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Essential Question:
Essential Question:
How can I keep students connected, engaged, and supported from a distance?
We all know that relationships are at the center of learning. We know students need to feel just as seen and valued in the virtual classroom as they do in-person, especially in this difficult time.
We are great at building relationships in the classroom. And we were able to use those existing relationships this year during the school closure. But how do we now do that with a new class of students? What tools and strategies can we use?
Big Idea 1: Presence
Big Idea 1: Presence
At the beginning of the online learning process: prioritize presence and responsiveness. Respond to posts as quickly as possible and praise engagement. Proactively reach out to students to check in. Post in discussions and other communal spaces often. When students have confidence that you are present and paying attention, they will mimic that behavior and begin to work more independently.
Best Practices
Best Practices
Share about You so students feel like they know you and let them show about their life.
Incorporate your image & voice wherever possible.
Sprinkle little pictures and stories from your life through your morning messages -- your pets, your garden, something you did over the weekend, etc.
Incorporate “show and tell” into your class meetings and participate yourself. Select things from your home that tell students about you - for example, show them something that is your favorite color or about a place you have traveled.
Share your creative work with students. If they are writing poetry, share your poems too.
Make your photo your Google avatar. Here’s how.
Bitmoji: Adding silly things like a bitmoji to your slides personalizes the instruction and reminds students that the directions and thoughts are coming from you. Tip: After you create an avatar, make a folder of the most useful images for easy access.
Feedback: Create a culture of student to student, teacher to student, and student to teacher feedback. Classroom, SeeSaw, and Flipgrid all provide multiple possibilities for feedback: from simple "likes" to multimedia commenting. Modeling, encouraging and guiding the liberal use of feedback will help students feel visible and part of a community.
This article uses examples from a teacher’s classroom: All That Jazz: Using Feedback to Make Learning Visible
Big Idea 2: Maintaining Community
Big Idea 2: Maintaining Community
Even if you might already know your students from in-person classroom time, it’s important to continue developing and building relationships online. Building in some levity is a way to humanize the experience of online learning and keep students from feeling isolated and disconnected. Planning check-ins, having students share out, or posting a daily prompt could be good methods of creating routine and connection.
Best Practices
Best Practices
Social Spaces: Consider offering a variety of informal and fun ways for students to interact. Be thinking about balancing opportunities for students with different levels of comfort with sharing. Some students might prefer to participate in an anonymous poll, others might enjoy posting a video in FlipGrid, some might enjoy sharing in a Google Doc Check-In. Socializing can be done in the Google Classroom Stream, the SeeSaw Blogs, or in a simple virtual space such as Padlet.
Social breaks during video meetings: Plan a little time at the beginning or end of a class video meeting for social time. Having social time during a video conference can make students feel more relaxed and positive, reduce feelings of isolation, and improve communication. Perhaps some of your favorite Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting Activities can be adapted to your class Google Meet sessions.
Examples & Resources
Examples & Resources
Using FlipGrid for Check-Ins, Messages, and Special Events (2:09 minutes)
Teaching Students How to Give Feedback and Participate in Online Discussions
Slide Deck: Commenting on Google Classroom
Slide Deck: Teaching Social Media to Kids
From "5 Virtual Ways to Build a Classroom Community" by PBS.org
Big Idea 3: Student Supports
Big Idea 3: Student Supports
Keeping students engaged and learning is a huge challenge. The questions we all are asking ourselves are: How can we be proactive and anticipate student needs? How can we best react when we see a student not engaging or struggling?
Creating student supports involves constant monitoring of student engagement, planful communication, and utilizing all available staff members efficiently.
Best Practices
Best Practices
Proactive Strategies:
Provide instructions in both video and text
Involve parents in communication early on
Communicate to students the procedure for getting help
Have regular office hours for students to "drop in"
Set a welcoming and understanding tone
Proactively check in with students
Monitor student engagement closely
Reactive Strategies:
Be available and respond quickly
Use support staff to help students in need of additional monitoring
Send friendly check-in messages to students and families when student work is flagging
Set “threshold points” for communications. For example, if a student misses three assignments, an email goes home.
Slide Deck from GOA Relationships by Design: Examples of check-ins and family communications
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