With just 45 minutes for each of my art lessons my students and I are always pushed for time.  It seems that no sooner have we set up, I’ve given instructions and they are into the activity than I have to say “OK, time to start packing up”.  Demonstrations and instructions really cut into student art time, so last week I tried something different (for me).  I “flipped” my classroom.  The concept is that the “teaching” is done at home via online tutorials or videos and that the “practice” is done in the classroom – where the teacher is on hand to monitor and guide.

My grade 7s are doing a clay project with air-dry clay which will really only stay moist and workable for a week if it’s wrapped.  I knew they would not be able to finish a pot within the 45 minute period if I first had to give a demonstration. The alternative was to demo one week and for the students to create the next – but I felt that waiting a week between the teacher demo and them actually doing it themselves would be totally pointless (I mean, I can hardly remember instructions given to me 5 minutes ago, let alone a week ago! So it wouldn’t be fair to expect a bunch of 12 year olds to do the same)

So I video’d myself making a clay pinch pot.  I then uploaded this to our school virtual learning centre (run by Moodle). The students were instructed to watch the video before the class.  The lesson came, I gave out the materials and off they went!  Those who had watched the video (most of them, I’m happy to say) knew what to do and I was on hand to explain to those who hadn’t.  All the students managed to finish their pots and clean up within the time frame(ok, so we spilled a little into recess time).  This freed me up too, to go round and really help and see all the students (there are 25 in this class).  The bonus is that the students can review the video as many times as they want/need to (important when I have so many second language speakers)

I will be ‘flipping’ my class more often now and have already made videos for water-colour painting techniques for my Grade 8s.

It won’t work for all projects, but for some it’s going to be a huge time booster and more importantly I hope it will really help the students too!