What just happened!! One day we were comfortable in our brick and mortar classrooms and then wham! The next day our kids are at home and we are required to teach them virtually. Ok…now that we have had some time to think about it, now what?
Well…guys I am here to tell you….nothing has changed except for the location. We still have our same students, we are in the same spot in the curriculum that we left off on, we are lucky to still have our jobs. So, we figure this all out by looking at ways to do the exact same masterful teaching that we have always been doing in a virtual world. I get it! It is a lot of work to figure out the whole “techy” thing but is something that is so important for us to do, for our kids and for us as adult learners. This will make us stronger. In fact, there has never been more of a time for you to build something or learn something. Let’s double down and provide some value to our lessons, assessment, and mindset virtually. Let’s become warrior teachers who grow through this pandemic rather than just go through it.
Here are some tips on how to do that!
- Keep your mindset and wellness as number one as this will help everything else to rise up. Keep your immune system healthy through eating foods that bless your body, supplements, exercise, and mindset management.
- What will save you in this uncertain time, is community. Use your grade team, your admin team, your learning support team to help you to design virtual lessons, collaborate for ideas, and make connections with students. Build your team so that they can speak life into you and pour into you when you need it the most.
- Curate your content to be more streamlined but still include workshop elements, choice, creativity, and dedication to the student’s passions. Guys, just sending worksheets is not enough. Teach them about processes of thinking (using the curriculum) that will help them in life.
- Every lesson you create must have the intention of moving the learning forward not just getting through this.
- Assess with the intention to include evidence from product, observation, and conversations that you have.
- Include the student’s in gathering their own evidence of learning. Start with one area and let them practice and then go from there into other areas. If they learn to self assess that is a huge part of them learning more independently.
- Be sure that your voice and face is showing up in the videos and not just youtube videos. Students need to hear you and see you. They know your learning language and so you, (yes you), are the best person for them.
- Create your own content with what you have already been doing. Don’t change your why or direction. They can still do this virtually!
- Get them to write about this experience! Guys, this is history in the making and something that will evoke some masterful writing and provide a window and an outlet to how they are feeling.
- Model the quality of work you expect from them and include success criteria so that they and their parents can understand what you want from them.
- Build time each week to connect face to face with them through a platform like zoom. Conference with them, check in with them, have fun with them.
- Shorten your feedback loops and be sure that the feedback is specific to drive the learning forward.
- Try not to bombard them with emails. Try to streamline everything into one email a week with the lesson plans.
- Encourage your students to build their community too. They need to know how to interact beyond video games in this time of uncertainty and isolation. This could be a writing or reading lesson!
- Ask for help. Not because you are weak, but because you want to remain strong.
- Pour into these kids all that you can and it will renew you in the process.
Download my free Virtual Assessment For Learning Roadmap!
If you want more streamlined ways to do each of these steps, I have created a free Virtual Assessment for Learning Roadmap that will give you 8 easy steps to assess to move the learning forward and get the students more involved in assessment too. Most of all, these assessment steps have the intention of keeping and building the connection between you and your students in this virtual world we were thrown into.
If that’s your goal, be sure to download my free Virtual Assessment for Learning Roadmap to take action now!
You can also check out our podcast that is a wellness podcast created for students by students called Even If You Miss. It is available on apple podcasts or spotify. This next week’s episode is all about what students can do when learning from home.
Even If You Miss..... 