This is a follow up to last week’s introduction to teaching live lessons online.
The big takeaway for me this week is that I have realised that being forced to teach online will change my classroom practice. Sometimes it takes a shock to bring about innovation. Here are three approaches that I want to continue when I return to teaching in person:
1. Ask students to write down their thoughts / strategy in the middle of an example.
I started doing this on Zoom as a way to check that the whole class are concentrating, but it has proved so much more useful than this.
- I can see what everyone is thinking, give individual feedback and ask the students who have the most useful responses to share them with the class.
- Similarly, I can see who doesn’t understand. This gives me a hint as to who might need extra help when others start.
- It gives an opportunity for all students to express their ideas and show off their understanding, reducing the frustration sometimes encountered when working through a problem with a mixed-ability class.
- Forcing students to write a sentence tests whether they can use topic-specific vocabulary to explain their ideas- something that is crucial if they’re going to be able to help each other.
It’s so easy to do this online, it’s a shame that it’s going to be harder in person. I think it will work OK with mini-whiteboards.
2. Decide on the core questions that all students must complete before we move on.
I am used to setting questions to incorporate a wide range of abilities, starting easy and getting gradually more difficult. The first set of questions I set to students on Dr Frost Maths was like this. Then I realised that some students were just never going to complete it.
This felt unsatisfactory – I didn’t want students have incomplete tasks on their ‘to do’ list, so I have really pared back the questions that I set to all students to just include a few key questions. This has really made me think about what I want everyone to do.
Additionally, it has helped to control when I move on from a topic to the next. Usually I move on when I feel from the work I am seeing that all pupils have a good understanding of the topic (a word I try to avoid because it is so overused: ‘mastery’). Having the data in front of me on the screen has made me realise that some pupils take much longer than I realised to answer the questions that I considered ‘standard’ when planning the lesson. They definitely haven’t mastered the topic.
DFM has been great for this as I can see exactly who has done the questions, and it also allows for plenty of extensions, including lots of revision and interleaving, for students who complete the set work quickly. I may continue to use it in the classroom.
3. Test prior knowledge with an online quiz or individual questions.
During the past couple of years, I’ve been really focussing on testing prior knowledge before teaching something new. I have done this mostly on mini-whiteboards. This works ok and allows me to provide immediate feedback, but students generally recall knowledge at varied rates and so it is tough for me to help those who need it, whilst challenging others.
Instead, I should do this with individual tasks. Why on earth have I not been doing this?! It allows me more time to work with the students who need it, and gives others opportunity for extension.
Whilst online, I’ve been using Quizizz for this, mostly to provide a change from DFM. I would consider sticking with this in the future – it provides a clear bar chart showing who is doing well and who probably needs extra help.
Other points, related to my first, were made by Beth Plaw and Heather Scott on twitter: Students have been asking lots of sensible questions and often phrasing them more carefully and specifically than usual.
Next week I’ll be back, with more tips on Zoom, including how to get students working in groups and monitor this, as well as how point 2 above has encouraged better differentiation and useful collaboration with my Head of Learning support. And hopefully more…
