By the way, check out our free teaching strategy discovery tool. We provide vital online teaching ideas on how to make your lessons more interactive and foster active learning. Bright ideas for tech-savvy educators right to your inbox. It’s a dynamic tool that allows students to follow along and participate in your lessons on their own devices. Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves take this idea further in ‘Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School’ … Decide on specific platforms that you will use with students—for instance, Google Voice, Zoom, Loom, Fripgrid, and Padlet. By the way, check out our free teaching strategy discovery tool. Your school’s Learning Management System or LMS will most likely be the primary tool you use for your direct communication and posting assignments. What are the Most Common Strategies of Distance Education? The teaching of writing happens — or should — within a deep field of practice, theory, and research. Then, follow up afterwards with a phone call home to discuss the situation. 6 Ways for Educators to Relax and Rejuvenate over Winter Break, Going Virtual? Teaching includes inspiring one’s students. And then, just kind of be a gentle thorn in their side. Tips for teaching English online using Albert include varying our leveled readings in STEM and across topics to generate interest among different students. Also, you’ll be able to help troubleshoot common problems that you might not have noticed from just your teacher log-in. Incorporate movement into your daily routine, like calendar time. Newsletter emails help keep families informed and involved with the happenings in your class and the school. Continue to send your weekly or monthly classroom newsletter. Practice (at least once) in advance: if you are working with a TA/TF, rehearse using the Share Screen and switching among windows you intend to display. An unbeatable tool for asynchronous discussions is Flipgrid. This process helps educational leaders select and run successful educational technology pilots in their schools. What can educators do to calm nerves and be successful through this transition? Our. Set due dates for everything, and send frequent reminders. We know that parent involvement strongly impacts student performance in school. There are other interactive whiteboard programs as well—don’t feel like video lessons have to be all about you speaking on camera. For students in the grades 6–12 range, there are a lot of interactive online resources. Tell your students, "Look, we're in a different environment. And then, consider expectations again. Find videos, find music, find different activities—incorporate movement, have them go outside and jump 10 times while they're doing their addition facts and things like that to keep them moving. Competitive student athletes with rigorous training schedules, students with mental or physical ailments, and families who just want the flexibility in their day, to name a few. What are you doing in your online classroom? Nearpodis one way to make online classes more interactive. The same in any classroom, it’s just as important to enforce your expectations as it is to create and share them. Education staff use effective teaching practices to: Establish strong relationships with young children and their families Create learning environments that foster children’s trust and emotional security and respond to their interests and needs Natasha: Like we’ve already talked about, you already know your students from the brick-and-mortar classroom, so you're at a major advantage. Following is a list of selected teaching practices that are well recognized in the profession as being effective in helping students develop as writers. Nothing is perfect, and distance learning isn’t a solution to all a school’s problems. But no matter what tool you use, it’s about building that culture of community and really allowing multiple ways for kids to share their ideas. Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Adapt Your Lesson Plans to Different Types of Learners, Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Set Clear Expectations with Students, Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Build Rapport and Community with Students, Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Connect with Parents, Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Find the Right EdTech Tools and Curricula Supports, Common Mistakes Teachers Make When First Teaching Online, Wrapping Things Up: Things to Remember When Teaching Online. In the short term, understand that you will forget things and make mistakes during this transition, and that's OK—give yourself grace. Adding to the challenge, many educators navigating this transition don’t know if online learning will be a short-term situation or the solution for the remainder of the school year. For the younger grades, try hosting a live book reading or joke time where you can get kids together and let them have fun interacting with each other. Natasha: When you’re providing live instruction online, breaking students out into small groups, even if you teach each group the same lesson, gives students the chance to participate more and makes it easier for you to monitor students’ understanding. Many students struggle with time management. This is a great two-way communication tool, that allows you to send both mass and personalized text messages. Ashleigh: For younger students, number one, find activities that you feel will be interesting for them. Clear, respectful communication is the key to building relationships and classroom community. You set the topic (their pet, their favorite outfit, something from a fun vacation), and students can turn on their video cameras and microphones to share in a lesson. Daryl: