Organizing Student-Centered Learning

As I have "flipped" my classroom from a teacher-centered learning environment to a student-centered one, I found it helpful to have a framework. A few years ago I came across a great one that is tailored to a history classroom using Common-Core standards. But I think this framework could be used in several disciplines.

It is called the C4 Framework and was developed by Glenn Wiebe (@glennw98). One of his main purposes in developing it was to help teachers help students to move beyond memorizing content. Here are the fours steps:

Collect: Content is in so many places so for the first step, students should go out and collect as much of it as they can. As a teacher I may set up a list or folder of suggested resources. These resources may also include lectures that I have recorded or other YouTube content videos. I may also have student "specialize" in an area they are collecting information about, for instance, the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Collaborate: Typically at this stage I have student pool their information together. They can decide what is the most important information and what isn't necessary. They can fill in nay gaps they may have missed. But this can also mean a Socratic Seminar about the topic or some kind of interaction with others about the contents. The C4 website has some cards you can purchase for ideas about each level. This may be a stage where I could use a little help.

Create: Students must gather the information they collected and create something with it. Ideally, they create something that answers a driving question, with supporting examples. The possibilities for a product are endless and the choice is best left up to the students. This step is so much more valuable than memorizing a fact and spitting it back out on a test. It is more important that students know how to use facts to support and argument.

Communicate: This is the 21st Century and learning should not be contained to the four walls of a classroom, let alone a private exchange between the learner and teacher. New learning should be shared. I think classroom blogs are a great avenue for this. Students can publish their work on the blog and reflect on their learning. The online publishing opens up the possibility for authentic feedback beyond the teacher.

This framework has really helped me plan out inquiry-based, student-centered lessons. Please check out the website for more information and ideas. Glenn's blog is also a great resource for teachers, especially history teachers that love technology!

Experimenting with Flipped Mastery

One "brand" of a flipped classroom is a Flipped Mastery model. This usually pairs well with standards based grading. In many cases the class is not synchronous, each student is going at his or her own pace.

I certainly had my doubts about how this might work in my classroom. Firstly, I can envision some kids flying through the materials and others barely getting started. But more importantly, I'm not sure how well it would work for my particular school environment. I work in a small, Christian school. My Western Civilization class is taken by all of the Juniors (about 16-20 students) during one period. In larger public or private schools, kids may know a few good friends in their class period. But in my school, all of them know each other like brother and sister. This is great in many ways, they like to explore things together. I don't think they would be too fond of this model.

However, I gave it a try with my Imperialism unit last year. Here's a brief look at how it worked (from my PGP again):

"In this unit on Imperialism, students were given a list of assignments aligned with section objectives. A few of the assignments they were required to chose, but for the most part they could choose whichever activities added up to the right number of points. Some of the choices involved watching lectures online, interpreting primary sources, or reading the textbook and answering questions. As they worked, I checked in and asked them about what they were learning. And as they turned things in, I talked ideas over with them that did not seem clear or I had them redo sections that did not seem mastered. Once they were done with this basic level, they could move on to the next level assignment, where again they had to choice to apply their learning in a creative way. In the final level, there was one overarching question that they could chose to answer in any format they wanted.

There were several things I liked about this flipped-mastery model. First of all, students were the most active in class, and I acted as a coach, helping and correcting as needed. When I would ask students questions about a finished assignment and they did not really know the answer, they just wrote something down. In those cases, we could talk one on one to clear up the confusion. Students were also able to chose from many activities, they could avoid assignments that really did not fit their learning style or attention span. Finally, students were working individually they could collaborate and ask questions of fellow students. I think this model could work very well in a standards-based grading environment in which students are practicing and forming knowledge and then summatively assessed."

Although this went pretty well. In practice I made a few mistakes. Mainly, I gave them too much work. Perhaps I had too many objectives or maybe mastery assignments could cover multiple objectives. I found that it was easy to check in when students first got started, but as I got more bogged down with assignments, I did not have the time to check in with the students while they were completing assignments, thus eliminating a key pillar of flipped learning. Instead of making use of face-to-face time, I was managing papers while they essentially did worksheets (not quite that bad, but close!)

Furthermore, I felt like flipped-mastery was very textbook-content driven. As I look to flip this year, I don't have plans to incorporate this model on a regular basis. Maybe one or two units per year. Instead, I am hoping to focus more on inquiry, group investigations, research, etc. In my next post I will share my attempt at this from last year and hopefully you will be able to see why I fell in love with this model.