I am not a master at remote teaching but I'm guessing not many of us are. I am sure we all have an opinion on it and due to the current situation we are all shortly going to be a great deal more efficient at remote teaching. For us all, it is going to be a steep learning curve.
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We should remember that the same principles that informed our teaching before Covid 19 should also inform them in this new teaching dynamic. We need to give our students opportunities to review and practise old content, learn new content, practise it with a view to embedding, and to continue to build on their learning. This important element of teaching remains the same. However, teaching a lesson remotely is NOT the same as teaching a lesson face to face.
These are the steps that I believe will enable you to sustain a good level of delivery and that will give your students every chance of success.
1. Spend time at the beginning explaining what you want to be achieved. Even better if you can prepare a video or an audio file with instructions so your students can refer to these throughout the lesson. Check here for how to record your screen:
2. Be there for your students. Let them know that you are there in the chat (or via email, if that's how it has to be for you) so that you can answer questions and queries on the topics being covered.
3. If you are able get onto the pages your students are working on - I can do this in Class Notebook - and check out what they have done then do this. Provide individual feedback.
4. Halfway through the lesson or at the most appropriate time bring the students together again and talk through common problems that you know your students have encountered. Now is the time to ask questions and to check on answers and model some more good practice.
5. Provide some opportunities for your students to practise new content. For #mfltwitterati there are so many fantastic websites out there where you can create 'more of the same' type exercises that will give students the chance to practise and embed new content. The following are favourites for me and are free and relevant to many subjects:
- quizlet
- learning apps
- quizziz (not live games but as assignments that can be played a number of times)
6. At this point, provide some guidance on some exercises which will be more challenging. Again, these instructions can be recorded or you could deliver these live with some modelling. Either way, once your students embark on the task you can be there guiding and helping out in the background but you do not need to be live teaching the whole time. If students want to complete these more complex tasks away from the computer then that is fine. Work on paper can easily be photographed and shared.
I do believe that a term of live teaching will be exhausting for all concerned; teachers, pupils and, in some cases, parents. It is important for students to work independently and for teachers not to be running live lessons throughout the school day.
These are the steps I will be following with my classes although perhaps in five weeks time I will have fine-tuned this process yet again. Watch this space.
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