From: https://www.edutopia.org/article/distance-learning-strategies-bring-back-classroom

Distance Learning Strategies to Bring Back to the Classroom

 

When schools closed, teachers were forced to get creative—and they’ve learned things they can use when they’re back at school.

By Sarah Cooper

May 20, 2020 Updated May 22, 2020

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Before my eighth-grade history students moved into online learning this spring, I had no idea about one student’s affection for Cup Noodles or another’s sweet way of talking about her 5-year-old brother. Perhaps I should have known, but I didn’t, and I wish I had.

Distance learning has enabled these intimate glimpses into students’ lives and thought processes, and I worry that these moments won’t happen as much once we eventually return to campus. However, I realize that doesn’t have to be the case—and so I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ways to translate the best aspects of online instruction to the physical classroom.

WHAT I WANT TO BRING BACK TO MY CLASSROOM

Providing feedback on what works in a quick email: With all of us being so far from each other and everything being turned in online, it feels natural to send a handful of kids two-line emails for each small assignment, highlighting something specific that worked. I’m judicious about doing this so that I don’t spend forever grading quick-completion assignments. However, I do want students to know that I’m seeing their work and thinking about them.

I’d love to continue this practice back in the physical classroom, even if it’s only for a minute during class while students are working on something else, because it can be more permanent and private than saying something aloud.

Following along online while talking with students about their projects: While discussing research that students have done for history projects, it’s been easy to look at and comment on the group’s shared Google Doc while they’re in a Zoom breakout group with me. Back in the physical classroom, I’d like to carry my laptop around more often so that I’m not simply looking over their shoulders, but also engaging with them by making written comments in real time that they can follow up on later.

Screen sharing has been invaluable for helping students investigate whether a source is valid or find citation information. It’s also helped me navigate tech questions, such as how to move a file into a Google Drive folder. Even in a regular classroom, I could take more time to walk individual groups through processes like these.

Using exit tickets as a formative assessment: I’ve used online exit tickets for different purposes, whether asking students to summarize their progress on a group project or to write about what made a podcast powerful. I hadn’t consistently used exit tickets in the physical classroom, but now I want to. The information they provide has shaped my understanding of my students and helped me plan for the next class.

When we’re back in the classroom, I’d like to think about how best to do an exit ticket according to the daily lesson. Some days it might be a Google Form so that I can compile, copy, and save information easily. Other days it might be a projected chat window where students can talk about what they found interesting about a topic. Other times, it might be an old-fashioned slip of paper so that I can keep feedback anonymous and sort ideas into categories.

Offering creative and fun summative assessments: Since we transitioned to distance learning, my students have appreciated that their teachers have assigned creative projects, both to individualize instruction and to give students a chance to socialize through virtual breakout groups. My students also like offering feedback on their classmates’ projects through Google Drive and Google Forms. These compliments are much easier to pass along than the handwritten comments that students used to write in class.

Providing space for relevant side chatter: Even with a focus on content-driven responses, there’s still room for appropriate humor and on-the-side interaction among students. I’ve been delighted by the informality of kids’ chipping in an idea that they don’t necessarily want to interrupt class to share but that they do want to get out there. (As I’m teaching, I monitor the chat, laugh along with the students, and then suggest that they lay off if it goes too long!) It would be ideal to keep this chat going every day in the physical classroom, maybe on a screen behind me, so that I can hear from every kid more frequently throughout class.

Introducing warm-up questions about students’ lives: My favorite part of online learning has been the immediate glimpse of students’ lives that they offer in the chat at the beginning of our eighth-grade U.S. history Zoom sessions each day. I post a question, students respond, and I call on a few to explain.

Lighter questions have included: What did you have for breakfast or lunch today? What is something you’ve enjoyed creating or doing with your hands this week?

Heavier questions have included: What is something nice you could do (or have done) for someone else while in quarantine? What have you learned about yourself or others while at home?

For the last question, I have loved hearing from some seemingly extroverted students who found that they were enjoying time alone, and vice versa. Some kids have discovered that they like cooking, and others their siblings’ sense of humor. I have also heard from a few kids whose answers concerned me, and I followed up later with them or their counselor.

In a recent survey, a number of students said that they also love this daily warm-up, that it makes “the feel of this class familiar and comfortable.” I plan to incorporate this quick check-in either by voice or onscreen, or both, when we’re back together in real life—which I hope will be sooner rather than later.

