Reflective Break #1

It is very common for students to come to class unprepared. What about yourself, when you were a student or now as a teacher? Were you ever unprepared? If so, does that give you insight into you unprepared students in a Flipped Classroom lesson?

Sample Response

Even as a teacher, I am not always as prepared as I should be. Plus, even when I do prepare, things sometimes happen that spoil my preparations. Nevertheless, the class session can go on, maybe not perfectly but well enough. Similarly, if I’m using a Flipped Classroom format and I have used some of the suggestions in the above Scenario and some students have not prepared, the lesson can still go on.

One advantage of groups is that groupmates who are prepared can help those who have done less preparation. Also, I can do a mini-lecture (just 5-10 minutes) to cover key points that students will need to do their CL tasks. Because I myself am not perfect, I have sympathy for my students when they are not perfect. Thus, I don’t give up on CL, I just try to do it more skilfully the next time.

Reflective Break #2

The above scenario was adapted from a free online book by Jacobs et al. (2024). While many of the scenarios in the book were written by teachers who teach current or future nurses, the scenarios are relevant in many other teaching situations.

Choose any other scenario from the same book, read it, and do a reflection of at least 100 words. Some points that you might want to (but do not have to) include in your reflection are:

a.      Have you experienced a situation similar to the one in the scenario?

b.     Would any of the solutions suggested in the scenario work in your situation?

c.      What might be another solution for addressing the situation in the scenario?

d.     Do you have any colleagues who might benefit from hearing about this scenario?

Sample Response

I chose Scenario 7, Excluded Group Members, written by Lim Chee San, Branda. I chose the scenario because so many times in education and in life generally, I have seen people excluded from groups. In fact, I have been excluded, and I’m ashamed to admit that sometimes I have gone along with excluding others. I especially like the solutions about teaching cooperative skills that students can use to include others. I also like how cooperative learning (CL) techniques are designed to promote the CL principle of equal opportunity to participate. For instance, in the technique Cooperative Debates, everyone has designated times to speak. One feature of CL that attracted me is that while I have long been a fan of group activities, too often groups are flawed, and a key flaw lies in the exclusion (intentional or unintentional) of one or more group members. Thus, I really like the ideas that CL provides for remedying this situation.

Comprehension Check

This unit makes the point that the Flipped Classroom and CL are complementary strategies for effective classroom instruction. What evidence do the authors provide to support this? If you are working with others, share your ideas and add the evidence they identified to your notes.