When I first heard about the flipped classroom, I was slightly confused. It felt more like a college type class setting, in which we do a lot of the reading and prep work outside of class, to be given a further explanation in the form of a lecture. The flipped classroom is slightly similar, with the prep work and learning done outside of class - but in class, the students are to do the work with the assistance and guidance of the teacher.
I think this is an interesting concept to implement. First of all, students that are struggling could do this lesson at their own pace, ensuring their understanding. They could pause, repeat, slow things down in the lesson so that they can make sure they fully understand the concepts taught.
The only issue I have with it is that most of my students do not have access to a computer at home, which limits the effectiveness of the flipped classroom. It is too reliant upon the availability and access to technology the students have, and with students in poorer communities, this could be a struggle. My students would miss watching the video as they did not have access to it at home, and during after school library hours, they are unable to attend or forget to attend. It's hard to plan out flipped classroom lessons when we have to keep this factor in mind. Perhaps, a flipped classroom lesson that can be done with a reading assignment on paper could be considered to be accessible for the students at home when they don't have access to these sort of technology.
It was also a good experience for me to learn how to develop questions that requires a certain level of thinking. Getting their responses back was a good feedback to see how well I could deliver the content for them to understand. It was also a good way for my supervising teacher and I to know what the students knowledge are about things we thought they'd know already, for instance, the proper formatting and usage of quotation marks.
With Google Forms, we could see a summary in which questions the students were struggling most, and proper formatting and usage of quotation marks was one. Seeing the results indicated to me and my teacher that we should adjust our lesson plans to accommodate to making sure our students learn this concept in another lesson.
You are right, that if the students do not have access to technology at home, then the flipped method, via video anyway, would not be of much use. I wonder what the actual percentage is of students at your school who not have access. Do you have an idea?
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