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MENTAL HEALTH

Helping Students Through a Period of Grief

Covid-19 has meant a lot of loss for students of all ages—with more loss likely to come. Teachers can engage and support them in processing their emotions.

By Becki Cohn-Vargas, Carlee Adamson

May 13, 2020

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Educators often face challenges supporting students through loss and grief, in part because neither teachers nor principals are generally trained as grief counselors. Yet in the coming weeks and months, many students will experience losses of loved ones and of ways of life, and schools are in a unique position to collectively engage and support them with compassion in the grieving process.

With a new loss, previous losses are remembered, previous trauma may be re-experienced, and new fears emerge. Children may fear that a parent will die. If their parents are unemployed, children may fear that they’ll become homeless. Teens might worry that they must give up hopes for college and a future. And with this pandemic, losses are likely to be compounded over time, and students may become unable to focus on their education.

Teachers can play a critical role in helping students understand their responses to these losses and move through the grieving process, which gets us in touch with our humanity and offers an opportunity to more fully experience our aliveness, and life itself.

TEACHING STUDENTS TO ACKNOWLEDGE FEELINGS

Educators can encourage students to fully experience the feelings and physical sensations—tightness, tension, or numbness, for example—that come with loss. Healing occurs when a person accepts and moves through the emotions of fear, anger, and sadness to integrate a new reality, understanding what has been lost.

For younger students: Young kids don’t have words to express these feelings. They may absorb anxiety they sense around them or on the news, and they may vacillate between happily engaging one minute and acting out irritably the next. Teachers may observe regressive behaviors, violent play, and a lack of focus.

Allow these younger students to express their grief, listening without offering quick solutions or telling them how to feel. Calm their fears without minimizing their emotions. Respond honestly to questions—and admit when you don’t know the answers. Encourage conversations, play, and physical outlets with symbolic activities using drawings and stories. Be patient, nurturing, and consistent.

For older students: As they get older, children understand more and try to make meaning of what’s happening. Some are better than others at expressing emotions. Many repress their feelings or are in denial, appearing OK when they’re not. Others act out, exhibiting addictive or self-destructive behavior.

Do a needs assessment to find out what students are feeling and needing. Give them permission to express grief and space to process feelings. Listen patiently without judgment. Give straightforward answers. Build trust using ground rules for compassionate and safe interactions. Adjust distance learning expectations to their specific needs.

Children of all ages can be supported to express emotions—even anger and frustration—in healthy ways, developing a language to describe feelings and identifying physical sensations associated with them. They can do mindfulness and movement exercises to release tension and stress. When they’re feeling bad, they can learn to identify what they can hold on to that brings a sense of safety or comfort, such as people, places, images, colors, or sounds.

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FACILITATING SUPPORTIVE PARTNERSHIPS

Prioritizing activities that nurture connection and relationship-building increases the likelihood that students will not feel alone and will feel safe to grieve. Create simple ways of checking to find out how they’re doing. Use low-tech and high-tech options to ensure access—phone, video conferencing, emails. Invite, but don’t require, students to share their stories to ensure they know they aren’t alone in their experiences. They can contribute to school newsletters and community blogs, with videos, art, or writing as an outlet. Recognize and honor individuals and groups for their contributions.

For younger students: Contact each child regularly. Even paper packets can include interactive activities such as journal prompts or poems about their feelings, expressive art projects, or SEL lessons like a feelings scavenger hunt. If your students can access the internet, create online lessons to strengthen social skills like brainstorming kind words or dealing with disappointment.

For older students: Assign advisory groups of students to individual teachers to ensure regular one-to-one check-ins with every student. Many teachers schedule office hours with drop-in times, and some teachers whose students who weren’t showing up for class sessions or answering calls have planned home visits—while maintaining social distancing.

Teachers can continue to foster peer connections using video conferencing. It may be best to allow students to choose not to use cameras—some are embarrassed about their noisy or crowded homes.

During synchronous sessions, assign online group work in smaller breakout rooms for facilitated collaboration. Design structured conversations and teach students to use open-ended questions, paraphrase with reflective listening strategies, use affirming statements, and carry out empathy interviews that acknowledge strengths and feelings in a safe non-judgmental way.

CREATING NEW RITUALS DURING TIMES OF GRIEF

Many communal approaches to grief, like funerals and community gatherings, cannot occur during social distancing, but it’s still important to recognize loss and hold those who are grieving. Try to be aware of cultural differences in expressing grief and honoring the dead, and use input from students and their families to create community rituals to support those who’ve experienced a loss and to honor life. This might include writing letters to the family of the deceased, planting a tree, or making a piece of art to remember the person.

