As a teacher, I know firsthand that remote learning is difficult. While improvement is possible, nothing about remote learning will become easy in the weeks and months ahead as we continue navigating uncharted territory in education. Here are 5 tips from my experience teaching remotely so far that can make virtual schooling a little more successful:
1. Check in with individual students. While relationship building is more difficult on a remote platform, it is by no means impossible. Start small by choosing 2–3 students a week to check in with before or after class for 5 minutes. I like choosing students who are on the quieter side who I don’t hear from as much during class, or students who exhibit a demonstrated need. For example, students who are struggling to complete classwork or homework, students who seem to be falling behind in their skills, or students who are often absent from class are priority check-ins for me. One of the most effective ways to motivate students to continue attending online classes and complete classwork is to make sure that they are seen, heard, and loved first. The more a student feels connected to a teacher, the more a student is likely to feel invested in their own learning. Ensuring that every student in the grade feels connected to at least one teacher is essential. Nothing fosters and builds trust in a relationship like taking the time to talk with a student one-on-one.
2. Prioritize teaching grade-level content over remedial skills. Students will fall farther behind if they are not given the opportunity to learn new skills and content. As teachers, we might think we are remedying the situation by targeting skills from the previous grade and reviewing content. However, students by definition experience learning loss with this practice because they are not spending time learning the new skills they otherwise would have in a typical year. Instead, teachers should plan for more flexibility in lesson sequences and build in time to review skills that become relevant in the context of teaching new skills. For example, when I taught students an objective on writing linear equations, I built in additional time to review how to calculate the rate of change, which is a key skill that goes into writing linear equations. That way, teachers are still providing space for review as a supplement, rather than a replacement, to new material. The adage, “We will go as fast as we can and as slow as we must,” is a good rule of thumb to keep in mind.
Similarly, teachers have an opportunity to collect formative data while teaching new skills. By explicitly asking students to share their thinking in ways such as calling on various students to share during a whole-class discussion and closely monitoring student work time and practice, teachers have a window into student progress and where students get stuck. These pain points then provide excellent starting points to review prior knowledge when necessary. While diagnostic assessments are a useful tool and can inform teachers of the level of knowledge with which students enter a unit, assessments are not the only way to determine students’ prior knowledge and mastery. Moreover, because any assessment during remote learning is given online without direct supervision, we cannot be sure that it is a true reflection of student understanding. I still administer online end-of-unit assessments to get a general sense of what students mastered from the unit as a whole. The information is also useful to determine the students in the class who are in need of more academic support, especially students who were not on my radar. I pay attention to students who performed surprisingly low to make sure they get more of the necessary scaffolds to access new material. My school has made all summative assessments open note. This is partially a logistical solution because it would be nearly impossible to ensure that students are using no resources or notes while monitoring during an assessment online. While the data is not a perfect measure of what students learned, it is still useful for teachers to gain an intuition for the topics and standards that students mastered compared to the ones students did not. These checkpoints are important as teachers continue to teach new grade-level content.
3. Engage students as much as possible during class. Ask students to respond to questions, particularly questions with short answers, in the zoom chat. Use the participants tools to get students to vote yes or no (or equivalent if you do not have zoom) during a debate. If students’ cameras are off, ask that they turn them on if they are able, and hold them to the expectation. Typically, the simple action of asking students to do something is already a fairly strong motivator. Utilize breakout rooms to allow students to work together in partners or small groups if appropriate. Have a conversation with students about expectations and mindsets before using breakout rooms or any environment where students may be unsupervised while online. Make your slides visually intriguing by including student work, images, memes, gifs, and videos. Combine your video conferencing platform with other teaching platforms such as Nearpod, Desmos, Go Formative, Actively Learn, or other learning websites. These platforms offer a variety of other ways to engage students outside of zoom or other video applications. They often allow teachers to monitor student progress during work time and allow students to see each other’s work and ideas. Students should feel like they’re playing a video game during class rather than watching TV. The more that a class can draw on students’ ideas, opinions, and questions, the more likely that students are engaged and will ultimately be successful with the lesson. Teachers should actively strive to infuse student work, writing, and thinking to ground discussions or drive to key points. I often use student work to launch mathematical discussions, and I find that students enjoy evaluating each other’s work, or seeing their own work on screen, much more than taking notes while I speak.
4. Repurpose the role of school staff. Enlist administrative staff, counselors, paraprofessionals, and other non-teaching school staff members to serve as co-teachers in remote classrooms. Staff can support teaching, assist with tech issues, and chat with students individually to build relationships and connection.
5. Streamline family communication. Communicating with families is key to making remote learning a success. Often, a family member is physically present at home and can hold their student accountable to log onto class or complete classwork. To make communication efficient, teachers should coordinate with teachers across the grade in appropriate instances. For example, each teacher at my school has an advisory with a small group of about 12 students. About once a month, teachers will gather information in an excel document about how each of their advisees are doing in each class and contact families with an academic summary and update on each student’s general well-being at school. Teachers can also coordinate communication for individual students who are consistently absent or not completing work. That way, a family member will receive one call rather than five calls from each content teacher sharing basically the same information about the child. Teacher and family partnerships have the power to greatly change a student’s academic outcomes. In my most successful example, a student who completed no classwork during math for weeks pulled a complete 180 after I texted his mom that he was consistently completing no work and not responding to my chats on zoom. Turns out he was distracted by the constant access he had to his phone, and some additional attention from mom provided the accountability he needed to stay focused during class and complete work.
None of these ideas are completely novel, nor will any idea be a silver bullet for success this school year. However, these ideas are worth prioritizing in our current context as teachers continue to stay remote or alternate between remote and hybrid classrooms. My hope is that the act of sharing my experience and some of my school’s practices is in itself a way to find connection and spark inspiration.
If you are a teacher, what have you tried during remote learning that’s been successful?
