The Flipped Beit Midrash


However, when teaching on the Yeshiva middle school or high school level, utilizing this tried and true method can be daunting. I can sum up in a sentence that I remember the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky, telling me at a Torah Umesorah convention where I showed him Gemara Berura, "but our students can't read". How does one give our students opportunities for independent learning prior to shiur when they don't yet have the skills to learn on their own? One solution to this problem is the flipped classroom.

I have blogged about the Flipped Classroom many times in the past. Look here, here, and here for example. The dream of Sal Khan when presenting the Flipped Classroom in his famous TED talk was to assign students to watch the videos for homework so students can do more exploration type activities during class. However, many of Rebbeim in my school, myself included, have found it more effective to assign these videos for chavruta work in the Beit Midrash prior to giving shiur. With iPads for every student and the teacher using free apps like Showme, Educreations, or, the relatively inexpensive but more powerful app, Explain Everything, creating these videos and using them in the Beit Midrash cannot be easier.


1) Students report that they prefer watching the videos instead of first hearing the Gemara being read in class since they can learn at their own pace. They can start and stop the video, pause and rewind or rematch the entire thing as many times as needed. They also find it very easy to take notes since they can watch the video at their own pace. The rebbe requires that very student take notes on the video either using their iPad, a computer, or pen and paper, whatever they prefer, and then only can leave once they have shown him their notes.



Basically, these flipped videos allows the teacher to focus in class on the areas he is needed most and where his unique skills as an educator are most apparent while “outsourcing” the VERY important but often tedious reading portions to the videos simultaneously helping the students to become more independent learners through their watching, note taking, reading.

One other plus that I have experienced with flipped videos in my Nach classroom is that before an exam one can share a playlist of all the videos for students to use as a study aid. The students LOVE this and might very well watch every video multiple times prior to the exam.

So if your students have iPads or other web-based devices, even smartphones will do, give the Flipped Beit Midrash a try. You might find that students will enjoy the learning, gain more skills to learn more independently, and your shiur that follows will be that much deeper with more student input and higher order thinking because they have already mastered the basic "pshat" and are ready to bring their learning to a higher level.