Anonymous wrote:Flipped sounds great (for me, actually). And for anyone with an IQ over 120. You try to understand the material, then the teach explains and reinforces what you know.

Sure beats busy homework.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Flipped Classrooms reverse the order of learning. Instead of teachers introducing, explaining and reviewing new material in the classroom. Then reenforcing it with homework in the evening, everything is reversed. New materials are introduced to students in lectures the students watch on their computers via YouTube for homework. Then the following day work which traditionally would have been done as homework is done in class without any additional teacher instruction. Students are told to raise their hands if they need help, but the students are reluctant to admit they are clueless to the extent they can't even ask intelligent questions so the kids just sit and suffer in their ignorance.

It's a ridiculously failed experimental teaching method used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Flipped Classrooms reverse the order of learning. Instead of teachers introducing, explaining and reviewing new material in the classroom. Then reenforcing it with homework in the evening, everything is reversed. New materials are introduced to students in lectures the students watch on their computers via YouTube for homework. Then the following day work which traditionally would have been done as homework is done in class without any additional teacher instruction. Students are told to raise their hands if they need help, but the students are reluctant to admit they are clueless to the extent they can't even ask intelligent questions so the kids just sit and suffer in their ignorance.

It's a ridiculously failed experimental teaching method used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County residents should be more concerned with the lack of instruction taking place throughout the school day in FCPS classrooms than twenty minutes lost in transit.

FCPS uses Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies where actual teacher instruction has been removed from the classroom. Students are given assignments and a final assessment due date. They are then left to work alone or to work in groups to teach themselves the required content and skills.

This works well if your children are very smart, popular, socially-adept, self-starters who easily share and copy the work of other students. If this is your family situation then these teaching models are perfect for your children.

However, if your children need and want genuine and authentic student/teacher/mentor relationships with their classroom teachers you will be sorely disappointed with the instruction they will receive from their FCPS teachers.

When your children return home from school and they begin their homework, please ask them what did their teachers teach or explain to them about the subject matter they are working on. You'll usually find the teacher gave the assignment without first teaching anything whatsoever about the material.

My children want to know and like their teachers. They want to learn from their teachers. They want to communicate with their teachers. They want to bounce their ideas off their teachers and during the learning process, they want their gradual lesson mastery validated by their teachers, but this is no longer available in the FCPS schools. Schools which have adopted Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies have eliminated regular classroom student/teacher communications.

It's pretty sad. Their teachers have become distant, detached, and disengaged. It's strange, it's as if their teachers are no longer present in their classrooms. Teachers claim they are present to answer questions, but what they don't realize is by failing actively teach their students they have gradually lost their abilities to communicate with them at all.

Because teachers are not driving the dialog, they find themselves unable to answer essentially basic questions when they are asked. Eventually, they begin to act as if students' questions are troublesome and annoying.

It's sad for the students and the teachers can't feel good about it either.

I am an FCPS teacher and I don't know what you are talking about. We do not use either a flipped classroom or a project-based model, with the exception of the 5th grade global awareness technology project, which accounts for a small part of the overall social studies curriculum in 5th grade. There has been no elimination whatsoever of regular student/teacher communications. This is the most bizarre thing I have read in a long time about FCPS schools - are you sure you're writing about FAIRFAX, and not another county starting with F?

+1. This is crazy talk! I've been teaching in FCPS for ten years and haven't heard of this!

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest time wasters at our school is breakfast in the classroom. All of the teachers HATE it! Food dropped on the floor attracts bugs and mice. Sour milk smell from milk dumped down the sink. Yuk! Our school allows students in at 9:00 and sometimes milk is just being delivered to the classrooms at 9:20. For the older grades, if they want breakfast, they come to the cafeteria and eat it at 8:45. If only we had enough supervision for this to occur for the younger students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County residents should be more concerned with the lack of instruction taking place throughout the school day in FCPS classrooms than twenty minutes lost in transit.

FCPS uses Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies where actual teacher instruction has been removed from the classroom. Students are given assignments and a final assessment due date. They are then left to work alone or to work in groups to teach themselves the required content and skills.

This works well if your children are very smart, popular, socially-adept, self-starters who easily share and copy the work of other students. If this is your family situation then these teaching models are perfect for your children.

However, if your children need and want genuine and authentic student/teacher/mentor relationships with their classroom teachers you will be sorely disappointed with the instruction they will receive from their FCPS teachers.

When your children return home from school and they begin their homework, please ask them what did their teachers teach or explain to them about the subject matter they are working on. You'll usually find the teacher gave the assignment without first teaching anything whatsoever about the material.

My children want to know and like their teachers. They want to learn from their teachers. They want to communicate with their teachers. They want to bounce their ideas off their teachers and during the learning process, they want their gradual lesson mastery validated by their teachers, but this is no longer available in the FCPS schools. Schools which have adopted Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies have eliminated regular classroom student/teacher communications.

It's pretty sad. Their teachers have become distant, detached, and disengaged. It's strange, it's as if their teachers are no longer present in their classrooms. Teachers claim they are present to answer questions, but what they don't realize is by failing actively teach their students they have gradually lost their abilities to communicate with them at all.

Because teachers are not driving the dialog, they find themselves unable to answer essentially basic questions when they are asked. Eventually, they begin to act as if students' questions are troublesome and annoying.

It's sad for the students and the teachers can't feel good about it either.

I am an FCPS teacher and I don't know what you are talking about. We do not use either a flipped classroom or a project-based model, with the exception of the 5th grade global awareness technology project, which accounts for a small part of the overall social studies curriculum in 5th grade. There has been no elimination whatsoever of regular student/teacher communications. This is the most bizarre thing I have read in a long time about FCPS schools - are you sure you're writing about FAIRFAX, and not another county starting with F?

Anonymous wrote:Of course they are counting time before the bell as instructional time when it clearly isn't. No one says otherwise.

It may or not be a big deal but it's dishonest. But to bureaucrats, ethics is situational. It's a small lie, it isn't a big deal, there are other days off, you know the lines....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our FCPS elementary has the exact same bell schedule as last year with the exception of full day Monday. 8:40-3:20.

Why are some schools changing times and other's are not?

No school is changing the time of its tardy bell except for Bailey's. Many people are quite confused about what is really happening which is that schools are advertising their start of the "instructional day" 10 min earlier than last year. But the tardy bell, the one that teachers go by to start the day, has not changed in any elementary school (again, except Bailey's).