Flipped Learning in Motion
By Heather Clydesdale
Ask teachers of Chinese language to name a resource they lack, and chances are they will answer: “time.” Flipped learning, using online sessions to build and drill basic knowledge and skills, frees up time in class. Teachers can leverage this and create opportunities for students to apply language as they practice higher-order thinking.
Helen Yung, vice president of academics at Better Chinese, advocates using backward design when planning a flipped learning curricular unit. Teachers should start with the standards to identify objectives, gauge students’ current abilities and knowledge by analyzing pre-assessments, and then craft a performance-based summative assessment. Next, as teachers develop instruction and learning activities, they determine which will be best suited to online components (introducing new vocabulary and sentence patterns), and which should be highlighted in class (performance-based tasks), to seamlessly integrate technology and learning.
“I want to use all my class time to do things they [students] can’t do at home,” remarks Hilda Leung, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade Chinese at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles, California. She contends that since adopting flipped learning her students come to class and “are speaking right away, doing skits right away, and they are writing right away.”
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