Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock these past few months it’s hard to deny there has been a massive shift in the way education is delivered. It’s been a huge learning curve for all involved in educating young people who now have to make distance learning work.
There’s a lot for teachers to consider: obtaining and keeping the attention of their students, checking in on their students emotional and physical well-being, staying in touch with parents & guardians as well as managing what can easily become an around the clock job with most of us having emails, zoom or teams on our mobiles.
Here are 5 tips to help you through this process:
1) Keep up your expectations with regards to work ethic. Ensure your students know you still expect them to submit work on or prior to deadlines. Don’t let poor attendance go unchallenged, unless of course there is an actual issue with accessing the online content in which case you’ll need to liaise with your school to resolve the issue. Make sure students are arriving on time and are ready to learn.
2) Use gentle reminders to keep students on track with work and deadlines. Unfortunately, I can’t remind students in the playground that their assignment on Early Modern Crime and Punishment is due on Friday so the next best thing is a gentle reminder through teams/zoom. It’s also super handy as it informs you who has seen it and who hasn’t…so there’s no room for the old “I didn’t know, sir” excuse.
3) Try to avoid lengthy lectures where the class have to sit and listen. It’s difficult to maintain an adults attention for long periods let alone a child’s. Mix up the styles with a discussion point, a quick activity or thinking point here and there. Finding the right balance for your style is crucial. If you prefer to talk for large chunks of the lesson that’s absolutely fine, but how will you ensure you keep the focus of the class. On the other hand, if you have too many different activities the lesson may actually feel more clunky and hinder progress.
4) Test out your slides before you are due to teach. This is a big must do. You don’t want to be talking and holding the class’ full attention just before a flashy transition sweeps across the screen, followed by the answers flying in before the students have seen the questions ruining that fantastic main activity you had planned. Also, remember some students may not be using a laptop and instead be using their phone, so make sure you can read all required information from a mobile device. If you are intending on using external sites such as for a quiz, make sure they work well on mobiles.
5) Have interactive activities such a quizzes. These are great at ensuring students are focussing but also allows you to check understanding and progress being made. It also allows you to check for any misconceptions. These can be used throughout your lesson as mini-pitstops or they can be used at the start as a retrieval practice tool or as a plenary to check progress from the lesson. I usually offer a little prize for when we return (usually a chocolatey treat) to add a bit more competition and give me an excuse to buy more sweets.
These are just a few tips to help aid with online lessons. Good luck trying them out and happy teaching!
If you have any other tried and tested ideas that work with online lessons, please feel free to leave a comment below.