Flipping the

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A Realist’s Guide
What is
the flipped
classroom?
Just what it sounds like: a learning model in which the classic

structure does a somersault and lands upside down. Your

first thought: that seems painful. Actually no — it provides a

welcome new perspective.

A Realist’s Guide to Flipping the Classroom 2

Introduction
In more concrete terms.
Students use digital tools to listen to lectures and review other resources on
their own time (outside of the classroom). In class, they work together on
activities and concepts — with the help of the teacher — putting what they’ve
learned into practice, often times learning from each other.

Since its emergence circa 2007, the flipped classroom has gotten
a lot of buzz. It is praised as a way to do the following

• Engage active learners with a collaborative and customized

educational environment

• Increase time for individualized, one-on-one instruction

• Encourage more and better student-instructor communication

• Enable high-performing students to expand their knowledge while

giving struggling students more tools for catching up

• Involve parents more meaningfully in the learning process

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Introduction
Flipping for beginners.
Standing on your head is harder than it looks, and flipping the classroom is, too.
That’s especially true for instructors just getting started with a flip. And with a
concept this new, most are beginners. Those who have been at it the longest
say the strategy for successful flipping combines enthusiasm with a healthy
dose of realism. In this guide, you’ll learn from their experiences and get some
tested-in-the-real-world tips for doing a flip of your own.

What you’ll learn from this guide

1. Anatomy of a flip.
2. The benefits of upside down instruction.
3. Tips for successful flips.

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Introduction
1.
Anatomy
of a flip.

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Anatomy of a flip
The inspiration.
When Sherry Spurlock decided in 2011 to flip her classes at Pekin Community
High School in Pekin, Ill., she had the necessary enthusiasm. And she
understood what she was taking on — mostly.

Spurlock had attended a workshop by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams,

Colorado high school teachers who are considered architects of the flipped
classroom. Their message was inspiring, especially since their success recording
lectures and using face-to-face time to shepherd student learning was forged in
a chemistry classroom. Spurlock asked school administrators to back her plan
to flip all of her classes — four chemistry courses and a physics course — in one
“I warned
fell swoop. Then she spent much of the summer getting ready.
my husband: ‘I think this really is going to make a difference
for the kids, but is going to take a lot of time.’”

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Anatomy of a flip
The preparation.
“My free time was spent putting together materials for the podcasts, making
videos, creating worksheets,” Spurlock said. “Once the school year started,
things would come up that needed to be redone or that I wanted to add.
And so a typical day would be to show up at school at about 6:30 a.m. to get
everything ready in the classroom for the students and spend the rest of the
day working with four-person student groups. At the end of the school day, I
would have a list of things that I needed to do to get ready for the next day.”

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Anatomy of a flip
The flip.
Spurlock’s class was transformed. “In my traditional classroom, the students
came in and sat in neat little rows. I lectured for 45 to 50 minutes, and they
took notes and occasionally asked a question. And then I assigned homework
designed to reinforce what we talked about in the class. They went home, tried
to figure it out, got discouraged, came back the next day, and we went over
“Now, they go home and watch the
the material again,” she said.
content. They come into class and form groups of four. They
work with each other on problem sets and worksheets, ask
each other questions and ask me questions. I am right there as
they’re going through those reinforcing exercises. I can walk them through the
process, if they need me to. I’m there to question them until they understand
what’s going on and can then move on. And they act as each other’s mentors
and keep one another on track.”

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Anatomy of a flip
The payoff.
Spurlock survived her first flipped year, and now is reaping the rewards of her
hard work. It’s too soon to say whether students’ test scores have improved
“What
in the flipped classroom, although Pekin High is studying that.
encourages me to continue with the flipped classroom is
the attitude and the perception of the students,” Spurlock
said. “They are much more involved in what’s going on in class than they ever
have been in the past. That’s a much better sign for me than their test scores.
And, from a time-management perspective, the second year has been much,
much easier. A lot of the content is done already. It’s just a matter of organizing
and posting and making improvements. This year there’s less of that setup
work and much more active time with the students.”

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Anatomy of a flip
We were spending inordinate amounts of
time re-teaching lessons to students who
missed class, and the recorded lectures
became our first line of defense. Our absent
students loved the recorded lectures.
Students who missed class were able to
learn what they missed.
—J
 onathan Bergmann
Chemistry teacher
Woodland Park, CO

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Anatomy of a flip
Genesis of the flip.
Chemistry teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann are considered class-
flipping pioneers. Their lectures and explanatory videos, originally posted online
for their Woodland Park, CO, high school students, have become go-to tools for
students and instructors around the world. Their book Flip Your Classroom: Reach
Every Student in Every Class Every Day is now a prime resource for novice flippers.
In this 2011 blog excerpt, Bergmann explains that they started with a self-serving
plan but quickly realized the benefits to students:

“In all honesty, we recorded our lessons out of selfishness. We were spending
inordinate amounts of time re-teaching lessons to students who missed class,
and the recorded lectures became our first line of defense. Our absent students
loved the recorded lectures. Students who missed class were able to learn what
they missed. Some students who were in class and heard the live lecture began
to re-watch the videos. Some would watch them when reviewing for exams…
We began to share the links to the recorded lectures, and teachers from all over
the country began to take notice … All in all, it was amazing to see what we were
doing in our small town being noticed across the country.”

