Flipping Tip: Be a Flipping Coach!

“All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself.” – Bill McCartney 

Coaching in a flipped classroom means providing your students with the resources and opportunities they need to achieve their fullest potential as scholars. Not every student will succeed. I wish they did. And not every student achieves the same level of excellence. Regardless, we exist to ensure they have every opportunity to do so. The rest is in their hands.

One of the things you can do to help is to require mastery of a prerequisite topic before allowing a student to move on to the next. This fills the cognitive gaps which so frequently freeze academic progress later on. How can we expect a student to master Physics with deficient math skills?

Students do not learn at the same pace. Differentiated learning accomodates these differences by allowing students to progress as their own pace.  This means students will finish a course of study at various times. However, you can reduce these differences by employing faster learners as tutors. Everyone benefits from peer tutoring. The tutored benefit from the added exposure to content from a more youthful perspective. Tutors gain deeper understanding through the act of teaching another (Belmond-Klemme).

Flipping requires teachers to make course artifacts available in advance to accommodate their quicker students. These artifacts include but are not limited to syllabi, textbooks, suggested readings, audio recordings, case studies, videos, images, hyperlinks, discussion questions, presentations, assignments, quizzes, and exams. A repository is needed to house these artifacts and make them available. Your LMS (Learning Management System) is the perfect repository. It provides convenience and security. Which one you use is mostly a matter of taste but I suggest using one compatible with tablets and smartphones. So far I know of two; Blackboard and Edmodo. 

Flipping maximizes teacher-student interaction. It frees you from didactic lecture so you can focus your attention on students who need it. Dialog is more natural and students are less timid to ask questions. Once you discover deficiencies you can make progress toward recovery. Anecdotal data suggests recovered students keep pace with their peers.

At-risk students often just need to know someone cares about them. Once they taste success they tend to thrive. Such was the experience of this once at-risk pupil.
 

Belmond-Klemme. “The Learning Pyramid“, 2012. Belmond-Klemme Technology PD Wiki. Creative Commons. http://bkpd.wikispaces.com/04++The+Learning+Pyramid.

 

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