Added on July 28, 2020 – From the Washington Post, One teacher’s experience teaching a summer camp with kids who are required to be socially distant and wearing masks. This teacher confirms what I feared as I wrote my thoughts below, any kind of teamwork or small group work is most likely just not going to happen if we re-open schools face-to-face.
As the spring was nearing its end, I along with many other teachers, was busy thinking ahead to the fall. Thinking ahead to better times and learning from all the lessons I was learning teaching my 6th graders fully online. Two weeks before the 19-20 school year ended I started a list of things I wanted to remember for the start of the 20-21 school year. I knew that blended-learning was saving me tons of time and I wanted to learn more about flipped-learning because those two together seem like a powerhouse for what we’re going through right now in education. I turned my list of things to do into a 10 Things To Do in the fall of 2020 thinking I had it all figured out. I was even interviewed about remote learning by Screencast-O-Matic because of how much I was enjoying using their service.
Then summer started. I’ve been reading Twitter and blog posts, watching the news and reading all sorts of articles. I’ve been busy working with my local union, my school building, and my district to figure out how to best start the 20-21 school year. My plans, my wonderful To Do list, has changed. I am now convinced that the best way to start 20-21, whether you are made to work with kids in your classroom face-to-face or whether you are starting completely online is to prepare to teach completely online. Here are my thoughts around planning for online, remote only regardless of whether we see kids face-to-face or not:
- I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to start the 1st week with my new students and I was going to focus on certain things that would take full advantage of having my students right in front of me face-to-face. Much of what I wanted to do was blown out of the water when I tried to visualize what it would look like working with 14 or so kids sitting six feet apart from each other and wearing masks. I really wanted to start on day 1 with a class meeting and I thought that it would be so nice sitting in a circle with only 14 kids. Then I tried to arrange our stools in my mind for 14 kids six feet apart. Even if we could fit a 14-or-15-six-feet-apart-stool-circle in my classroom I was imagining what it would look like, especially when we all try to talk with our masks on. We can’t safely share a microphone when kids want to speak so kids will have to shout when they talk and some kids are already uncomfortable talking in class so maybe starting with a class meeting is not the best idea.
- Thinking of kids talking to each other or even sharing a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit won’t work because how can I ask kids to sit right next to each other? And if they are six apart how can they talk to each other? Even with only 12 or 14 kids in a classroom, any type of teamwork or small group work would be chaotic at best, impossible at worst. Even with only 12 kids in a room, if four or five of them start talking at once it’s going to be difficult to focus on who is talking to whom! And if we think kids get left out when teams get too large, imagine trying to have all 12 kids work together. So there goes any plans at have kids safely socialize much less effectively carry on any conversation without it becoming a farce.
- Teachers at my school are talking about taking advantage of the fact that our school has a great outdoor garden program and a rich history of outdoor education. We can really take advantage of that since in the outdoors, especially in September when the weather can be really nice, viral loads get very dissipated. Teaching outdoors is so much safer than being cooped up in a room even with great ventilation! If we do start the year face-to-face with a hybrid schedule, I do plan on taking my kids outdoors. I’m lucky because I can just switch my Ocean Guardian School Environmental Stewardship Project from the spring to the fall!
- I am already nervous about walking around the room getting too close to kids and I’m going to look like quite the sight with a mask and face shield on trying to build relationships with kids I’m meeting for the first time, so it’s already going to be a strain to establish relationships with my students. I’m trying to picture standing in front of 14 kids, wearing that mask and face shield and trying to talk so they can hear me even with my wireless mic. First of all, where am I going to put that mic? Near my mask or inside the mask?? And if I have kids do something and they ask for help? Should I raise my voice so it can be heard across the room for that one kid who raises his or her hand?
- So assigning kids a laptop and teaching them how to sign in and how to access all their online classroom materials is the safest option for week 1 where kids can stay six feet apart and not have to shout over each other while wearing masks. I just have to do that while also keeping my distance, right? Again I am trying to picture tasks I can assign where if a student asks a question loudly enough for me to hear from the front of the room, I can just show them from the board using my wireless mouse or even right from my laptop. My laptop is pretty far away from students so with proper ventilation, we should all be safe.
