2. Plan ahead and prepare

If we think about a normal teacher, that has used traditional methods throughout the years and is about to flip his classroom, he has to prepare in few different ways.
To start with it is fundamental for teachers to prepare mentally. If the teacher gets order from above that he should change his teaching, it is important that the teacher also feels that he gets support from his school managers and coworkers.

If the teacher makes the decision himself, it is important for him to start slowly and seek information on how other teachers have done flipping in similar situations. It’s wise to choose well the topics that he wants to flip and start figuring out what would be the best way for him as a teacher to do this, according to the content of his class, his students and the circumstances he’s working with. It’s also recommended for new teachers to find a mentor to talk with, that could be a co worker that he trusts or someone from another school that is doing similar experiences. Being a good teacher requires good self esteem and humility, not being afraid of making mistakes - learn from them.

It’s challenging for teachers to change their teaching methods, and the flipped learning theory is quite revolutionary. So theoretically the teacher might have to rethink his whole approach on delivering the content and how he acts in the classroom. The teacher has to believe in the new methods and remember not to give up by first mistake. To develop new perspective on teaching methods it is helpful to have someone to talk to and discuss teaching theories.

Moving from traditional teaching and start working with flipped learning methods, requires time to prepare all the practical aspects. To give students the space to take responsibility themselves, good planning is essential. The whole course must be planned ahead by the teacher; reading material defined, prerecorded lectures ready to view, other material to support the topics and all student projects ready for them to work on with defined deadlines. The practical preparation gives the students better feeling for what is expected from them, what to do and when. The students can take control over their own study and the teacher gets more time to answer questions and talk to each and every student. The practical preparation can be a huge job at the beginning but already next time the teacher teaches the same course, it’s a lot easier. Usually some of the course planning, recordings and projects can be reused, but a teacher that is trying this method for first time, should always be prepared to make changes both during and after each course.
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A big part of this method, is to face the fact that you will maybe not find the one right solution, but an ambitious teacher will be able to improve constantly if he is prepared to learn from things that could be better. It is important that teachers get time to reflect on how things are going and listen to feedback from students, parents and coworkers.

Decide on a subject, establish content for the videos, adapt classroom activities, organize video recording.

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