Dear Sun Valley Community,

We are all anxiously awaiting news about vaccines and a timeline of when schools will be able to return for in-person instruction. In the meantime, my staff and I are focused on helping schools to make their online instruction as effective as it can be.

Effective instruction in a remote learning context depends on making lessons interactive for students. This does not have to be accomplished through complicated digital tools. It can be realized through some low-tech interactive strategies that every teacher can employ.

One of the strategies that we are promoting in the Sun Valley Community of Schools this semester is the use of Universal Responses. A Universal Response is when a teacher provides an opportunity for every student to respond simultaneously to a prompt. A simple example of this strategy is when a teacher asks students to show a thumbs up on their camera to indicate they understood a direction. It could also be something more sophisticated like asking every student to respond to a poll that the teacher launches in Zoom. Incorporating at least one Universal Response every ten minutes during a lesson is one way to keep students engaged. By asking all students to respond to a prompt, a teacher can quickly see which students are engaged and following the lesson and which students are beginning to withdraw.

Each week I have the pleasure of visiting online classrooms at elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. I am happy to report that many teachers are embracing Universal Responses as way to make their instruction more interactive and engaging for students. Principals are also modeling Universal Responses for their teachers during their staff meetings and encouraging teachers to get creative about the ways they can build in these moments where every student has to engage and respond. I have observed many innovative teachers in our Community of Schools that are keeping their students on their toes and active throughout their lessons.

Our office will continue to support schools with the use of low-tech and high-tech ways to make their online lessons more engaging so we can achieve the best outcomes until we can return to in-person instruction. The silver lining may be that when we are finally back in classrooms, teachers will have learned a new set of strategies that they can continue to implement that will make learning more engaging and fun for students.

Thank you,

John Rome

Sun Valley Community of

Schools Administrator