Turn that class upside down

Hello y'all!

Today we're going to create a vocabulary teaching video for a flipped classroom. Turn those frowns upside down, 'cause it's more interesting than you think.

In traditional classrooms, the classroom is where the instruction takes place. Once the instruction is done, the application happens. But due to the several factors such as time, the number and the different needs of the students, the practice part may get rushed and be ineffective. The Flippped Classroom Approach presents a solution to this by moving the instruction to home spaces and uses classroom time for teacher-guided pratice. 

There's no single way to flip a classroom. As it's a student-centered approach, it depends on the students' expectation and needs and how the teacher provides for them.

So let's get to the task.

I worked on this task with my dear friend Ayşenur, you may remember her from our previous works and you can check out her amazing blog by clicking on her name.

For the task, we chose a unit from the 5th grade English textbook our professfor provided for us. We chose the Daily Routines unit and created our material to teach the target vocabulary of it. 

Initially, we had the idea to teach the vocabulary using a zoom call of two friends talking about their day. We prepared our draft and presented it to our professor. Yet she wasn't too thrilled about it. She told the language was too advanced for our target audience and it wasn't focused on the vocabulary so we went back to the drawing board.

This time we decided to make our video more visual. We got rid of the extra barbie doll from the first draft and used the other doll to act out the target phrases. To make the doll "move", we made a stop motion movie. If you think you are a patient person, clearly you've never made a stop motion movie. 

After getting our footage, which was a very exhausting process, we edited it using YouCut. And finally, THE DOLL WAS ALIVE!

Then I recorded my lines and now Amy was moving and talking. I have to say I really got the gist of this whole voice acting thing.

Now that the instruction part of our video was done, it was time for the practise part. Kapwing was our hero here. We used the footage from the first part as the visual and asked the students what Amy does in the gif. Ayşenur was the voice of our encouraing teacher in this part. 

Here's our video: 

Once the students have watched the video and feel confident to move on to the next part, we present them our activity. In this activity, we give them Amy's daily routine with a twist. We have disarranged them and expect them to reorder it. We used Worwall to create this activity.

Here's our activity:

As a person who always liked to go over the material before the class, I really liked this approach. One of the difficulties in ESL teaching, especially in crowded classrooms is the lack of time for practice. Flipped Classroom Approach may solve this problem. Also the teacher can have a more controlled instruction this way and be rid of classroom-based difficulties of the instruction.

Yet this approach may simply be ineffective with not autonomus students. When distance learning first started in Turkey, many faced problems due to this. Students were not used to be responsible of their learning. But this problem can be overcomed by being aware of the student body  and preparng them beforehand. 

Also as this approach relies majorly on technology, any technological issue may cause major ones. 

Nevertheless, this approach has its advantages and disadvantages like any but any difficulty and be foreseen and resolved. 

What do you think about this approach and our work? Feel free to leave your comments.

'Till next time!