The thinking behind the flipped lesson concept:
Public school teacher Peter Paccone summed up the benefits of flipping lessons in the following statement:
A benefit of flipping is that you gain more class time.
But the real benefit for me is not just that flipping frees up class time, but that it frees up class time for what I believe my students need more than anything else in this day and age – and that is a chance to work in small groups to try to solve real world problems from inside the classroom, where the teacher can help tutor, mentor, and coach the kids in their problem solving effort.
In other words, to flip not only provides my students with good reason to come to class and to learn (for to be given an opportunity to solve a real world problem truly motivates students to come to class), it also better prepares them for college, career, and civic life than anything else I can do.
I'd even go so far as to say that if, in the Common Core Era, we as educators, do not provide our students with ever an greater number of project based learning opportunities (aka opportunities to solve real world problems from inside the classroom) than we as educators will have done our students and our country a great disservice.
For America today, more so than ever, needs adults who, in small groups, can solve real world problems . . . and with flipping, teachers will find themselves with the class time needed to help train an entire generation of this country's youth to be successful real world problem solvers.
Hence, though I can understand the call for in-class flipping, I hope we don't give up on the kind of flipping that calls for students to learn more and more of the content at home.