Year 6 pupils were recently asked to choose their own way of helping other children understand one of the topics that they had learnt. They produced a range of interesting presentations that could be used for Flipped Learning. Some children chose to develop their presentations over the holidays. One produced his own animated video explaining the order of operations in maths. Please follow this link to watch his video. Thomas has not only used his IT skills but demonstrated his understanding of algebra using his creativity and with a superb sense of humour!  

This is a prime of example of how our pupils are engaged and inspired by learning and I know that in the very near future Thomas is also hoping to take part in a masterclass on movie making with the iPad, including green screen, run by external provider https://www.tomorrowsachievers.co.uk/. Do take a look at this website as there are so many wonderful opportunities for our pupils to participate in at weekends and holidays.

Mr. Lewis, who is the leading force on ‘Flipped Learning’, will be sharing more on its uses and how our pupils are being encouraged to embrace Flipped Learning, not only for school home learning, but also for how it can inspire them beyond the classroom...but that is for a future blog!

Mrs. Drummond