We need to start by talking about broader objectives for the online situation. By establishing comforting and predictable routines, teachers set the stage for cognitive development and give kids the encouragement to think criticallyand take learning risks. Even traditional schools are utilizing fully virtual courses for their in-person populations. The steps include how to identify a need, discover and select a product, train staff, and much more.Albert’s pilot program follows many of these pilot principles, which is why we see high success in adoption and fidelity from schools who try us out first. A board like. You're going to fumble a little bit. Storyboard Teaching. There’s a few common mistakes even the best veteran teachers make when first switching to the online environment. Students’ wellbeing and success are always priorities for educators. Beyond just lessons, you can also record yourself explaining assignment directions, for those students who do better when verbally told what to do. You can adjust Padlet’s settings so that all messages have to be approved by you before posting. Parents who aren’t fans of checking their email or logging into their LMS account every day benefit from receiving timely reminders like these directly to their phones: Newsletter emails help keep families informed and involved with the happenings in your class and the school. The big difference between online and face-to-face instruction is when students are online watching a video lesson, it can be extra hard to focus. This is a great option for reluctant writers, a strong way to boost engagement, and promote active learning. is a great tool for creating a collaborative class message board. Then, you can use that information when you’re talking to students and say, "Hey, I noticed that you didn't log in yesterday. Use the tips and tricks provided later in this article for discovering, experimenting, and implementing new tools in your classroom. Asynchronous activities, like discussion boards or recorded lectures, allow your students to complete assignments at their own time and pace. We hope you found this Ultimate Guide for Educators helpful. You can actually set up a Zoom call with yourself, record a lesson to your computer or the cloud, and then it’s available to share. It just takes a little creativity, and the right tools. You then can add in places for student interaction: written responses, drawings, quizzes, polls, collaborate boards, and more. shows the importance of teachers and parents developing relationships based on trust, respect, and solid communication. As the teachers, we must find ways to connect and support our parents, provide online learning strategies for students, and keep them involved throughout the school year. . Familiarize yourself with it early, and don’t hesitate to reach out to your more tech-savvy coworkers with questions. If you don’t have a work phone, create a free. It's imperative that you do that.". If you're an educator interested in trying Albert, click the button below to learn about our pilot program. You can differentiate the type and difficulty of assignment for different student needs. For many educators and students, the virtual format is their day-to-day normal, and now is the time to lean on their experience and advice. Any kind of consistency that you can maintain will be really helpful. If conversation lags or needs direction, you can facilitate topics with fun icebreakers and “would you rather” questions. This is a great option for reluctant writers, a strong way to boost engagement, and promote active learning. Albert.io offers the best practice questions for high-stakes exams and core courses spanning grades 6-12. We're ultimately leaning on parents to facilitate some of this learning, and we want to give options that are attainable and workable. And they work; they get results. Beyond these basics, there are a huge variety of educational technology tools to transform your teaching and engage your students. They can view and respond to each other’s videos, as well. We’ve seen a lot of questions come up that center around educators feeling nervous about their own technological savviness and ability to teach online. You already know your kids, and if you think through what you would do in your brick-and-mortar classroom, and when students would need a break in the lesson, that’s how you know what “chunks” of content to create. These videos can be downloaded or shared via weblink. Best Practices for Teachers Making the Switch to Virtual Instruction: Q&A with Online Education Experts Wednesday, March 25, 2020 Educators around the United States and the world are facing a huge level of uncertainty as local governments respond to the fast-evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Best practices in teaching and learning include a stream of defining moments and epiphanies that may be effectively offered online. And if you do, just keep on going like you do in the classroom. Checking their child’s due dates and what they’ve submitted each day, Checking the posted grades for each class, Reading and responding to teacher emails and calls, Reaching out with any questions or challenges, With so many different tools out there, it can be overwhelming to find the one that’s best for you and your students. Zoom is one specific program that works well for filming videos, even though we usually think of it for conference calls or live meetings. Remind them you’re not going anywhere and that you understand things are unpredictable right now. [Free Classroom Resources] January Printables, Activities, and More! Talk to your district about what the expectations are, and make sure that you’re working within them. The threat of COVID-19 will lead to significant changes in the practices