Each of us can be a sanctuary for those who are grieving to stay connected and feel hope. Reminders of what is growing, thriving, and alive will keep our hearts open. Sharing strengths like creativity, resilience, generosity, gratitude, and care that exist within communities will go a long way toward healing.

More resources:

• Emotional First Aid Tips
• Emergency Response Tool Kit
• Coronavirus (Covid-19 Resources): Coping With Loss and Grief
• What Everyone Should Know About Shock Trauma
• Trauma-Proofing Your Kids
• How to Teach SEL When Students Are Not at School
• Take Care: That Is the Curriculum (in Spanish: Cuidate: Ese es el plan de estudios)

From Edutopia

Fostering a Strong Community in a Virtual Classroom

The shift to working online requires teachers to think a little differently about how to build the culture they want with their students.

By Leah Henry

May 1, 2020

FG Trade / iStock

One of my friends, a classroom physics teacher, was asked to teach an online physics course. Many of the students dropped the course midterm, and it was not offered again. When I asked what happened, my friend said the class failed because he began without establishing a strong class culture, diving right into physics. He assumed that the culture he had worked so hard to build in his classroom was already present.

In a traditional classroom, there are some pretty standard practices that most teachers use to build the desired culture. In shifting to online learning, these strategies rarely transfer perfectly. In my years of teaching virtually, I found that culture can be built in the online setting, but it requires different strategies based on trust, respect, and responsibility.

These are the steps I use to build a strong classroom culture online.

COMPLETE A CULTURE INVENTORY

If you have already begun your online course—as most teachers have at the moment—identify the current culture you have in the digital space, which consists of taking inventory of what is or is not happening. Ask yourself questions like:

• Do students show up for live sessions?
• Are they interacting with the material I provide?
• Does their work reflect the objectives of the course?
• Are they communicating with me regularly?

If everything seems to be working, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you find that your online classroom isn’t focused on learning, plan the culture that will lead to it.

If you’re in the process of creating a course that hasn’t begun, you’ll need to identify the type of culture you want, and keep this vision in mind as you develop the course plan. Use it as your North Star for planning.

ESTABLISH DIGITAL COMMUNITY AGREEMENTS

After you have completed your inventory, use a live class session to develop community agreements to guide virtual class interaction. You can use the Setting Agreements Activity from the National School Reform Faculty to create a set of agreements with your students.

The key to building a culture is revisiting these agreements during every class session. Begin and end class with the agreements. Have students determine how well they lived the agreements as a reflection exit ticket or opener for the week.

If you need to provide students with a set of agreements because of time constraints, be consistent in reflecting on them. Shared agreements are important because they help students trust each other.

ESTABLISH TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS

Cultivating a culture of trust in the shared virtual space involves building relationships and helping students build empathy and understanding for each other and you. Building trust involves daily contact, via a phone call, email, LMS announcement, Remind message, or even a letter to keep students connected, especially early in the course. And everyone must have equal access to the learning experience: For example, every member of the class has their camera on, or no one has their camera on.

The virtual classroom must be a safe place. Video response tools like Flipgrid are a good way for students to answer questions about non-content-related topics to build trust. For example, “What are you most proud of?” or “What motivates you?”

You can also create a class slide deck in Google Slides with “get to know you” questions and a space for each student to upload photos or images that represent themselves or what they value. These images are a good way to build connections in your virtual classroom community as students identify with visuals from their peers.

Since you moderate this exercise and model it with your own video answers or slide, the threat of bullying on these platforms is decreased. Above all, convey to your students that they are important to you and vital to each other’s learning.

BUILD RESPECT

Some strategies used in a regular classroom work in a virtual one. Again, assigning a “get to know you” survey and sharing your own response works in both environments. A culture of respect is fed by relevant, interesting tasks, and the information from the survey can help you design those.

I’ve had success in using the breakout room feature in video apps to allow small groups to follow discussion or text analysis protocols together. Assign roles like protocol monitor, time keeper, and notetaker for the group’s shared doc. Each student is responsible for contributing to the work—they build respect for each other as they listen and respond with the community agreements guiding them. This simple strategy also builds responsibility through both the roles that students take and the expectation that everyone contributes.

