Flipping WITHOUT Video

Jeff Utecht, who writes "The Thinking Stick.com" argues persuasively in this excellent post that the flipped history classroom does not have to involve video. "In fact every time I have helped a teacher flip their classroom in the high school it has never involved videos. Instead it involves students actively finding information, making sense of it, and then coming to class ready to discuss with the teacher what they have learned, what questions they have and, what it is they still don’t know/understand."

In this essay, he outlines a history lesson on Thailand and Southeast Asia. He explains the process of coming up with an essential question and then sub questions to focus research. He posted the entire lesson and offers some feedback from students and parents who push back because they expect the teacher to tell them the answer in a lecture or power point. You can see the entire lesson and rubric when you scroll down to the bottom of the page. You can even copy his blog rubric in Google docs as I did here.