- Use Your Voice!
Building positive relationships is such an integral part of student learning and it can be forgotten about so quickly when you aren’t seeing your class each day. Keep your positive relationships alive by:
- using an app or extension, such as Mote, to record yourself reading the task and embed it in Google Slides. This also makes it easier for the students to understand the task.
- recording your lessons using a webcam. Screencastify makes this so easy!
- leaving feedback using audio comments. (I provide feedback on Seesaw using audio comments and the students/parents also reply using audio comments. It makes my day! Mote is also great for leaving audio feedback!)
- making regular phone calls to the students to check in.
- Fun Class Zoom Sessions
Schedule FUN Zoom sessions with your class. Don’t get caught up in everything and forget to have fun! The class Zoom sessions might be the most exciting thing the students do all day!
- Provide time for them to say hello and goodbye to each other.
- Play fun games.
- Scavenger hunts, directed drawing and I spy are just some ideas!
- Follow @misslearningbee and @talesfrommissd on Instagram for amazing ideas and resources.
- Fun Optional Zoom Sessions
What are you good at that you could share with the students via Zoom? What are you passionate about?
Each week I lead a Science Zoom with the students and we have fun designing and making or conducting a simple experiment.
So far, we have:
- experimented with different drinks and the damage they caused to egg shells.
- participated in cooking challenges for Science Week.
- read chapter one of ‘The 13-Storey Treehouse’ and built a treehouse.
- made a maze.
- made a rainbow.
- Celebrate Hard Work
Don’t forget to celebrate the amazing effort and hard work you are noticing from your students. Throughout the week I send out personalised awards to the students who have been working really hard. This helps the students who receive the award to feel recognised and also encourages them to continue, while also encouraging those who aren’t putting in as much effort to complete their work.
- Click here for stickers I made that you can purchase and use during online learning. When you prasie hard work and effort, you are fostering a growth mindset.
- Bitmoji is also a great way to motivate the students and personalise your feedback.
- Make Learning Fun
Remember to stretch your lessons out – what you normally might teach in one or two lessons might need to be taught across three or four lessons. Break your lessons into smaller lessons or allow your students to meet the outcome in different and fun ways.
Examples:
- I encouraged the students to make each animal we learnt about in our English and Science lessons using materials they had at home.
- Use wordwall.net to create fun games and help the students revise what they have learnt.
- Set Daily Challenges
Each day, my grade partners and I set a daily challenge for our students and encourage them to send us photos of them completing the challenge via Seesaw. We also share a photo of ourselves completing the challenges. This brings a little fun and helps to spice up the monotony!
Examples:
- leave a kind note for someone in your family to find.
- read in a comfortable spot.
- find something tiny.
- find something orange.
- dress up as a superhero.
- wear your favourite clothes.
I hope there is something you can take away from this post. I’d love to know what you are doing to keep your students motivated during online learning!
Ideas Of A Teacher 