SCAFFOLD RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility can be the toughest and most important aspect of a virtual classroom to build. Students have to juggle a lot when they’re working from home, and you can help them develop some basic time management and coping skills. The community agreements play a part, as students often set up an agreement or two related to timeliness and being fully present.

Help students by having clear expectations and a routine for the class each week to eliminate confusion. For students who have six or seven classes, demonstrate how to use the calendar feature on your LMS or help them build their calendar on their most used device. If they have collaborative work, have them schedule time for that work in the calendar and invite the other students to work with them.

Remind students to create a space in their home where they can learn without distraction, and be flexible about allowing students who can’t meet live to access the materials from the live sessions, watch a recording of their class—I record all of my classes for students to refer back to if they need—or catch a later session of the class.

It is really tempting to push out a curriculum strategy without attending to culture in any school setting, but including your cultural strategy in your virtual curriculum plan is the key to creating a true learning community.

How Can Educators Tap Into Research to Increase Engagement During Remote Learning

From: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-05-06-how-can-educators-tap-into-research-to-increase-engagement-during-remote-learning?fbclid=IwAR0gUAfAIJKLi2juGkqnfiFniaN100udHvvCcG_vRqehgmBPTrvtdt9w4gk

How Can Educators Tap Into Research to Increase Engagement During Remote Learning?

By Kerry Rice and Kristin Kipp     May 6, 2020

Kristiana Budkevica / Shutterstock

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As university professors and researchers who work closely with K-12 online teachers and learners, we’ve heard from many newly remote educators who are struggling. Recent class discussions have focused on the difficulties of getting through to students without in-person contact, especially during a time of enormous stress. Some teachers report that their students lack interest and in the worst cases, that students are dropping from classes entirely.

From our experience both in the online classroom and in training teachers to teach online, this is familiar territory and typically happens about six weeks into a new school session. The newness has worn off, the excitement around technology wanes and teachers often struggle finding ways to engage with their students.

The crucial question that has emerged is: how do we engage learners when we are not together physically? It’s a complicated question, even in the best of times—one that has been at the forefront of our daily online teaching practice and our research into the online behaviors and interactions that can have the greatest impact on successful learner outcomes. Thankfully, research into online learning can provide us with a starting point to make sure our students continue to be engaged in the process of learning.

There isn’t one solution for increasing learner engagement and motivation. Online teachers need to combine multiple strategies to reach learners, such as strengthening relationships with learners, engaging families and helping learners connect with their peers. But building strong relationships online is difficult.

What Is Engagement and Why Is It So Important to the Learning Process?

In its simplest form, engagement is a measure of how much we are attending to a purpose, task or activity. When it comes to learning, engagement is influenced by a learner's level of motivation, focus and cognitive ability as well as online course design and a teacher's decisions regarding facilitation style.

Grounded in the learning sciences, engagement is deepest in environments that support fostering relationships, productive instructional strategies, and social and emotional development. Engaged learners demonstrate stronger satisfaction with learning experiences, stronger achievement in courses and increased graduation rates.

Researchers identify three primary components of learner engagement for in-person and online settings: behavioral, cognitive and emotional. In other words, we know that learners are engaged if they exhibit behaviors, thinking processes or emotions that indicate they are connecting with course materials, with the teacher and with each other.

Measuring these types of engagement is easier said than done, though researchers have settled on some common approaches in traditional classrooms that can easily be translated to the online classroom, where research isn’t as far along. Some of these measures will be more difficult for teachers to assess, and some may require teachers to understand and use the analytics capabilities of online tools. Teachers needn’t collect data on every single measure, but having familiarity with the following common measurements will allow teachers to determine which factors they can reasonably assess according to the type of engagement they hope to spur.

Types of engagement with common measurements for virtual settings

How can we make the leap from this research to practical application in the remote classroom? The Adolescent Community of Engagement Framework proposed by Jered Borup, Richard West, Charles Graham and Randall Davies gives us one approach. These researchers argue that student engagement is created and enhanced by the involvement of three key players in any K-12 online learning experience: teachers, parents and peers.

Adolescent Community of Engagement Framework: A Lens for Research in K-12 Online Learning Environments hypothesizes that as parent, teacher, and peer engagement increase, student engagement will likely increase until it fills the area indicated by the dotted line. Image credit: Jered Borup, Richard West, Charles Graham and Randall Davies. Used with permission.

