Didactic intervention with the method of Flipped Classroom

Applying the method of flipped teaching (Flipped classroom), on Friday, April 8, 2022, a two-hour didactic intervention on “Renewable energy sources” was held in the 4th grade of the 1st Primary School of Soufli.

The instructional strategy of a flipped classroom constitutes an innovative teaching method, in which content is delivered at home via an online platform, thus saving time during class periods to actively involve students towards discovering knowledge themselves. It is based on Piaget’s theory of constructivism, since the students themselves are urged to discover and construct knowledge on their own account. It is also aligned to Vygotsky’s socio – cultural approach, according to which humans learn their best when they interact in their actual social and cultural context, since students act as active members in their teams and take part in experimental situations.

In order to implement the first stage of Flipped Teaching, the files were sent electronically via Seesaw portfolio (https://web.seesaw.me/), which is a free online application, and the activation of the student account is done according to opinion and contribution of their parents (since students are minors). Also, there is also the corresponding application for smartphones in order to be achieved better communication. The video was posted and enriched with questions on Ted Ed website (https://ed.ted.com/educator), from where the teacher can create lessons, monitor students’ progress on the accessibility of materials and the completion of courses. In the teacher’s account it is visible which of the students dealt with the online course and their success in completing the multiple choice or development questions.

In the second step of inverted teaching, during the classroom lesson, students worked with the Worksheet created by the classroom teacher.

According to the constructive and exploratory model, the Worksheet follows the following steps:

  • Search for a phenomenon from everyday life that arouses the interest of students to make the lesson more attractive.
  • Formulation of hypotheses-ideas of students about this phenomenon, as they are asked to answer similar questions or elicited by the teacher during the discussion.
  • Experimental proof and recording of observations,
  • Formulation of conclusions that are consistent with scientific knowledge and
  • Application of the exported knowledge in problematic situations of our daily life. This step was also used orally through the group discussion.

The inverted teaching course was designed according to the Bloom classification where the educational material offered for home research concerns the two lower levels, namely knowledge and understanding. The video provided the appropriate knowledge to gain an understanding of the phenomena.

After a discussion about the video that the children watched at home, in order to solve questions or discuss which points impressed them, the class work followed where the students filled in the Sheet.

Working, but also through collective discussion, they achieved the three higher levels of the Bloom taxonomy, application, analysis, and composition.

They had to distinguish the application of renewable energy sources in our daily lives, through the experimental process and the group discussion. In this way they were given the opportunity to identify and correct the wrong view they had expressed before or to reinforce their correct position.

The aim of the experiments was for students to distinguish what are renewable energy sources, what are the differences from non-renewable energy and which should be are preferred by man and why.

At the end of the lesson there was an interesting discussion about energy sources, which we characterize as renewable, why and what are the benefits to the environment and people, similar to the one that preceded the lesson in order to detect their established views.

The Physics lesson for primary school students is a very interesting learning process, as it involves the experiment and stimulates the curiosity of students, who turn into young researchers-scientists, observe, work, draw conclusions and answer their own questions. worry.

The use of the inverted classroom is an attempt to increase the interest and participation of students in the educational process.

In the teaching of Physics, it is wrong on the part of the teacher to demonstrate the experiments in order to prove the natural phenomena or in the worst case the teacher to lead the educational process according to the behavioral model dictating the conclusions to students who in turn are asked to learn them as rules, without themselves being involved and most of the time they do not understand. Lasry, Dugdale and Charles (2014) very aptly observe that in any educational system can not be a satisfactory solution for teaching the activating the teacher, the most accurate and important resource in the classroom, as a simple book that presents the knowledge to the students, when the books that every child can consult whenever he wishes. But what most of the time does not allow teachers to take advantage of the active group learning in their teaching hours is the lack of time, a fact that does not exist in inverted teaching, since the time of “delivery” utilized in the active involvement of students. The teacher is now free from the awkward part of front-line teaching and has the opportunity to work with groups and groups in turn to develop their own codes of communication and progress.

“The mind is a fire to be lit, not a vessel to be filled” (Plutarch)

Work Sheet (page 1)

Work Sheet (page 2)

Diffraction and interference around us

For years and years this has been my least favorite part of school’s curriculum. Too much messy drawing on the board, too much mathematical formulas, and from student’s point of view this was just empty talk. I naturally tried and tried to explain this to my students as best as I could, but even with experiments, that I could demonstrate during the class, I’ve felt that my students been missing the point. They would just try to memorise whole thing without any critical thinking, and let’s face it, what kind of a teacher would I be to let that happen? Most of my colleagues agreed that this is not an easy part of curriculum which it’s hard to be understood even by older students at faculties, and that it is meant only for top of class.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that this was unnecessary part of school’s curriculum. This is fundamental part of physics. This was one of the first mistakes made by Newton. And shockingly this is where quantum mechanics starts (thank you Feynman). So I really needed to help my students learn more about this, but how?

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