Here are the reflections and resources collected during the Educators Responding to COVID19 Webinar.
Some Common Messages
Clarify Expectations - and make this easy to see. Create a table of what the students need to do each day.
Do Less - Common feedback from parents is that we are setting too much. Cut this in half and then in half again. We do this with all our planning, but in the online world, we are not the ones filtering what gets done and what gets skipped. Cut back on content, give time for collaboration and creativity.
Planned Downtime - Allocate a day when no new learning is set.
Build Relationships - Maintain Relationships - Use Zoom for maintaining connections. Use the Mute All feature to allow for one-to-one check-ins with individuals.
Start with “Why" - Why are my students learning this? Why am I asking them to do this? - What learning matters? - Is this lifeworthy?
Share our “Why" - Workshops for Parents - Our parent body might not understand the pedagogical moves we are making. School and learning have changed. We need to take our parent body with us.
Use what you Know - Build on from the digital platforms that your students already know and are comfortable with. Hack them to suit new purposes. maximise their utility before moving to something new.
Focus on what our students will learn, not what they will do.
Tools That Are Working
Immersive Reader Tool in Office 365
Microsoft Learning Tools are free tools that implement proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability.
The Microsoft Learning Tools set is natively built into the Office 365 and Microsoft Edge applications, and help improve reading, writing and comprehension. The immersive reader capability in Learning Tools gives users the ability to have content read aloud to them, and lets them adjust settings to break the words into syllables, adjust text size or background colours.
Features:
Enhanced dictation – improves authoring text
Focus mode – Sustains attention and improves reading speeds
Immersive reading – improves comprehension and sustains attention
Font spacing and short lines Improve reading speed by addressing “visual crowding”
Parts of speech – supports instruction and improves writing quality
Syllabification – improves word recognition
Comprehension mode – Improves comprehension by an average of 10%
Read & Write for Google
Read&Write is a software toolbar that helps students create and access content with the literacy support features needed to engage with a personalised learning experience - helping every member of the class meet their full potential. Great for all subjects across the curriculum, Read&Write offers support with everyday tasks like reading text out loud, understanding unfamiliar words, researching assignments and proofing written work.
Adapting Thinking Routines for Online Learning from Washington International School - Visit Now
A chart of thinking routines with ideas for how they might be adapted to online learning. You may want to use this chart to:
Identify the key learning move you want students to make
If there are several routines for the same move, pick the routine that suits you best
Choose an online tool
Go for it and share your experience!
Real-Time Feedback with Online Docs
Most online platforms (Google Docs, Microsoft 365 etc) allow for real-time collaboration on documents including Slideshows, Text and Spreadsheets. Use this to give real-time feedback.
Zoom - Features
Screen Sharing and Annotating - A great tool for collaboration. Combine with thinking routines to make the students thinking visible. Great with templates such as “T Charts” or Peel the Fruit
Whiteboard (Learn More) - Great for collaboration - Use with Chalk Talk Routine - LINK
Breakout Rooms - Might be useful for differentiation, targeted instruction and small group conversations. Start a whole class chat and then have selected students move into breakout room. Allow students to self identify which Breakout room best suits their needs.
Chat Room - Allows multiple ways to engage. A feature of many online tools is that students who might not be active participants in face-to-face environments are finding their voice online.
Questions to be Asking
Questions to encourage student reflection:
What have you learned?
How did you learn it?
Where to next?
What help do you need?
Question for refining a lesson plan:
What do I want my students to understand here?
What might they already understand about this? What gaps might there be in their understanding? How might I make this visible in an online environment? What obstacles block students from showing their understanding that I can remove? e.g not requiring a written response.
What experiences might allow them to achieve this and then demonstrate it?
As I evaluate the activities I have planned for my students:
Do they move students towards this understanding?
What understanding does this activity require?
What evidence of understanding does this provide?
How do I fill gaps? Questions, Prompts, Provocations, Direct Instruction, Feedforward.
What thinking will they require for this task? How might I scaffold that? How do I make it visible in an online environment?
What next?
Download Guidance for “Tuning Up A Lesson Plan” from Tina Blythe.
Frameworks, Tools & Ideas
OSKAR Framework
OSKAR was developed by Jackson & McKergow as a coaching framework. It is designed to clarify objectives, identify what is working well now, describe actions for growth and encourage reflection.
Click on image to enlarge.
Image courtesy of Oxford Falls Grammar School
The Understanding Map
In Making Thinking Visible the authors identify a set of thinking moves which learners utilise and that we can target in our teaching. These are shared in the Understanding Map. Instead of asking “What thinking routine will I use?" we ask, "What thinking will my learners require here?"
Click on image to enlarge.
Thinking Routines Tool from Project Zero
This tool highlights Thinking Routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. While Project Zero did not originate the idea of a thinking routine, a vast array of its work has explored the development of thinking, the concept of thinking dispositions, and the many ways routines can be used to support student learning and thinking across age groups, disciplines, ideals, competencies, and student populations. In addition to the initial Visible Thinking research initiative, some of the larger PZ research projects focused on enhancing thinking include Artful Thinking, Cultures of Thinking, Agency by Design, and PZ Connect.
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Using Thinking Routines to Scaffold the Writing Process
Download PDF of From Good to Great Writing
What’s Worth Learning? from David Perkins
Something to Ponder Before you Leave
From AJ Juliani
This is not online or distance learning.
This is emergency remote learning. It was not planned for. Most school’s curriculum was not crafted to be online or distance learning experiences. Most teachers and staff have not been trained in teaching online or through virtual tools. Most kids and families have not had the opportunity to be prepared for this change in learning. And yet, here we are, everyone doing their best to make this work.
And. . . from Hilary Hughes and Stephanie Jones at University of Georgia:
What is happening is not home schooling.
It is not distance learning.
It is not online schooling.
So, let’s call this what it is: Covid-19 Schooling; or better yet, Teaching and Learning in Covid-19.