Today is launch day for a new feature on the LTF website, the "Flipping the Classroom" blog! Robert Gonzales, a chemistry teacher in Austin and an LTF science trainer, and I are the contributors. Robert flipped his classroom at the start of the school year, and I'm going forward with flipping mine at the start of our spring semester next week. We have both posted to the blog already so that our readers can dive into the process with us immediately.

My motivations for flipping my classroom routine are (1) giving my students more control over the direct instruction piece of learning and (2) making more class time available for active learning and for addressing student difficulties in solving math problems. See how the experiment is going so far at:

www.ltftraining.org/TeachingCommuni...mBlog.aspx

Melissa, I'm looking forward to reading the blog and then bombarding your with questions! The more I've looked at and thought about this flipping idea, the more I want to try it. I'm going to do some trial runs in the spring with my AP Statistics classes to see how it goes. The past few days as I've been "lecturing" or presenting notes, and I see that same handful of kids zoned out no matter what I try, I've been even more motivated to try it.

Before I start with my list of questions I'll read the blog, but then get ready because I, too, want to start some next semester. Once I see how it works with my AP kids, then I'll see about Algebra II. The Algebra II kids will probably benefit more, but my Assistant Principal wants me to try with the AP kids first.

I've been talking to some other teachers about it, and they're intrigued. Of course they want me to try it before they do.

Tammy, I think you represent the position of a rather large number of teachers out there! I hope you will post comments and questions... either here or on the blog itself, where others can benefit from the dialogue. The two courses that I am flipping are very different ones, of course, and I'm interested to see if the strugglers in the Pre-AP Algebra 2 class benefit as much as the strugglers in the regular 9th grade Algebra 1 classes.

Thanks for the support!