What are the primary structures that I need to create for an at-home learning environment designed for student success and engagement?
What types of learning experiences require synchronous connection?
Which synchronous experiences can be turned into asynchronous experiences?
Clear expectations for attendance at synchronous meetings along with predictable timing and structure for assignments are essential to keeping everyone on track. Establishing routines early on will help your students plan their time to meet goals.
Posting assignments at the same time each day helps students ready themselves for the learning that day.
Making short videos to communicate these daily elements are most effective when they include your smiling face. These videos also make you present for your class and allow you to be you with them.
Here is a short Edutopia article: 6 Strategies for Successful Distance Learning.
Create a basic classroom website that families can visit to get information. Here is an example. Keep this site simple and relatively static so that you don't have to keep updating it. Learn more about Google Sites.
Have regular recurring times for posting lessons and holding class meetings.
Schedule feedback & communications to be posted during school hours whenever possible. SeeSaw, Gmail, and Google Classroom all allow you to schedule your posts and messages in advance. Click the embedded links here for tutorials.
Communicate expectations to families around engagement.
The best use of synchronous meetings are for community building activities and for sharing of student work.
Synchronous learning can also be useful for: planning tasks, troubleshooting issues, answering questions, and fostering space for discussions (when done in small groups).
South Portland School Department uses Google Meet for all synchronous meetings with students.
Resource: Jamboard is a great tool to make online learning interactive. Here are some great ideas about how to use Jamboard in your teaching.
Set expectations and share them with students and families ahead of time.
First things first: teaching the interface mute/unmute, grid view. Send a video beforehand showing how those tools work. As students come into the meeting, show them how to mute and unmute.
Post a meeting agenda
Example: Grade 4 Google Meet Expectations
Video Safety for Kids infographic
Sharing student work is a great use of synchronous meeting time. Just be sure to tell students in advance that they will be sharing, have a protocol in mind for how others will respond (silent signal? brief unmute for cheering? asking a question?), and plan out the sharing order in advance.
Asynchronous learning opportunities can be the most equitable and effective way to actually teach content in a remote learning situation.
Students can access the content wherever and whenever works for them. Instruction can be reviewed as many times as needed and can be accessed by caregivers and instructional support staff who may be working with the student individually.
The primary platforms for posting lessons and assignments at the elementary level are SeeSaw for grades PreK-4 and Google Classroom for Grade 5. Teachers can find or create instructional videos, virtual field trips, and read alouds and then design activities to demonstrate learning using the wide variety of tools supported by our technology department.
Activities to demonstrate understanding can also be created in SeeSaw, Google Slides, Draw, and Docs, Pear Deck Self-Paced, and FlipGrid.
Resource: SeeSaw Pioneer Program: New to SeeSaw? This is a great way to get started. If you want to go further, check out the SeeSaw Ambassador Program.
Creating an effective instructional video is similar to creating a lesson for the classroom. It may feel awkward to make a video of yourself, but students respond to fun, authentic, and relatable videos. It’s okay to be silly and make mistakes!
Instructional videos should be short (1-5 minutes is best). And just as you want to keep your “sit & get” time to a minimum in the classroom, you want to keep the passive listening sessions short followed by an activity that allows students an opportunity to apply what they just learned.
Learn more about how to make videos in Loom.
AND you can make videos interactive using EdPuzzle.