Engaging Students & Family

Engaging Students During Home Learning

Involve Families

Through your online learning provider, Remote, Class Dojo, and many other sources, proactively and regularly communicate with your parents. Give them clear directions and resources. Solicit, listen to, and act on their feedback.

Remember to communicate positive feedback with your parents. Make sure to reach out to parents with news of great work their children did. Specific work-related praise goes a long way to strengthening relationships with both families and students.

Daily Check-Ins

Be your student's happy hero! Set up a time or two each day that students will know you are online for an engaging conversation. Ask the students the same questions you would ask at the start of the day. In your online conversation, encourage your students to share their perspective, and then comment respectively to the comments of their classmates.

Some possible check-in prompts:

  • How are you doing?

  • What have you done today that was fun, and why was it fun?

  • What’s your internal weather?

  • Roses and Thorns, Highs and Lows, Glows and Grows

Just like in the classroom, there are students you give extra TLC to support their SEL needs. Through your online provider, continue to have those positive, constructive, confidence-building conversations. Be present while online for your students. They still need you, probably need you more.

Some Families may NOT have Internet!

For your families new to a device in the house, your online communication must emphasize each step of HOW TO access your lessons. Don't assume. Parents want to help, but may need you to help them help you!

Meeting SEL Needs of Teens in an Online Class

For teens, school is about time with their friends and opportunities to actively explore who they are and who they want to be in the world. School closures disrupt this SEL need of teens. Use your online platform to address teens' developmental needs!

The article, Making SEL More Relevant to Teens, recommends three activities to help students explore who they are and who they want to be that may reduce stress, anxiety, and depression during this time away from their social support system- their friends.

  1. Invite students to learn about their character strength.

  2. Encourage students to imagine their best selves.

  3. Challenge students to explore their purpose.

In your online conversations, by knowing your students, you can envision ways they might contribute to the world, share your insights during online discussions, and ultimately help them feel more respected and empowered.

Communicating with Students Online

Use your online learning management system to fully engage with your students! Depending on your students' ages and system filters, use all features available!

Email! Chat! Host a Discussion! Create Announcements!

Here are some tips that will, hopefully, help:

  • Be friendly and invitational. The tone you set might become the tone your students use in their communications. Perhaps begin emails with the word "Hi" followed by the student's name.

  • Don't be curt. Of course, there might be times when you'll need to critique students. Try to be as positive as possible, and be careful not to sound insulting. Because of the absence of body language in textual communications, students can misconstrue what you are trying to say. The more positive you are, the better morale will be in the class.

  • Respond to students in a timely manner. Let students and parents know what your response policy is, particularly for emails. It could be 24 hours or even 48 hours. The more timely the response, the better. If you are not planning to respond to emails on the weekends, tell this to the class.

  • Reply to student introductions. At the beginning of the semester, you and your students should introduce yourselves in the discussion board. Try to reply to each student post. This not only lets students know early on that you will be involved in class discussions, but it also helps to establish a personal connection with each student.

  • Be social. Use announcements, discussion posts, etc. to direct and redirect your students towards key ideas and concepts and to be a coach and mentor during individual and group assignments.

  • Proofread before you send or post. Everything you write should mirror your high standards. That means spelling and grammar errors should be very rare. If you are challenged in these areas, you might want to write your communications in Microsoft Word first, where you can use the spell- and grammar-checking tools, then copy and paste into an email or into your course.

  • Break up your text. If you have a lot to write, use short, multiple paragraphs. White space is a good thing; a long blob of text is not.

  • Establish your rules about Netiquette. Decide if you and your students can use acronyms, emoticons (those little symbols that make smiley faces, etc.), all lower-cased letters, etc. Let students know if these are appropriate.

Articles

click on arrow to the right