Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How I Started Flipping

I have been teaching German language, culture and literature at the college level for a very long time and have always enjoyed it. There are, however, a few aspects I truly love about interacting with my students, and I wanted to multiply them in depth, intensity, and duration:

  • Making class time dynamic and FUN.
  • Harnessing the knowledge of more advanced students and/or the energy of highly motivated learners to help their struggling or less interested peers.
  • Having sufficient time in class to answer students' smart questions about German culture: "Why don't Germans smile at random strangers more often?  or "Why is a college education nearly free in Germany?" or "How do many Germans construct a self-identity?" 
  • Leading students to discovering answers to these questions by providing them with the tools of critical thinking
  • Seeing students overcome the fear of producing utterances in a second language.
  • Helping students individually, depending on their personal needs.
  • Assessing all of the learning that occurred in my classroom, not just isolated vocabulary or grammar.
  • Giving students the tools to evaluate German culture, warts and all.
  • Making space and time available for learners to analyze differences and similarities between their own cultural practices and the way Germans handle theirs. Is there something to learn from these analyses?
  • Offering alternate German identities for my students so that they can walk in another Schuh and shed their monoculturism.
  • Laughing and playing in my classroom.
  • Celebrating students' success in creatively communicating in German.
  • Boosting the motivation in the classroom and outside through in-depth cultural discussions that make my learners think critically.
  • Providing explanations that students can access a second (or third or fourth) time around.
  • Witnessing students connect to the German culture in their own meaningful ways.
  • Talking less while my students interact and collaborate more in the target language.
  • Developing more intellectually each semester rather than repeating the same lessons and jokes year after year.
  • Giving students detailed feedback on the spot (instead of grading stacks of homework that those students who need my explanations usually just toss as soon as I return to them my toil of many hours).

The search for a teaching strategy that allowed me to achieve all the above took me many years. I constantly added and eliminated classroom practices, but the problem remained: LACK OF TIME! There simply wasn't enough time to do the pleasurable, mind-stretching, analytical, and creative activities that I saw as so desirable (and my students did, too). Not only that: it seemed, as the years went by, that students' grammatical preparation in high school was less and less adequate, with the result that I needed more time to explain grammar, first the English version and then the German variation. And that is when I discovered the flipped classroom. Shifting all those grammar explanations out of my group learning space gave me the breathing room I needed to start transforming my classroom into a dynamic group learning community in which amazingly smart insights occur by enthusiastic students.

Incorporating flipped learning into my German college classrooms supports my students' needs and my own desires as a professional educator. I hope you, too, will discover the same joy of reconnecting your discipline, your students, and yourself in this innovative and gratifying manner.









21 comments:

  1. German is the most dialect that is talked by very nearly 2 billion people groups the world over. Taking in this dialect would give one fearlessness to look the world in an alternate point of view.
    German Coaching Classes in Bangalore | German Training in Bangalore | German Language Training in Bangalore | German Language Courses in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is true that learning another language gives one a new outlook on all kinds of things in life, Karthik. I would say, though, that German is spoken by around 200 million people in the world (not as many as you think). Alles Gute! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Its an incredible joy perusing your post.Its brimming with data I am searching for and I want to post a remark that "The substance of your post is marvelous" Great work.

    Learn and Speak Better German with German Classes

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the good article about German language training in Bangalore, if you want to more information then go throw the link German language training in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  5. I truly like to read your post. Thank you so much for taking the time to share such nice information.
    legal translation services in sharjah

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ziyyara has the best online home tutors in Andaman Nicobar and provides one-on-one live online home tuition in Andaman Nicobar for the students of class 5-12 of all boards.
    Call Our Experts :- +91-9654271931

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is a really authentic and informative blog. Share more posts like this.
    How To Learn German Easily
    Learn German Easily

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great Post with valuable information. I am glad that I have visited this site. Share more updates.
    Study in Canada
    IELTS Band


    ReplyDelete
  10. This was an authentic and useful piece of information. Thank you for giving this useful content.
    How To Hack Emails
    How To Hack an Email Account

    ReplyDelete
  11. ziyyara has the best online home tutors in andaman nicobar and provides one-on-one live online home tuition in andaman nicobar for the students of class 5-12 of all boards.
    Call our experts :- 9654271931

    ReplyDelete
  12. To imply some type of possession, a noun is normally in the genitive case. As a result, the matching genitive form is frequently used as a genitive adjective for another noun rather than standing alone. info

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you for sharing with us, and we sincerely hope you will continue to update or post other articles.
    fraction as a decimal and percent calculator percentagecalculatorfree.com

    ReplyDelete
  14. What a great post that’s what I was searching for a long time, and at last I found it, so thanks for sharing this type of information. Learn more

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thanks for sharing this helpful blog with us, I found this really helpful.
    If you are looking For Top 10 Websites for Online German Classes
    Ziyyara Edutech in the right choice. Thank you and keep sharing these kind of blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks for shring this information, Hope you will keep on sahring.

    German language school Berlin

    ReplyDelete

Binaries Be Gone! How Flipped Learning Can Help Students Think Critically

My department at East Carolina University is called the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. There are hundreds more similarly n...