Lessons from virtual teaching that will transform any classroom
March 2020 brought about many changes overnight to so many areas of our lives but especially school. As a teacher who has taught in the classroom, remotely, and completely virtually there are three lessons I have learned that will transform any classroom.
First! Be specific.
One thing that virtual teaching lays bare is how important it is to be specific with our instruction with students. And that this is different from over explaining. Something my children will tell you I still work on daily! Some tangible ways to make sure you are specific is..
1) Use lists or bullet points to break. up tasks. You can also color code information, or use bold or underlines to highlight key information for kiddos.
2) Provide graphic organizers but don’t require them. Giving students the steps of the process but allowing them the freedom to do it a different way is a great way to scaffold for all students and be specific without trapping your or them into 100 of the exact same project or assignment
Use Technology to duplicate yourself!
1) Use multimedia like screencasts and videos so that students can hear/see you as you give directions. This is also great because then students can watch directions for an assignment over and over again. They can pause or rewind you. And you can send it to kids and parents to do outside of the classroom as well. Give directions 1x for real!
Provide Choices.
Level assignments. Provide level assignments that allow students to choose how many/how long. By giving students the choice for how to show you their learning you are baking scaffolds and differentiation into the special sauce that is your teaching. Choice also puts the onus back on the student and makes it clear that they are the ones doing the learning here.
Examples
- Level 1 assignments could be done daily or for fewer points. These assignments should take about 15-20 minutes for you to complete. This way even students who work slower, have accommodations, or struggle with motivation should be able to complete them pretty quickly. Examples would be: read this article and summarize what you learned in a paragraph, complete 5 of the following 10 math problems, fill in this graphic organizer on the topic of climate change, or answer one of the following quick journal prompts.
-Level 2 would be slightly longer assignments that might take 30-45 minutes. These could be broken up into tasks they start 1 day and finisht the next or are worth more points than level 1 These would be things like, investigate the following topic and write a summary of what you learned that includes, A, B and C. Or create a youtube style tutorial about how to _____. Or write down 15 facts you learned from_____ and star the top 5 most (or least) important pieces of information. Next to each star write a sentence or two about why you thought it was important.
-Level 3 assignments should take about 2 hours for you to complete. You could have students work on them over a period of 3-5 days or they would be worth the most points. These could be remote versions of typical assignments you would give to students to complete in 1-2 class periods in the classroom like a virtual lab and reflection, or comparing two articles and then writing an argument based on a question about those two articles, using mathematical formulas to create a budget or plan for another real world task, creating an author's profile including a review of one of their key writings or taking any of the tasks above and adding a reflective or presentation element to it.
For more ideas on lessons I do virtually that you can do in classroom, as hybrid, or fully online check out these lessons that can be formatted for any subject!
