'Flipped Classrooms' Aid Student Learning

Technology enables schools to rethink the way that they deliver instruction to students, and a recent phenomenon that’s catching on is called “flipping the classroom.”

It works by having students receive direct instruction — often via online videos — outside of the classroom, enabling teachers to devote more time to collaboration, project-based learning, developing critical thinking skills and mentoring students individually.

Clintondale High School in Metropolitan Detroit has flipped all of its classrooms, and may be the first school in Michigan to do so.

Based on just their short experience with this model,  it appears to be a remarkable success. According to Principal Greg Green, since exclusively using the flipped classroom, the school has dropped their failure rates for freshmen in English from 52 percent to 19 percent, in math from 44 percent to 13 percent, in science from 41 percent to 19 percent and in social studies from 28 percent to 9 percent. And this is a school that one might reasonably expect to have higher than average failure rates, since 70 percent of it students come from low-income households.

For more information about Clintondale High School’s story, see the video below:

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