Flipped learning is a relatively new concept in education. The premise behind flipping your teaching is to gain more time while enhancing student achievement. With this goal in mind, there is not question that any teacher would be silly to not jump on board. In this post, I will provide an overview of what flipped learning is and how you as a teacher go about designing it to fit your room.


Whenever I explain flipped learning to teachers, I begin with this visual:

I very simply explains the three modes of a flipped classroom. Before I explain each of the three steps, you should understand that there is not a singular way of flipping your learning. Every teacher has their own "brand" of flipping that is catered to their students, to their building, and to their abilities. Below is a definition explaining the visual as this is how many flipped classroom run.

Before classroom time can be developing content knowledge. This is the bulk of your flipped lesson. The content is introduced and modeled for the students. You may even decide to provide a task for students to complete to help them with understanding of the concept. All of this work is done outside of school.

During classroom time can be spent practicing the material learned the night before. More often, this time is group work or project work where the student apply the knowledge they developed outside of class. This time takes a lot of creativity from the teacher, especially in lower elementary settings. Creative lessons that are pinpointing standards are hard to find at these ages.

After classroom time can be spent following up on the learning. The teacher may decide that the knowledge was not absorbed to the extent that they had hoped and assigns a re-teach lesson for that night. The teacher may also assign extension activities for the students who need it, keeping in mind that they also need to prepare for the next day of learning. More often, this time comes with some kind of check such as a Google form. 

Flipped Learning boils down to a few key elements.
  • Time management - Don't burn out your kids on videos or too much at-home work
  • Lesson engagement - Spend class time with authentic, engaging lessons
  • Technology integration - Face to face discussions are OK
  • Simplicity - Getting too fancy causes teacher work to increase and student engagement to decrease
In later posts, I will outline how I flipped my Kindergarten classroom along with some key tools you should explore!