Tuesday 14 April 2020

Adapting to Remote Teaching and Learning

In my last post, I wrote that our school's Year 0-3 students are not part of the 1:1 Manaiakalani programme. My challenge was to establish accessible remote teaching and learning for my team and all junior students. Glen Taylor school decided not to change the term dates and we had to quickly adapt to the new teaching environment.

Emergent Stage: establishing online connections.
I decided to start small and assess what we had in place.  Our junior school had been using Seesaw and some families were connected to their children's blogs. During our Term 1 Talanoa time, we had updated the contact details of our parents and now we had to e-mail and/or call them to explain how they could access their child's Seesaw blog.
Tools used: 
-Seesaw blogs - to establish connections
-hard copy learning packs

Beginning Stage: implementing whole-class remote instructional teaching
My class was the only class from our junior school that had the class site. I also used the class site to reach other families of our Junior school and promote their Seesaw class blogs, Google Hangouts and other available online learning apps.
At the same time, we started to run daily Google Hangouts, engaging more and more learners.
It was a short period of whole-class teaching and I felt that it was not structured and engaging enough.
Tools used:
-Seesaw blogs - whole-class instructions (recorded videos of teacher morning greetings and daily instructions)
-hard copy learning packs (now with recorded video instructions on how to use some of the activities)
-Google Hangouts (3 daily sessions)
-My class site for the entire Junior school

Developing Stage: leading a change to improve remote teaching practices.

Reflecting on my remote teaching, I noticed that the change of my planning format and the constant use of my class site was a great tool to connect with my students and their families. It helped achieve a more structured programme and engage more learners. I felt that our junior school would benefit from having individual class sites and called for the syndicate meeting. I was very impressed by the GTS management and my team's dedication. However, some of my team members had no experience with Google class sites. I created a template of their class sites and ran a few online sessions on how to use their sites and implement our new planning format to improve our remote teaching practices.
In less than 2 days, our class sites were up and running! Well done, Team!

Current Stage: differentiated teaching, increasing student engagement and motivation
Everything described above happened within less than 5 days of our distance teaching.

My next step was making sure that my learners were engaged at the right level (differentiation) and motivated to keep learning.

The tools that I use now are:
  • New daily planning format using Google Slides - easy to follow differentiated tasks.
  • Google Hangouts - daily communication, oral language, feedforward and feedback, brainstorming ideas, students voice, sharing news and learning. A special thank you to Mrs Logan who was co-teaching during our online Meets and via Seesaw.
  • Class site - design for learning - making learning differentiated, accessible, rewindable and visible.
  • Seesaw - assigned individualised tasks based on their learning needs, ongoing feedback and feedforward, private messaging to improve individual learning outcomes.
  • Hard copy learning packs - allowing more time for purposeful non-screen learning, providing video ideas of how to use some of the hard material.
  • Learning apps - assigning group and individualised tasks, checking their progress, giving feedback and planning next learning goals. (ixl, SunshineClassics, Reading eggs, Hit the Button, Story Online, Matific)
  • Class points based on their visible learning - drawing on my students' motivation and competitive nature. Constant reminders to bring all of their other work (on paper) after the lockdown to earn more class points.
  • Learn-Create-Share pedagogy and the integrated curriculum have been utilised to keep my learners engaged, motivated and feel successful during these uncertain times.
  • Students have been encouraged to pursue their own interests as I believe that this fosters the development of life-long learning.
By the end of Term 1,  my team prepared online holiday activities. We tried to select fun but educational activities that our students can do by themselves or with their families.


Please check out my class site and Seesaw blog.   Today is the 2nd day of the school holidays but my learners keep sharing their learning on our class blog. I believe it proves their engagement and motivation. 

I would like to acknowledge and thank the GTS leaders and teachers who have been working together to quickly adapt to the new learning environment.                                     

8 comments:

  1. Great post Elena. I am very impressed the way you have adapted your practice to fit this model of teaching. The fact you were ready to go from day 1 is a testament to your professionalism. I wish I could get as much engagement as you are getting. It was. slow day today! Tomorrow is a new day.

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    1. Thanks Chris. I would like to acknowledge and thank the GTS leaders and teachers who have been working together to quickly adapt to the new learning environment. Team work!

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  2. You have shown great leadership to your team and have fully supported anyone who felt unsure about what they were doing.You are a very responsive teacher- you have the ability to quickly adapt your programme to suit the needs of your students. There was no learning lag between school based learning and online learning- everything was ready to go and the children were confident.The activities are interesting and targeted to specific children/ needs.
    Viv Logan

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    1. Hi Viv. Thanks for your support, enthusiasm and dedication!

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  3. Your dedication and commitment to our learners and your team is to be commended. I'm really impressed with how you have led and paved the way for our Junior Team to use sites, in a simple and easy to understand way. I'm looking forward to you continuing this work with the Junior team and using sites as a daily expectation when we get back to 'normal'! I think the learners will thrive with sites as part of their learning.

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    1. Thanks Johanna, we'll definitely look into using class sites when we get back to school.

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  4. Hi Elena,
    Thank you for all your have done for your learners to make distance learning accessible and exciting. I really appreciate the fact that you have shared the process you went through to reach a solution that worked. I wondered how you were finding the levels of engagement? It is a big change for everyone and it is so great to see how you are your team are approaching.
    Clarelle

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    1. Thanks Clarelle, I totally agree that it is not easy to keep distance learners engaged and motivated, especially junior students as many of them rely on their parents and their devices. I’ve enjoyed a good level engagement with my class and believe that the key ingredients were: 1.utilising their current interests, 2.ongoing tracking of their online and non-screen work providing timely and personalised feedback, 3.simplified planning that my young students can follow without their parents’ involvement, 4 being present for my learners and their whanau via e-mails and multiple apps. Thanks for your comment and stay safe!

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