It's funny how you think that you've solved most problems that might crop up before your lessons start. But students are used to being able to ask their teacher or class mate questions that pop up. Online distance learning meant that today I spent a lot of time troubleshooting for students, replying to emails as they navigated their way through tasks and were unsure of a few things, and replying to queries from parents. Building students confidence in being able to work remotely will be a key issue moving forward.
It is important to reassure parents that they are not expected to replace their child’s teacher. Their teachers are the experts in the practice of teaching and learning, and I will support their child in every way I can.
Positives today were
- everyone getting to see each other at our Class Google Meet
- excitement levels were high
- 23 students at our Google Meet
- students emailing me if they encountered problems straight away
- reading their work on their blogs and commenting
Things for me to think about:
- creating a Google Form at the end of the week asking students how they found the Room 1 Weekly Slides. Were 4 activities each day too much? I know Wednesday would have been a big day with them creating a google slide presentation on Holy Week.
- creating a Google Form for them to fill in if they have problems.
Our online distance learning is happening because of COVID-19. My class were already set up with this because we use a class site to access our learning anyway. Over the past two days I have been troubleshooting for the students as they encountered problems. Some couldn't remember how to put their Canva creations onto their blogs, others couldn't remember how to put their Screencastify on. So I emailed Catalina, a student in my class, asking her to create some tutuorials for her class mates to refer to. She has done an excellent job and these are now on our class site for everyone to see.
(There is also another way which Cheryl Torrie, my Manaiakalani mentor and saviour, is going to put on our class site for them to use.)
It was actually quite surreal attending this PD as we all knew in a couple of hours our school would be shutting down for lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. For that reason, it was hard to stay focused. Cheryl sidetracked and gave us tips for our class sites and ideas to use during remote learning.
Basically:
- keep it simple for the students.
- use Screencastifies of yourself as the students will want to see you.
- Screencastifies will help explain the learning and gives it a personal touch.
- Screencastifies will also provide that rewindable learning which is so important for students.
Here's some sites she told us to look at:
Year 3/4 The Block
Year 5/6 Team 4
I am also going to use daily slides. One tip is to change the background each day so students can differentiate the days.
Lots to do over the holidays!
