image taken from: https://teach.ufl.edu/resource-library/flipped-classroom/
Flipped classroom is a type of blended learning, that aims to expose students about the classroom content before the lesson. It’s definitely a good way to increase in-class time and a good way to make “homework” concept fun and interesting for students, compared to traditional classrooms. But for a country like Turkey, it has some backfires. Since this approach requires students to have smart phones, computers, or other technological items, not all students may have the access to these kinds of technologies.
For this flipped classroom approach, we’ve chosen the unit, “Party” from the book and came up with a story. We’ve decided to make a short-story type video to teach related to the vocabulary they have to learn, in this case a surprise birthday party. Firstly, we’ve prepared a worksheet for students to use WITH the video, we aimed to create a scavenger type activity. Three characters are included in the video and two of the characters are preparing a surprise party for their friend. When the friends are preparing the party together, and think about what they want to add, the video stop for a moment and a question pops up. The students have to pick one of the items depending on the given situation and learn about the word through context.
I felt like this video’s idea would be way too easy if we gave them the answers before the questions (because the characters were supposed to talk about the vocabulary words after the question), so I made a little tweak to change the way that questions are asked.
I tried to give a chance to my friend so he can come up with his own lines, but he used quite complicated wording for the students of 5th graders. I tried to give him some advice by telling him that students may not be familiar with these types of grammar, etc. I’m not sure if I misunderstood him or he just struggled to explain himself. He said he’s okay with it only because the majority agreed. I still tried to give him something to do for the voice lines and instructed him, but he did something different. When I pointed that he did it differently than what we talked about, he… kind of got mad and told me to do it myself if I’m going to keep changing what he did. I tried to talk to him out of it but it seems like we couldn’t understand each other. Now that I think of it, he did have a point, but he failed to express himself differing from what we’ve chosen the first time. Anyways, all is well now.
We’ve used Canva and Animaker to create the animation. I asked my friends if I can be the one who animates the video, because I have former experience in animating so I was familiar with the similar tools. They said okay, and I made the video. I think Animaker is a nice tool to create short videos, but it was limiting me greatly (eg. Limited usage of items and tools, the video can’t be longer than two minutes, there’s a download limit… etc.) because I was using it for free, but I came up with my own solutions. I had to create a different account to render the rest of the video, and merge the other videos together, but in the end it worked. I also had a problem while editing the question parts in the video, the time that waits for the answer is too short, but I could not edit it later becuase the whole video gets messed up when you try to change something from earlier. Despise these problems, it was fun to make the video. These tools are great, don’t get me wrong, but they become great when you pay for it.
Still, technology like this always amazes me. I’m so glad I live in a technologicaly developed era. I'll try my best to use the technology to its limist when I become an English teacher.
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