- If kids are on their laptops sitting six feet apart from each other then I might as well start them working on my online assignments so I should focus on preparing those assignments first before any of my face-to-face work and small group activities. For example, I wanted to start the year with a class meeting. We can do that much more safely and include ALL students using either a Google Form that kids can fill out at their seats or using a discussion forum where kids can read each other’s responses and comment on each other’s responses. We can even use Flipgrid or Padlet for this activity. This type of communication works better than a whole class discussion for introverted and shy kids and it will work while keeping kids six feet apart and not having to worry about them talking over each other with masks.
- With kids in front of me, I can start them off on using Classcraft since that is how I run my classes. Frankly, it will be so much easier to do this in person. I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out how to launch a Classcraft course online so if we start online, I’m not sure how I will launch my course but it won’t be the same. With kids in front of me I can get them started using tools like Gimkit, Quizizz, Pear Deck, EdPuzzle, Flipgrid, Adobe Spark, Book Creator, etc. If they get stuck, or need support, I’m right there, LIVE, to show and model appropriate use of the tools as well as how to use them. I can also throw in some guidelines for how to “behave” appropriately when using online tools to communicate and collaborate (CHAMPS)! And while I’m at it, I can go over remote learning rules and procedures for when kids are at home learning on their own as well as for Zoom or Google Meet sessions.
What I just described in thoughts 6 and 7 are examples of Blended Learning! Blended-Learning makes use of online learning strategies and online tech tools in the face-to-face classroom along with traditional face-to-face instruction. This is why I recommended Blended Learning for this fall no matter what (while planning for fully online!) – it makes for a seamless transition from face-to-face to fully remote and back to face-to-face again. To plan for a blended-learning environment that can switch to a fully remote environment and then back to a blended-learning environment, we should be using our existing curricula online AND face-to-face! In order to prepare, teachers will need to go through their existing curricula and standards to figure out what parts of their curricula can be put online for kids. This might require finding additional digital resources if a curriculum has parts that are best done face-to-face. Digital tools, like Flipgrid, Quizizz, and so on, are just tools to engage students in learning ANY content and engaging with ANY standards and can be used with ANY curriculum, so those are a great place to start. The fact that many online tools can be used with any curriculum is fantastic and if they are engaging and fun for kids, then they are must have tools to keep our kids focused!
I’m also really wanting to be deliberate as I design learning experiences for my students so I’m looking into the Flipped Learning model as well. Since face-to-face time or synchronous learning time will be limited in many ways, we need to fully take advantage of that time by connecting with students, building relationships, and doing SEL checks, in addition to providing support and instruction on what kids are learning instead of direct instruction of content only. The original Flipped Classroom model, now Flipped Learning, focused on having kids consume content, which was traditionally done via lecture, on video on their own time asynchronously (for homework). With videos, kids could pause and rewind as much as they need to make sense of the new content. Kids who could do homework, watched the videos at home while those who couldn’t do homework would spend time in class watching the videos on their own. Once kids consumed the content, class time was used for small group work and using their newly acquired knowledge to create something. The teacher was able to work with individual teams answering any questions they had during the creation process, the higher level thinking process, instead of focusing solely on delivery of facts and answering low level questions. During COVID that could mean kids would be watching videos during SOME of their at-home asynchronous work time (I say some of their at-home work time because otherwise kids will tune out and do more engaging activities if all we assigned were video lectures!) and that way we could spend our time with kids going over what they are still confused about and helping them develop the skills they need to fully take advantage of their learning. That might work best during Zoom or Meet office hours, I’m not sure. I’m still figuring out how to best use my online synchronous sessions. I am actually quite pleased with the way I did it this past spring, using Pear Deck so that kids had something to do besides looking at their computer.
This is also a great time for project, or problem, or phenomena-based learning (PBL). I know I’m highly engaged in my personal learning when I have projects to work on and if I can hook my kids into something cool, then they might be more eager to learn about it and share it in some exciting ways. At least I hope they will! I also noticed the lowest engagement on Fridays this past spring and I am thinking of having 20% Time/Genius Hour where Fridays kids can work on anything they want. The last time I did that it was very well met so if kids get to work on whatever they want on Fridays, since they did whatever they wanted on Fridays anyway, I can connect what they are doing to school!
I’m mostly just rambling here, trying to get my thoughts out. I want to start planning my online curriculum but am hesitant to start because it’s so daunting. This is like starting all over and it will take a lot of work to scaffold properly and not lose students like we did in the spring. As we prepare for the fall knowing the importance of teaching basic skills like reading, writing, and math let’s remember to also make sure we remember that our students also need practice with 21st century skills, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and working creatively.
