My Distance Learning Survival Guide
This past school year, teachers showed how truly dynamic they are by quickly adapting from in-person teaching to teaching online. We are now faced with a lot of unknown about what next school year will look like, with the high possibility of distance teaching. Reflecting on the last three months of the school year, here is what I learned that worked really well with distance teaching.
Create a Teaching Space!
In mid-March, when I learned that we would be teaching from home, I packed up my car with a ton of teaching materials. I really had no idea what I would need, so I practically grabbed everything. In the end, most of the things that I brought home I didn’t even really use. Here are the essential items for distance teaching.
Paper materials: post-its, printer paper, index cards, poster/chart paper
Writing materials: felt tipped pens, pencils, black sharpies
White board, whiteboard markers, and eraser
Coloring materials: markers, crayons, colored pencils
Books: Favorite books to read to students
Curriculum: units that will be taught, and any other teaching books that you utilize on a frequent basis
Technology: laptop, document camera (if you have one)
Manipulatives: math or phonics supplies that you know will be essential to teaching lessons
Make a Schedule and Stick to it!
During the first few weeks of distance learning, I found myself working from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. It was not healthy! I decided that it was important to create a schedule and set boundaries for myself. In addition to the school day, I allowed one to two additional hours to work on lesson planning, review student work, and read and respond to emails. I also made sure to schedule in designated breaks for myself, including a lunch break. Working eight hours straight without a break is not healthy for anyone! By creating these breaks for myself, it allowed me to step back from my work, take a little time for myself during the day, and destress. When my work day was over, I made sure to get outside and go on a walk with my husband around our neighborhood. As teachers, we’re not used to sitting at a table and being cooped up at home all day. Getting fresh air every day and/or some sort of exercise is very important while distance teaching. Of course there were some days that I didn’t stick to my schedule, but I tried my best to follow a schedule everyday, and it really helped me not feel burned out.
Remember, taking care of yourself is important. In order to be the best teacher for your students, you need to be your best self, and that means self care needs to be a priority!
Collaboration with Grade Level Colleagues
During distance learning, I collaborated with my grade level colleagues in ways that I hadn’t before. As a grade level team, we divided up the subject areas and taught the subjects to all three classes. My school uses Teachers College Units of Study for all literacy instruction. I was responsible for teaching Reader’s Workshop and Phonics and I appreciated the time to really read and understand the units, lesson plan, and design student activities that they could do at home. I also spent almost every day collaborating with my other colleague who was responsible for teaching Writer’s Workshop and doing interactive and shared read alouds. We discussed how the literacy units aligned and ways we could incorporate components of each other’s lessons into our teaching. For student learning, this helped build continuity across all literacy instruction.
During distance learning, working with your grade level colleagues will help to alleviate the workload. Also keep in mind that everyone’s home and work situation is completely different. If you have the ability to take on a little more work to help another colleague on your team, your support will be greatly appreciated in the end. As one of my Kindergarteners used to say, “Teamwork makes the dreamwork!”
Create a Routine for Your Students
Just as we create routines in our classroom, it’s important to create a routine for distance learning as well. Students are successful when they know what to expect. Here are some questions to keep in mind when you are setting up your routines for distance learning:
How do you plan to put out lessons every day (pre-recorded or live instruction)?
What online platform will you be using? How can you make it user-friendly for students?
When will assignments be turned in? How will students receive feedback?
What is your routine for a whole class Zoom call?
Once you have thought about the answers to these questions, make sure to keep everything as consistent as possible. When a foundation is in place for distance learning, you will have more time to focus on the curriculum and teaching! Since I taught Kindergarten last year, keeping a routine was essential not just for the students, but for the parents too!
Stay Positive
As teachers, we thrive when we are with students in a classroom. The last place we want to be is teaching in front of our computers at home. Students are very aware and pick up on your attitude and feelings. Distance learning was a stressful time for everyone. As teachers, we were learning and figuring it all out as we went along. In front of my students and families, I made sure to do this with a smile on my face. If I stayed positive about the situation, I knew the majority of my students and families would feel at ease with distance learning as well. Instead of using the “I can’t” or “students can’t” mentality, I tried to be optimistic about the situation and think about what “I can” and “students can” achieve during distance learning. Instead of thinking about all the negatives, I tried to stay positive and think about what was achievable. Having that shift in mindset, helped me to stay as positive as possible.
Get to Know the Web Applications
Whether you are requiring or recommending a web application, make sure you familiarize yourself with it first. For instance, we had two weeks to prepare for distance learning. Over the two weeks, I spent time on Schoology, (which is our school required online learning platform) and designed my class page so it would be easy for students and their families to use. Additionally, I also learned how to use ScreenCastify, because we would be making teaching videos for asynchronous learning. Taking the time to learn how to use Schoology and ScreenCastify allowed me to feel confident in using these Web applications, and I was also able to help families troubleshoot if they had difficulties.
Keep Classroom Community Strong
My students still remained my top priority during distance learning. At the beginning of distance learning, I had weekly one-on-one check-ins with my students. After three weeks, once students had transitioned into this new way of learning, I stopped having weekly one-on-one check-ins with each student, but was still available to meet with students if needed. I also had two weekly Zoom meetings with my class. Our meetings always started off with sharing about how everyone was doing at home, and then we would split into two smaller groups and play some games together. Fortunately, I have a teacher assistant, so she was able to help facilitate one of the groups on Zoom.
To learn more about ways I was able to build classroom community during distance learning, check out my blog post, “7 Activities to Build Classroom Community During Distance Learning”
Keep Students Motivated
One of the difficult parts about distance learning was making sure students were motivated to complete their work at home. Here are some ways I was able to keep my students motivated:
Create weekly challenges: The challenges I created were academic based and completely optional, but I always had close to 100% student participation. Students would post pictures of their progress throughout the week on our learning platform. Since students also saw others participating, I’m sure that encouraged them to participate as well.
Highlight weekly assignments in Zoom meetings: If there was an assignment with low participation, I would start the class meeting off highlighting the assignment and showing the student work that had already been submitted. After the meeting, I would have many students submit the assignment and their work was highlighted in our next Zoom meeting.
Giving feedback: When students submitted work onto Schoology (our online learning platform), I would usually check their work within a week and comment on it. Some of my families shared with me that they enjoyed reading my comments.
Teaching videos: Everyday our students would view a daily slideshow with teaching videos of the lessons. Even though there was not a Zoom everyday, my students were still able to see me on a daily basis, because of the teaching videos. I’m not saying to make teaching videos, but if you are not seeing your students everyday during distance learning, I would recommend making a short greeting video that they can watch before they start working for the day.
Family Communication
Communicating with families is more important than ever, especially during distance learning. In the primary grades, it is most likely that students will need support from their families at home with doing independent work.
Weekly newsletter/email: At the end of every week, I would send an email to all families to share assignments, due dates, and what our Zoom activities for the following week were.
Check-ins with students: Having that one-on-one check-in with a student can do wonders! At the beginning of distance learning, I had check-ins every week with each student in my class. After the third week, I only did check-ins if a family member asked or if I noticed the student was not as active in completing the weekly assignments.
Check-ins with parents: Sometimes parents wanted to check-in about assignments. A simple phone call or an email, went a long way and they were always super appreciative about the support and advice that I gave.
Whatever next school year brings, I know that as teachers we will adapt and change in order to do what is best for our students. What went well for you during distance teaching?