A collection of resources and articles related to distance learning. If you have any resources to share, please send them to me and I’ll add them here.
Teaching During a Pandemic
- Six ways to help heal toxic stress, trauma, and inequity in your virtual or in-person classroom
- Covid 19 Guidance for Educators: A variety of resources and projects from MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab including:
- “What’s Lost, What’s Left, What’s Next: Lessons Learned from the Experiences of Teachers during the 202 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic”
- Imagining September: Principles and Design Elements for Ambitious Schools during COVID-19
- Podcasts on teaching math, engaging in current history via remote learning, and other topics
- When the Kids Come Back: A to-do list for reopening during a pandemic
Distance Learning: Where you learn isn’t as important as what you learn.
- How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning: When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires “remixing” education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge. Hammond’s suggestions include deepening background knowledge, cultivating cognitive routines, and building word wealth.
- How to Improve Distance Learning for Students with IEPs: Strategies for parental involvement and synchronous and asynchronous activities can help students with individualized education programs.
- Webinar: Structuring Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning in the 2020-21 School Year Strategies for Inclusive Engagement
- Successfully Taking Offline Classes Online: The keys are prioritizing community and designing student-centered lessons.
- Remote Learning Support for Teachers: A collection of resources for planning online lessons including checklists for teachers with linked resources, lesson planning templates, communication forms, sample lesson plans, and Youtube playlists from the Nebraska Coordinating Council. Bonus: I really like the layout. It makes my brain happy 🙂
- Setting the Stage for a School Year Online: A quick set of suggestions to consider when beginning to plan and prep for online learning.
Community Building with Students and Families
- Eight Strategies for Building Belonging with Students and Families Virtually
- Creating an Inclusive Virtual Classroom: Distance learning can feel impersonal and inaccessible, but there are ways to help students feel a sense of connection and access academic material.
- A Positive Classroom Climate Even from a Distance: from the authors of The Distance Learning Playbook
- Twenty Creative Ways to Build a Classroom Community Virtually: From Bitmoji classrooms and morning meeting templates to daily zoom challenges and Friday fun, you might find a few good ideas for breaking up your time online with kids.
Instruction: Standards, Assessments, and Online Materials
Instead of thinking “my kids just cannot…”, try “my kids can when I …”
- Leveled Texts are Exhibit A for the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations (I’d love to share more about this with people who are interested. There’s a significant difference between limiting texts students have access to based on their reading level and carefully scaffolding texts from “easier” to more challenging so students can work their way into grade level text.)
- A One Page Slide with Direct Links to Virtual Math Manipulatives (would be great to link for kids!) from Julie Lewis at The Techie Teacher
- Research Supporting Foundational Skills in Reading: This one’s long, but worth holding onto. It summarizes the major research in how students best learn to read. For each article summarized, it offers key points or takeaways which is where I focused my time.
- Planning for Math Remediation: Just in case or just in time? Just in case remediation involves reviewing or compacting prior standards just in case kids didn’t learn them. The just in time approach focuses forward on the current grade-level content, rather than backward on the skills missing from the prior grade. The authors give some good guidance in how to plan and assess based on the current learning targets rather than trying to cover a broad range of skills just in case they were missed.
Teaching about COVID
- Covid Related Readers for Schools: An SLP created mini books for students with autism to help them better understand topics like wearing a mask, distance learning, video chatting, social distancing, and only using your own supplies. They’re great and free!
Ideas for Engagement
- Virtual Escape Room: This video explains how to create a virtual escape room with the option to grab the free template from the teacher and adapt it along with her for your own classroom.
Food For Thought
- How Honestly Willing Are We to Create Equitable Opportunities and Experiences for All Students? This one really is a must read, in my opinion. Calling out the current inequities in our system, this article shares ideas for transforming schools into places where every student is offered the same opportunities to learn and grow.