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National Flipped Day Encourages Flipping Classrooms with Free Lessons

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/03/13

Organizations are banding together to promote Sept. 6, Friday, as a national "Flipped Day" to encourage teachers to try flipping their classrooms. In the flipped classroom approach students watch videos or read content as homework to gain the basics on a topic and then go into school ready to spend class time working on related activities or projects.

According to the latest Speak Up survey by Project Tomorrow, only a fifth of elementary school teachers and a quarter of middle school teachers who teach online use a flipped model; yet of those 60 percent report that with the use of flipped learning their students are "more motivated to learn."

PBS LearningMedia, Project Wet, and other organizations are providing free lessons through the Flipped Learning Network for teachers to use in flipping their classes. According to those organizers, "hundreds" of educators in 10 countries have already taken the pledge to flip at least one lesson Friday. That day was chosen, according to education consultant Mark Wilson, an online community organization for TedEd, because the numbers nine and six are flippable.

Currently, 10 lessons for a variety of grade levels are available on the Flipped Learning Network flipped day site, including these:

• PBS LearningMedia, a free media on-demand service for educators, is providing an engineering and design lesson for building a "tangle-free headphone holder."
• Project Wet is providing curriculum on the "incredible journey of water through the water cycle," appropriate for grades three through six.
• Knowmia is offer a grades 9 and 10 lesson on temperature.

Participating educators are encouraged to take the Flipped Day pledge to publicize their commitment to the endeavor.