Best Practices for Remote Science Learning
This page showcases submissions of pedagogical practices from teachers across the TDSB for a wide variety of courses. If you have more ideas, please consider submitting - we need to help each other out. If you are looking for more course-related content, please see our resources for remote learning.
Submission
I am always looking for more great ideas! To share your insight, please download and complete this Word document and email it to Chris Meyer. Thanks in advance!
“Cropping” YouTube videos
Asynchronous learning using videos
from Cindy Law, W. L. Mackenzie. C. I.
Rationale:
Sometimes you want students to watch only one particular section of a longer YouTube video. There are a few quick ways to “crop” the video so that students watch the section that you want without needing fancy video editing tools.
Detailed Description:
To watch videos from a start that isn’t right at the beginning:
● Move the red cursor on the video progress bar to the exact point where you want the students to begin watching the video.
● Right click on the video and choose “copy video URL at current time”
● Share that URL with the students and the video will start at that exact point.
● Students can manually move the red bar themselves to the beginning of the video if they want to watch the other sections that you didn’t deem necessary.
To watch videos where it stops at a point that isn’t the end (also includes modified start times):
● Go to: https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/
● Enter the YouTube video URL. Hit <enter> or click OK
● The video will load. You will see 2 blue dots at the bottom where the video progress (time) bar is.
● Move the blue dots to “crop” your video, choosing the beginning and end of the section that you want the students to watch.
● There are 2 URLS listed below the video. Copy the SECOND URL for the students. Only the second URL will work with modified end times. The first URL only works with modified start times which you wouldn’t need since you can do that directly within YouTube.
● Again, the good thing with this URL is that if students choose to watch past the given section they still can. They URL will automatically stop at your designated time, but they can bypass that. So technically you haven’t cropped the video, you’ve just paused it. But it allows you to communicate the sections that you want the students to focus on.
Interactive Online Whiteboard
online collaboration
from Megan Ransom, Weston Collegiate Institute
Rationale:
This is a simple tool that allows Teacher to populate individual digital whiteboards to each student. You can see each student whiteboard in real time. Students only see their own whiteboard and the teacher's. This allows for immediate formative assessment of understanding of concepts and to provide live feedback. You can add graph paper and images as backgrounds for students to annotate or draw on. I am finding it very useful at the moment for grade 9 chemistry! My colleague is using it for drawing ray diagrams in Gr 10 Optics.
Detailed Description:
This tool requires no app installation or program. It is fully accessed through the web and is compatible with any device. Students can write with a mouse, stylus or finger. Access is through a temporary class code or QR code. As a teacher you can see all student whiteboards. You can make these visible to the class in an in-class situation and can hide names. PDF's of the whiteboard can be saved.
Experiences from Spring Quad Online
course design
Geetha Victor, Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute
Rationale:
Geetha is the Assistant Curriculum Leader - Math at Burnhamthorpe, a school that has been running on a quadmester system for quite a while now. Here she shares her experiences with remote learning from the past spring, when she taught a full quadmester online.
Detailed Description:
We conducted one full Spring Quadmester online. I was glad to test drive the remote models and I have not been disappointed. In quadmester schools, even during normal times, we have 90 in-class hours (including exams) and 20 online hours .
Project based learning approaches help us to use the independent hours (online hours) more meaningfully. Students use those independent learning hours to find a topic, research it, collect the background information, collect evidence, complete their presentation, and identify the solutions for their chosen problems. As we are familiar with the 'project-based model', students learn through the project during the quadmester rather than doing their project at the end of the quadmester as a culminating activity. They are given the 'voice and choice' to choose their project and are allowed to have multiple entry points.
The flipped classroom strategy works very well in our settings. They use some of the independent learning (online) hours for such purposes.
Teachers are super-organized and post all assignments and expectations in Google classroom or in the Brightspace platform. I normally advocate for the Brightspace platform and encourage my colleagues to use this platform because of the added ' minstry's course content' feature. It is convenient to navigate between the lessons at ease.The assignments and formative assessments are designed for ' E-learning' and therefore they fit perfectly for our remote learning hours. I teach some lessons live (synchronously) and assign a few more lessons for independent exploration and learning.
One suggestion I always provide to colleagues is to focus on the overall expectations. The project clusters many expectations and allows students the acquisition of 'Global competencies'.
Small group discussions worked very well in long hour sessions. Being mindful of the ' Physical distancing', now I am working to arrange ' Small group discussion' using Bright space's ' Group ' tool. In small group discussions, we shared lots of resources, focussing on culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy and used digital quizzes.
The Bright space platform and Gizmos can substitute for physical labs. During remote learning, we also demonstrated labs in our synchronous sessions and ask students to observe, analyse and infer.
Also, in Spring remote learning Quadmester, I had been offering 'Extra help' and 'Credit rescue' in the remote setting. I arranged many one-on-one sessions for 'Extra help' and students appreciated that opportunity and were motivated to learn.
As a team lead, I organized many small group learning sessions for teachers, where my colleagues signed up for various topics and shared their expertise on the nuances concerning the various learning management systems and digital tools, resources focussing on culturally relevant pedagogy and introduced strategies to create digital quizzes. We did the 'Share and Learn' for many topics and discussed the minor details. It was great experience to tap the expertise of all of my team members and to learn with no intimidation or fear.