of staff, teachers, and students alike. Due dates for upcoming assignments or test days. Make sure that students and parents know what platforms you’re using and how to get in touch with you. Be well and stay safe. How can you differentiate for your students who are working at different levels, especially as that relates to different reading levels? For example, if assigning an essay, set a due date for the outline, the rough draft, and the final essay. How can teachers keep students engaged when they’re working online? Do what you can to find out which students have an adult at home to help them, and incorporate those caregivers into the work you assign as well. Students can wish each other happy birthdays, share exciting events in their lives, or post shoutouts and encouragements to each other. Share your expectations and due dates early and often to prepare students and families for a successful year. Whenever local government officials decide to reopen schools, it’s clear that it won’t just be business as usual. The virtual classroom makes show and tell easier than ever! You’ll also need a separate tool like. Use the lessons you’ve already created, and adapt them to the online environment with different ed tech tools. When you need to supplement your curriculum with ready-made online activities, Alberthas engaging, standards-aligned resources across grade levels and subjects. offers a number of different, free templates to choose from. Incorporating these best practices will help ensure that you and your students stay engaged and have a positive experience. Educators around the United States and the world are facing a huge level of uncertainty as local governments respond to the fast-evolving COVID-19 pandemic. In the online environment, parent involvement looks very different. Log in and test out your activity as a student, so you can truly see if this will work for your class. Collaborate with fellow educators and identify specific needs to find and implement the best tools for your classroom. Reach out to your kids that you know would benefit from having just you talking to them for a couple minutes to get them going, and you're going to save them and yourself a lot of frustration. We have to think about our environment and what our expectations are. Instead of typing, students record themselves answering your posted questions. Think about hosting an opening meeting at the start of the week and then a closing meeting at the end of the week. In the early stages of getting things going when you want science to happen, you can think about that essential skill and what experiences actually need to happen for that learner and give families multiple approaches. It's often said in the teaching world (as in many professions and trades, I imagine), \"Why reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of practices that already work?\" We teachers are standing on the shoulders of giants before us who have developed tried-and-true strategies by testing them out, reflecting on the outcomes, and honing those strategies over decades or longer. Too often, districts work on something for a year, then revamp their priorities and launch a whole new set of goals for the next year. Inevitably, something won’t always go as planned. Lean on building structure into your teaching and students’ days, and be diligent in establishing a cadence over time—over time, the routines will start to take care of themselves. Get Ready for Canvas to be Your Best … You’ll also need a separate tool like Google Voiceor Zoomor phone calls, live lessons, and video chatting. It’s an unfortunate reality that … David: I usually tell my students I hover at a distance. We’ll continue to conduct these educator Q&A webinars in the coming weeks. For written discussions, Google Classroom is a great tool. Here, we outline our favorite best practices and resources for keeping distance learning engaging and rigorous throughout the coronavirus outbreak (and beyond). But, the truth is, education’s shift towards distance learning had been steadily growing long before this pandemic. Framework for Effective Practice. PBS KIDS and other mission-driven websites have a suite of content that would allow you really to have your reader reading at the level you want them to be at. Daryl: Check out different communication and collaboration apps. —Mr. Online, you're facilitating students to make progress away from you and really have to think about how you are guiding them from the side. The price tags of elaborate 3-D printers, coding robots, circuit sets, … Reader’s theater can be a great learning experience for students while their having fun at the same time. The graphic presented here lists seven best practices for teaching online. Usually, some people will say they're going to be my problem student for the day because they don't feel comfortable with technology. Click to share these online teaching strategies on Twitter & help other educators! I'm here to support you like I've always been, and I need you to communicate with me. We discuss these five most common strategies in distance education in more detail throughout this article: Revamp your in-person lessons to the online environment with engaging discussions, screen recordings, and interactive tech tools. In this online environment, you’ll find yourself inevitably wondering, “Does anyone even read my emails?” To guarantee your students read and understand any especially important communications, add a link to a quickGoogle Formwhere a student and/or parent will type their name to acknowledge they read and understood it. An unbeatable tool for asynchronous discussions is. Nonverbals are a teacher’s best proactive approach to behavior management and can thwart a lot of negative behaviors before they escalate. What