How Teachers Can Increase Learner Engagement in a Remote Classroom

One of the most consistent findings in engagement research is that a teacher has an enormous impact on the student’s experience, influencing everything from students’ perceived learning and self efficacy to their motivation. Being an engaged teacher online means being visible in the class, whether that’s through discussion posts, announcements or assignment feedback. Teachers can emphasize their visibility and overall engagement in a remote classroom by implementing these practices:

•  Post regular announcements: A funny video or meme along with a hello and a weekly reminder of due dates can go a long way in reconnecting learners.
•  Reply early and often: Students need to feel that teachers are immediately available to help and may feel isolated when educators take a full business day to respond to a request for help. Quick communication builds connection.
•  Vary communication tools: Teachers should consider the communication preferences of individual students and make sure that their tools are best positioned to respond to students’ questions. Phone calls, synchronous video tools, instant messaging or texting are all good options to use in combination, depending on the district’s communication policies and student preferences.
•  Use feedback to build relationships: Providing personalized feedback to let students know their work has been reviewed can strengthen relations. Video feedback is also effective in building a connection with learners.
•  Physical connections under social distancing: Teacher parades and chalk messages on students' sidewalks are a great example of recent efforts teachers have taken to demonstrate their level of commitment to maintain high levels of engagement with their students. Similar online approaches such as recorded or live book readings and virtual office hours can be just as effective.

How Teachers Can Increase Parent Engagement in a Remote Classroom

Research has shown that the involvement of a responsible adult, typically a parent, is critical to the success of online learners. K-12 learners need the support of a caring adult to build executive functioning, manage their workload and maintain motivation. Teachers can support parents in this role by implementing a few key practices:

•  Connect with parents: Phone calls, texts and friendly emails help parents feel connected, realizing that the teacher is there to support the entire family.
•  Provide a schedule: Parents can use a schedule that shows the days and times of synchronous classes and includes what activities students should be working on each day to help keep students on task.
•  Offer tech support: Teachers can create short videos to help parents understand how to access their online content.
•  Less is more: Parents can quickly become inundated with well-intentioned emails from various teachers. Keeping emails short and focused is best.
•  Survey parents: Periodic, brief surveys can help teachers understand what support parents need.

How Teachers Can Facilitate Connections Between Students in a Remote Classroom

Research shows that students who feel connected to other learners are more engaged. In connecting with other learners, students feel that they are part of a classroom community. When motivation for the content itself is lacking, the desire to socialize with other learners can keep a student coming back to the work of a remote classroom. Teachers can improve peer engagement in a virtual setting by implementing these practices:

•  Use prompts to spark discussion: Discussion boards can be a great space for conversations, especially when teachers use prompts that are open-ended, stir debate or force deeper learning. Prompts can also be used to generate video discussions using a social learning tool like Flipgrid or an online debate tool such as Tricider.
•  Student talk during synchronous learning: Lectures and focused learning can happen through recorded videos but synchronous sessions offer an opportunity to share and talk to each other as a community. Sessions hosted through Zoom or Google Meet can incorporate traditional classroom activities like jigsaws, small group activities in breakout rooms or discussion protocols.
•  Group assignments: Learners can create collaborative group projects through a shared Google doc or Google site. For instance, students can collaborate on the creation of an Editor’s Toolbox website with grammar tips by assigning groups of students to each page within the site.
•  Student-led tech support: Students who are exceptionally gifted in technology might troubleshoot or a teacher can create a “Tech Help” forum that students can moderate. Teachers should take care to set up structured guidelines for classroom use.
•  Carving out time to share: Teachers can allow time and space for students to showcase their expertise, hobbies or projects using a Padlet or Pinterest board.

Figuring out how to effectively engage learners has always been a complex challenge for educators like the ones that we instruct. Identifying ways to motivate students, help them maintain focus and get the most out of learning was difficult when we had physical classrooms and it remains a challenge now that our learning environments are entirely virtual. A savvy educator will employ a variety of strategies to build engagement. By recognizing the critical importance of engaging learners, parents and peers, and selecting the strategies that work for them and their contexts, educators can move toward deeper engagement in online environments.

This story is part of an EdSurge Research series about how school communities across the country are connecting research and practice. These stories are made publicly available with support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. EdSurge maintains editorial control over all content. (Read our ethics statement here.) This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Kristin Kipp is the chair of education at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD).

Kerry Rice is a Fulbright Scholar and professor in the department of educational technology at Boise State University.