Flipped French Classroom: What I have done and what I have learned

Flipping my classroom has been flippin' fantastic.

In today's educational setting of student-centred learning, integrating the flipped learning concept into my classroom has given me such an appreciation of what it means for all of my students to have access to the curriculum.

For those who are unsure of the term, 'flipped learning' or the 'flipped classroom' turns traditional content learning on its head, by getting students to access the content out of the classroom (generally through videos at home) and completing exercises and tasks in the classroom. Ideally, this means that all students can complete their homework by themselves, and can bring in questions to ask the teacher. When the students come to class, they can complete tasks, projects and exercises with the aid of the teacher and their peers.

So, I had a Year 9 French class whom I thought would be the perfect guinea pigs for flipped learning...

Madame, are you Youtube famous? The kids started to cotton on that I have a Youtube channel which I use distribute the videos for homework, and although 'no', I am not Youtube famous, it has been an easy platform to upload my videos and easy access for all students at my school. You can also create playlists for your videos so that students can watch beyond the set video.

I would set the homework to be completed over a one week period. Year 9's, especially at our school, have a ton of commitments! I asked them to watch the grammar video and take detailed notes in the course of a week. It is never my intention to 'dumb down' the work, but to ensure that they are coached on how to prioritise and schedule their work to be done. I have had some great conversations with my Year 9's on using their calendars and organising their schedules to get their work done.

At the start of each week for 1 period, my students would come in to the classroom and sit at a levelled table:

Classroom instructions for flipped learning

Madame, how did I go? Can you work this out with me? Questions and on task conversations were flying around the classroom. Students had their devices open and were completing levelled activities using editable Google Slides. Once an activity was complete, they submitted their work and moved up to the next level. Their enthusiasm was inspiring!

This enthusiasm continued over the course of the term. Yes - some students came into class not having watched the video. They watched the video in class. Yes - some students were tired and confused on the content. They asked other students for help or asked questions in class. Yes - some students were so advanced that I had to form creative tasks for them prior to class or on the fly. Awesome.
The one common thread was that ALL students could access and interact with the content at their own level.

So what have I learned from this initial flipped learning experience?
1) That students do want more guidance. This term, I will still use the flipped learning for grammar with my Year 9's, however I am going to trial embedding the video in to a Google Form and writing some reflection questions for the students to answer. I will then also know who has completed the homework and when.

2) I asked my students to complete a survey, and be brutally honest... there was a unanimous vote that my videos were WAY too long! It is good to understand what kind of media students are familiar with in this day and age. Vlogging, memes, vines... these are all new methods of communication. A 15-20 minute lecture just doesn't cut it anymore. My plan is to make 5 minute videos with more oral content over the holidays, and we'll see how that goes!

3) Flipped learning has awarded me more time to focus on the communicative classroom. By getting the passive content off the board, I can spend more time in class using French by talking and interacting with my students. I plan to spend at least one period a week solely on communicative tasks with my Year 9's. I mean, we learn a language to hopefully be able to speak it one day, yeah?

4) It has opened great conversations with my colleagues from different departments. So many teachers have come up to me and told me great ways of how they might do something similar for science, maths... It is stimulating for us teachers to try new methods, too.

Are you implementing flipped learning or have thought about doing it? Please comment below and let me know your thoughts/methods!

NB: I always forget to take photos of my classroom's in session. I will endeavour to do this in term 3!