recommendations do you have about the amount of time that students should be spending on each class per day, keeping in mind differences depending on the developmental stages of your students? Or is it something that they need to physically put their hands on in order to best meet the goal of learning that content? We’ve covered a lot of online teaching ideas and strategies. has a huge library of standards aligned lessons and activities for all ages and subjects. Do you need an interactive online lab? Strong classroom management is as essential in the online environment as it is in the traditional one. This is the fun part! That's part of the natural flow and rhythm to this. We are also chock-full of ideas and strategies to find what will work best for you and your students. As an online teacher, you have an opportunity to create a … But, that’s okay! I turn it around and ask, "Do you use email? Provide bite-sized learning opportunities outside of formal PD days. It can be intimidating to try out a new tool for the first time, so we suggest setting up a mock class and using some willing colleagues or family members as your guinea pigs before rolling it out with students. David: I often use my smartphone to make instructional videos. Having clear conversations about your goals and expectations for the school year helps. For example, if it’s a discussion board, have students’ first posts be about their family pet or what they did for fun that weekend. Weekly newsletters are a great way to build community with families. These 5 simple principles are the framework for all of the top online learning strategies. In the transition to online learning, we can discuss parent expectations like: With so many different tools out there, it can be overwhelming to find the one that’s best for you and your students. And don't feel when you shoot anything on video that it has to be absolutely studio perfect. By using reader's theater scripts, teachers can encourage students to read with expression and to practice important fluency attributes, such as pause, inflection, and intonation. I think you can get creative with the low-tech piece, and then bring it back to the idea of giving yourself grace. You’ll probably find even the quieter students feel more bold typing in the chat- which is great when it’s positive conversations, but not-so-great when it gets off topic or inappropriate. We know that parent involvement strongly impacts student performance in school. As the online classroom can often feel a little free-form, you’ll need to provide … Set The Expectations. When I'm presenting a live lesson, screen sharing is most important for me. With COVID-19 nearly overnight transforming our traditional classrooms into virtual ones, it can seem like distance learning has appeared out of nowhere. Ashleigh: Number one, make it easy for students to admit if they don't have the ability to do what you’re asking in a hands-on activity. Ten Best Teaching Practices I've Observed by Dr. Charles Taylor This article is intended to share best teaching practices that great teachers display in the classroom. Research shows the importance of teachers and parents developing relationships based on trust, respect, and solid communication. As the person physically with the student, parents are now responsible for making sure their child is staying on-task and logging into the computer each day to complete assignments. How can you provide small-group instruction in the online environment? is one way to make online classes more interactive. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel- take advantage of the great resources already out there. That's how correspondence school started. I think about being consistent and persistent in communicating with my online students. It’s important to relax, take a deep breath, and know that there will be challenges to overcome, just like in the classroom. Support social skills practice. Then, it’s all about reinforcing. The good news is that online teaching and learning are not new approaches. You can leave messages for your students with discussion prompts, and they can return the message with their response. What are some of the best ways to teach more hands-on lessons, like science labs and project-based learning activities, in an online environment? Without a rigid school day schedule, it’s easy for students to lose track of time and fall behind on their work. Every single teacher who I know is working longer and harder than ever before, so supporting your child’s teacher in any way is an enormous help. Try making memes for your students—kids love that. The workshop is facilitated by a team of instructional designers and touches on several best practices. Without a rigid school day schedule, it’s easy for students to lose track of time and fall behind on their work. Often, you can accomplish in a 15-minute, one-on-one meeting what that student could work on for an hour on their own and not figure out. Be wary of assigning complex tasks and assignments without training your students on how to use the technology first. Get Edmentum's Administrator’s Checklist for Pivoting to Virtual Learning, Six Study Island Features that Educators Can't Live Without, [Edmentum Podcast] Episode 13: Taking Teaching on the Road with Cathy Cluck. And then, beg, borrow, and steal. Just reaching out and speaking with your student one-on-one builds an essential bond. The days of teachers … If a student is negatively participating, you can easily mute or remove him or her from the lesson. This district will instead hire one teacher to virtually run the course through an online Learning Management System, like Canvas or Moodle. Things have been and will continue to be adjusted. 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