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Three Henrico County educators Friday shared an hour-long presentation full of ideas and resources for teachers anywhere who will be teaching virtually in the fall.
The presentation was not designed to tell teachers exactly how to use the resources, said Donahoe Elementary School Assistant Principal Tyler Hart, who worked with Greenwood Elementary School Principal Ryan Stein and Glen Allen High School English teacher Lindsey Pantele to create the video.
“We wanted to just give you a just massive amount of tools to put in your toolbox, and then you on your own can go back and explore all those programs and what works best for you,” Hart told viewers of the event, which was meant to be interactive and live on Facebook but because of connectivity issues was recorded and made available afterwards. (Almost 1,500 people joined the Facebook group made for the seminar – “The Virtual Essentials” – and more than 2,000 had viewed it at https://vimeo.com/443450579 as of Monday.)
Those virtual essentials for teachers, according to the trio, include among others: setting the “hook;” effectively managing a digital classroom; “kicking” (or going all in on virtual); telling their stories; relentlessly engaging with their communities; and demonstrating love.
Greenwood Elementary School Principal Ryan Stein explained the first two essentials by encouraging teachers to set the hook for class within five seconds and think about what students will see, hear and feel as they are joining class. Stein suggested that teachers play a song and have students say the title and artist, or have them do a quick drawing activity or read a quote – potentially one from a person not in the curriculum. He used a John Lewis quote: “You must be bold, brave and courageous and find a way…to get in the way,” as a demonstration.
The bottom line is to be unpredictable and to show that you care, Stein said.
To effectively manage their digital classrooms, teachers should consider them to be the 3-by-3 space that will show on their students’ screens, Stein said – and decorate those as their own classrooms. Teachers also should consider presenting standing up, Stein said, to show students they are engaged.
They should also be prepared to give students grace as they navigate the new system and should have incentives for students, such as creating a “house” system in which different groups of students compose different houses and earn points for behavior or performance.
Streamlining communication with parents
Hart spoke about the “kick” essential, by which he meant putting in all possible effort, the way track and field athletes do at the end of their races. Teachers need to start that process now, he said.
He shared Mentimeter (http://menti.com) as an effective online resource that allows teachers to create a link with a question for students, whose answers will show in real time in word clouds, bar graphs or other options.
Relationship-building will be important, Hart said.
“The first few weeks of school should be devoted to community building and digital competency,” he said.
Teachers should think about what their virtual classrooms will look like, he said. They should decide what platform they will use, which tools — adding Virtual Math Manipulatives or Whiteboard.fi as more potential resources — they will use, what the schedule will be and what the norms will be. Setting expectations collaboratively with students could help get them to buy-in, he said.
Teachers also should think about introduction videos for themselves and for students, Hart said; potential resources for introductions include Flipgrid, WeVideo and Bitmoji classrooms, lockers or cubbies.
They also should make personal connections with their students and their families. A virtual newsletter using Smore, Canva, or Adobe Spark, a Google Site or blog, or Schoology for teachers in the Henrico County Public Schools system could help teachers communicate with families, Hart said.
He encouraged one-on-one virtual meetings with families and advised teachers to walk parents and students through the virtual tools that the class will use and to list the in-person supplies students will need.
“Communication with parents needs to be more thorough, more streamlined, and predictable,” Hart said.
‘Knowledge of students is everything’
Pantele, the HCPS 2020 Teacher of the Year, discussed social and emotional learning engagement.
She has her students create “about me” videos that can be between 30 seconds and two minutes long. She has students say their names, one goal they have, one essential thing that she should know about them, and anything else they want to include. She also makes a video about herself for her students, she said.
To help students bond with their classmates, she uses an icebreaker called Links, she said. One person begins by stating his name and sharing statements about himself. The next participant begins when she hears a statement that she and the speaker have in common.
Pantele demonstrated exit tickets on the Socrative website as a way to check students’ understanding. The ticket asks how well students understood the day’s material, what they learned and a third
question of her choice.
Teachers need to know their students, Pantele said.
“Knowledge of students is everything,” she said. “We can come up with the best lessons, with the most creative ideas we’ve ever had, but unless we know those kids in our room and what intimidates them and what excites them, it doesn’t matter.”
Pantele gave examples of how to incorporate the next essential, break outs, such as splitting students into the pro and con sides of an argument or having them collaborate on a Google Slides project. Break outs could also allow for independent work, peer-to-peer tutoring or project-based learning that allows students to choose their topics, she said.
The Learning Lab with Nearpod (http://nearpod.com) is another online resource for teachers, Pantele said. Teachers can create presentations that are live and only show students the screen that the teacher is on or create assignments and set the steps to move on as students respond. Teachers can also hide student names from discussion board responses or use multiple choice questions to spot check students’ understanding of new material.
‘Be relentless about it’
One tool that Stein shared is an application called Classroom Screen (http://app.classromscreen.com) that has a changeable background, timers, a stoplight, a silent icon and other visuals that teachers might find helpful.
Stein discussed hand signals and call and response as methods to keep students’ hands off their keyboards and make sure they are focused. The hand signal method is using a signal that students would perform at the screen on cue, such as wiggling their fingers as if they are performing magic when their teacher says “wizard.” Call and response could be a rhythm that the teacher taps or drums out and that students repeat.
Teachers should prepare to give students feedback in new ways. Stein gave “mail time” as an example — going through mail from students, such as cards or pictures, which could potentially be pinned up in part of the 3-by-3 classroom, printed out emails, or praise from students’ peers for a contribution to a group project. Teachers should also think about ways to give praise, like monthly awards.
The bottom line for digital classroom management is to reflect, adjust and share with other educators, Stein said.
Teachers should be prepared to go where parents are, Hart said, since they might not use the same platform that a teacher normally updates. Creating a Facebook group could be one solution.
Although educators are worried about their students, “we should also be worrying about our parents, because they don’t know how to do it either,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out to help them help their students because we’re not right there looking over our students’ shoulders on their computers while they’re in our classroom.”
Hart also suggested that teachers use different strategies to raise the percentage of their class that attends, such as themed days like a hat or pajama day, contests, virtual lunch bunches and other methods.
The most important thing, Stein said, is that teachers love their students and make them feel seen. He suggested virtual morning clubs before the school day begins, such as sending links for a Lego club or chess team meeting, having off-campus events like drive-in movie theater nights, having students show their talents — like a student playing the piano virtually for a PTA meeting — or holding virtual trivia nights or reading spooky stories to a group. Music teachers could teach their students a song and then ask parents to record their children singing so that the recordings can be merged to create a chorus of students signing. Teachers could have children fill in their own bingo boards and then use a bingo number generator to play.
“We’ve got to find ways to continue to connect with these kids and be relentless about it,” he said.
