Tackling Remote Teaching
What a difference a year makes, who could have thought this time last year that we would be reinventing ourselves in the online classroom. It's certainly been a steep learning curve and combining this with starting a new job has certainly led to a fascinating first few weeks of January, 2021.
I’ve read and watched a number of blogs and videos on remote teaching which have really shaped my thinking. Especially this blog from Elisabeth Bowling, Doug Lemov’s ‘Field Notes’ and this one from Alex Gordon. They all have been pivotal in shaping my own approach to tackling remote teaching, and i’d like to put my own spin on what remote teaching looks like for me and what my thinking is around this approach.
Best practice in remote teaching is a difficult thing to get right. Teachers are all at different places on the novice to expert continuum with regards to remote teaching. Confidence levels in using tech is amongst the biggest cause of stress for teachers. Especially that first day when nothing was working, but I am keen to stress that beyond technology our online classrooms should feel similar to our brick-and-mortar classrooms.
So what does effective remote teaching look like for me? I’d like to start by reiterating that we should endeavour to make our online classrooms feel as much like our brick-and-mortar classrooms as possible, and through utlising much of the tools already at our disposal we really can make this happen. Let me share a few ideas on how i’ve tackled remote teaching these past two weeks.
Being Clear
Starting a remote lessons should be as similar to starting a lesson at your classroom door. Being warm and welcoming as students enter the online classroom is no different to you standing at your classroom door. From this point onwards we need to be crystal clear in everything that we say, do and instruct the students to do.
A good example for the beginning of an online lesson is to have a slide ready and waiting with key information displayed on it: what the students need, lesson title or aims, today's date and anything else you deem to be relevant. Consider this example from Mr Hamer of Marine Academy, Plymouth, where he is crystal clear on what his students will need, the lesson title and date is clear and also he is displaying a page he would like the students to copy so that they are ready to participate in the first task of the lesson:
What is also brilliant is that the first task Mr Hamer sets is the ‘Do Now’. It is clear that this is similar to what would happen every day in the classroom, making the online lesson feel and look the very same.
Throughout the lesson it is vital that we don't allow our students to cross into the ‘I don’t get it’ threshold. To prevent this we must make our Means of Participation crystal clear. Means of Participation are what Doug Lemov calls ‘all the ways students can participate in class’, being clear on these helps our students immensely. In your classroom these could include Turn and Talk, Cold Call, Hands Up and various other techniques you would typically use.
For this, we need to be sharp in our instructions. For example if you would like the students to complete a quiz using Forms you would say “As soon as I post the form in the chat box, open it and you have four minutes to complete it, go..”. Or if you are Cold Calling you would ask your question, pause for 10 seconds and then ask “Jessica, can you unmute please and tell us..”.
There are a variety of techniques you could use and i’ve offered a sample but the key message here is to be absolutely crystal clear in what you want the students to do and how you want them to participate in every phase of your lessons.
Ensure Interactivity
In your brick-and-mortar classroom you would be mindful of who is doing the cognitive work and design your instruction, practice tasks and questioning so that the students are doing most of the heavy lifting. This principle is no different in the online classroom.
Ensuring that our students are thinking hard throughout our lessons is a key goal, after all ‘memory is the residue of thought’. However, online this can be a challenge but there are a number of strategies that we could employ to keep the level of challenge high for our students.
Questioning is probably the number one tool in a teachers arsenal and remote teaching provides some challenges but thankfully the chat function could help us. After a period of quick instruction you could use the chat function in a number of great ways:
Speed Questions are where you ask a question verbally or on your slides and then ask for the quickest response in the chat function.
Wait Questions are when you ask a question, instruct the students to write their response into the chat box but only ask them to press enter on your signal.
Cold Calling could be achieved in the chat function by asking a question, providing think time, instructing students to write their response into the chat box but instead of asking them all to hit enter you call upon one, two or three students to hit enter.
Watch this video of Sadie McLeary and notice how often she uses the chat function in 2 minutes. How interactive do you think this sequence of the lesson is? Ms McLeary involves her students in her instruction with the use of Now Questions (complete the sentence now) and Wait Questions and keeps the students thinking throughout. A wonderful example of a teacher thriving in the online classroom.
Next Steps
There is so much gold out there for us to search through and I am really beginning to get my head around a lot of the technology which is allowing me the space to consider aspects of pedagogy that can be translated into our remote teaching experiences.
My remote lessons are far from perfect and i’m sure yours are the same but starting with the idea of disabling the ‘I don't get it’ threshold through being crystal clear and continuing to build ‘ratio’ in the online classroom through a variety of interactive techniques is a great starting point.