SNC 2D1 Biology Unit Choice Board
assessment, choice board, gr 10 Biology
Rationale:
Created a choice board for some of the specific expectations of the biology unit in the gr 10 Science curriculum. My rationale was to create an equitable assessment practice that allowed the students to demonstrate their learning through the method they were most comfortable.
Detailed Description:
Students clicked on the different objects in the room (see link below) and it took them to a different choice for assessment. Students were required to choose 3 of the 9 options and submit their work digitally. In some cases, they submitted a photo, audio or video recording of their work. Below is the link to the rubric I used.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v83E511VV6zom8Si4WX-9kNAXSMExxjo_BqI7UO0kR0/edit#slide=id.p
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mtLwMCl67qyc6u4eeCtD73p4qzFyHFLTZyZ4eUaSB7c/edit
SNC 2D1 Biology Unit Choice Board
assessment, choice board, gr 10 Biology
Rationale:
Created a choice board for some of the specific expectations of the biology unit in the gr 10 Science curriculum. My rationale was to create an equitable assessment practice that allowed the students to demonstrate their learning through the method they were most comfortable.
Detailed Description:
Students clicked on the different objects in the room (see link below) and it took them to a different choice for assessment. Students were required to choose 3 of the 9 options and submit their work digitally. In some cases, they submitted a photo, audio or video recording of their work. Below is the link to the rubric I used.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v83E511VV6zom8Si4WX-9kNAXSMExxjo_BqI7UO0kR0/edit#slide=id.p
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mtLwMCl67qyc6u4eeCtD73p4qzFyHFLTZyZ4eUaSB7c/edit
Lesson Summary and Reflection
assessment
From Melissa Holden, Newtonbrook
Rationale:
The students were already familiar with making a learning log to summarize the main ideas from each lesson. For remote learning, the students were also required to reflect on what they learned and were given some questions to guide their writing (what was easiest/hardest/most interesting etc). This helped create a great summary for them to review, but also ensured that they work they handed in was their own. The learning logs demonstrated the knowledge or connections they made during the lesson and gave an opportunity for me to highlight any important concepts that were missed.
The reflection component was most interesting for me and gave opportunities to have discussions with my students. As part of their culminating task, the students needed to improve on their logs (based on feedback) and create or add textbook questions that would help them review for an exam. Many students were grateful to have the documents from each unit at the end of the semester. It is also a helpful document to review chemistry ideas for when they are in Grade 10.
Detailed Description:
Here is a sample learning log.
How to make a Google Meet Lesson interactive
Real-time interaction in a Google Meet
from Roberta Tevlin, Danforth Tech
Rationale:
If you have 30 students at the other side of a Google Meet lesson, you need many ways to allow many students to interact – otherwise, you might as well just pre-record a lecture. Here are two easy ways to use existing Google tools to help.
Detailed Description:
Multiple-Choice Concept Questions in the Chat Area: If you are dealing with 30 students in a Google meet, it is almost impossible to make use of student microphones or videos. However, the chat area provides a place where students can participate. It is extremely helpful for multiple-choice concept questions, where they can type in a single letter answer instead of holding up a letter in class. As usual, you want them to answer independently after thinking. Therefore, don’t let them answer right away. Give them time to think about which answer they think is right and why, which answers are wrong and why. How would they explain their response to a classmate? Then you can say ‘ready, set , go!” and they can all answer at the same time. There are so many responses coming in so fast, that no one feels like their ‘wrong’ answer stands out. The students get excited trying to answer first which wakes them up and because you have made them think first, it doesn’t interfere with learning. I am aware that there are lots of apps that do this sort of thing – but I liked how easy this was to implement.
Google-Form Quizzes: A Google Form can be made into a quiz really easily. You go to make a Google Form and click on the gear at the top right of the page. Check out this document for images of this process.
Then you select Quizzes from the three options at the top. I would also collect emails and usually limit to one response.
Then select the toggle top left that turns the form into a quiz. You can choose to let them get their answers and score right away or until after all the responses are in.
The rest of the set-up is pretty self-explanatory. The software grades the quiz and when you say so, emails the results to them. I used these at the end of each class, but they could be used at the start for a review or in the middle for a break. Once again, there are other tools that do this, but I liked the fact that this is software available to all the TDSB students and staff and did not require any extra downloading.
ScreenCastify Recording Software
Unit and lesson designs
from Andrea Palmay
Rationale:
ScreenCastify allowed me to record my lessons and attach them to google classroom for my grade 12 physics class. Students were able to listen to the recordings at any time at home. Recording lessons helped me explain scientific topics in simple language and demonstrate how to solve practical examples. Like KhanAcademy Videos, Screencasitfy records your voice and includes drawing tools. You can include text and draw diagrams. All recordings are saved on your googledrive.
Detailed Description:
Check out this document for an example.
Online White Board
Synchronous Learning and Demonstration
from Andrea Palmay
Rationale:
I used canvas online white board during my google meets with my physics class. It is a great tool to explain lesson topics and go over homework questions. The teacher shares their computer screen through google meets to view the white board. The teacher has control of the white board app and can use different drawing tools such as text, equations and diagrams.
Detailed Description:
Check out this document for an example.
Name Tents for Students
Classroom set up
from Chris Meyer
Rationale:
How do we learn student names? Students will be masked and we will see them once every 4 days, or roughly 10 times in total.
Detailed Description:
Here is an Excel sheet I created that makes name tents you can print, cut out and place on desks at the locations where you want students to sit. This allows everyone to see the students name. I will probably use them for the full quadmester.