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Anatomy of a flip
2.
The benefits
of upside down
instruction.
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The benefits of upside down instruction
The reward.
Sherry Spurlock describes how flipping her classes has made learning — and
teaching — more rewarding:

1. Personalized instruction:“Since flipping the classes, I not only know all my

students by name, I also know what they can and cannot do. I know what I can
and cannot say to them. I know how far I can push them and what I can expect
from them. It’s a whole different interaction with them.”

2. Student engagement:“Students are more deeply engaged, and I know that

because I’m getting much more interesting questions. I used to hear, ‘I just
don’t get it.’ Now, I hear, ‘What do you suppose would happen if this were to
occur? If I change this around, what will happen?’”

3. Skills for the real world:By working in groups, students are getting a
preview of what their postsecondary and real world experience will look like,
where group problem solving and project-based learning are part of the daily
routine.

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The benefits of upside down instruction
4. Learning beyond the lesson:“Flipping the classroom puts a lot of
responsibility back on students; it takes away any places to hide. There is less
opportunity for them to just copy a friend’s homework and hand it in. If they
don’t get something done, it’s not the teacher’s fault or the school’s fault. They
have to accept that responsibility. And most of them step up to the plate and
do it. They really grow.”

5. Improved quality of life:“I still start about 6:30 a.m. to get the lab set up.
But I leave between 3 and 3:30 p.m. I don’t have to take home grading because
students do most of their work in class, and it’s graded there so they get
immediate feedback. I give students my home phone number in case they are
confused at home about what they’re doing. Before the flipped class, I would
get up to 30 calls a night. Now, I get one or two a week. Students can rewind
my lecture and listen again and again. They can bring questions into class the
next day where they can get hands-on help. And my working day ends with the
school day. I get to spend time with my family in the evening, and that makes a
big difference.”

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The benefits of upside down instruction
3.
Tips for
successful flips.

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Tips for successful flips
Getting started.
Flipping the classroom is a new idea, but every teacher who tries it doesn’t
have to reinvent the wheel. Go online to see what flipped strategies others have
come up with and learn from their successes and mistakes. Here are a few tips
to get you started:

Know your tools.Understand how to use the classroom technology and

learning management system tools at your disposal. Can you post a video
clip via your LMS? Can students exchange ideas or ask questions in an online
environment that also allows you to distribute materials and track grades?
Leverage tech tools to make your flip — and your job — easier.

Don’t do the bulldozer.Spurlock flipped all of her classes at one time. In

hindsight, she says, that all-in approach added to her workload and stress and
didn’t leave much time for experimentation. Start by flipping one class and use
what you’ve learned to flip others.

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Tips for successful flips
Find a partner.Flipping pioneers Bergmann and Sams attribute much of their
success to teamwork. Working in sync with peers has made the flip more
manageable for Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School teachers. And those like
Spurlock who forge through alone say it would have been easier to share ideas
and materials with another teacher. Working with a partner also makes a flip
less overwhelming because you can share content-creation duties.

Set expectations.At the beginning of this academic year, Spurlock put

together a PowerPoint presentation for parents and students. It explained
how a flipped classroom worked and what students’ responsibilities would be.
Setting those expectations early — and with the entire family — helped ease
students’ adjustment to the flipped environment.

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Tips for successful flips
We gave the teachers who were doing our
flipped classroom pilots some examples.
We said, ‘Your pages need to look like this.
Your video should be this long. Your lesson
should last this long. It should include these
components. Now, you make it work for
your subject and your teaching style.’
— Jennifer Shoaf
PA Cyber’s curriculum director

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Tips for successful flips
Flipping as a team.
At the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School (PA Cyber), consistency is key to
ensuring a quality online education. So, when teachers began flipping their
classes, they stuck to a single game plan. And they discovered that flipping in
sync made the whole process less daunting.

“We gave the teachers who were doing our flipped classroom pilots some
examples,” said Jennifer Shoaf, PA Cyber’s curriculum director. “We said, ‘Your
pages need to look like this. Your video should be this long. Your lesson should
last this long. It should include these components. Now, you make it work for
your subject and your teaching style.’”

Those parameters were freeing, rather than limiting, said flipped classroom
teacher Christine Crow, who noted that instructors still put their own unique spin
Sticking to the guidelines made flipping
on lectures and materials.
her class less overwhelming, she said, and because all the
teachers follow the same format, peer-to-peer advice was
on-point and incredibly valuable. “We are all in it together.”

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Tips for successful flips
Grading the flip.
“One of the big marks in the ‘con’ column of the flipped classroom right now
is the lack of systematic research on its effectiveness,” said Robert Talbert,
Mathematics professor at Grand Valley State University and flipped classroom
experimenter. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm and interest, but not a lot of data.”

At Pekin Community High School, Information Specialist Cynthia Hinderliter is

overseeing a plan to gauge how the flipped classroom stacks up when it comes
to test scores.

Using ACT’s College Readiness assessment, the school will evaluate subgroups
of math and science scores to compare how students in Spurlock’s flipped
chemistry and physics classes perform compared with students in traditional
classes.

The results will show whether the anecdotal evidence of student success in
flipped classes can be verified and quantified.

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Tips for successful flips
On the
flip side.
With each passing academic year, technology will make

flipping classrooms even easier and more motivating.

Is flipping the classroom right for you? Only you can

determine that, but here’s what we do know: trying a

flipped classroom is right for everyone.

Stay connected AND learn more about flipping your class

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Tips for successful flips