Wow! I have heard some amazing stories since many of the state school districts have started the new school year. One of my favorite stories was hearing about an elementary school teacher who really had a hard time sitting in her classroom with no students because her district was universal remote. As she would go to work and shut the classroom door, there was an eerie silence until she turned on the screen. It was just too much to bear. So, she decided to print out pictures of their cute, little faces and tape them to the desks.
I love that small example of a teacher finding a way to feel the connection between her/him and their students. There have been a lot of conversations about basic classroom management in this remote world. I can see a shift in priorities and classroom management because at the end of the day we just want to interact and learn together.
Recently, I attended a session about designing a virtual training. The conversation focused on thinking about your audience and what you want them to gain from the lesson. Once you truly determine those 2 things, you can decide if it would best be understood or learned via collaboration or presentation. Collaboration would require attendees/students to engage and work together as a team (think-partners at the virtual table). A presentation is more informational. In a presentation, collaboration would not be necessary because this is just information that you need to know. I kind of see this as probably part of your resources for students to access at any time for extra support or the presentations can be part of the scaffolding as you deep dive into the standard.
For example, if I am teaching an ELA standard on figurative language, I might create a learning platform that is strictly informational for the first lesson. Students would access this presentation on something like Nearpod or, heaven forbid, Power Point. The presentation would have the terms, definitions, and examples. You could include some formative assessments within the presentation to check for understanding. At any time, the student could access this presentation as a resource. Because memorizing the meanings of figurative language does not really need collaboration, this can be a part of e-learning; something the students may access at any given time.
The remote learning, where teachers are live with their students in a virtual setting, is truly a collaborative space. I bring this up because we can differentiate between when we want our students to be engaged with each other and us, depending upon the lesson and essential goal. If it is something that is purely informational, I would suggest shifting the way you think about what your presenting vs. collaborating with your students and what kind of platform should it be delivered through. Let’s stick with the figurative language standard. If the students have begun memorizing the various literature terms like metaphors and symbols, we might want to start having them identify their understanding through different mediums and analyzing their meaning. This would be a great space for collaboration. Right! Students could be put into small groups and break out rooms. Each small group reads a poem and identifies the figurative language and then discusses/analyzes the meaning.
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I think that if we can get our student in a space that is conducive to collaboration and invites them to engage, we will spend less time on classroom management. In fact, I believe that SO MUCH that I like to focus most classroom norms (which were created by students in collaboration) on behaviors for maintaining a positive and safe environment rather than on what students can’t do. If we are given a list of things we can’t do, we don’t feel invited or comfortable at that place. Just saying…
Stay safe! Keep rethinking what works for you and your students. Adjust. Take time for you and just breathe. We will get through this year and once on the other side, I think we will have new best practices that become our favorite things to do with the students.
See You Real Soon,
Erin
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