I made this video to share my ideas after a week of teaching online lessons. Thank you to my colleagues Harriet, Jodie and Sandra for acting as my students!
My school has decided to keep to the standard timetable, so I teach lessons at the same time I normally would. The students generally seem to like this as it gives structure and normality to the day. I met with the parents of my tutor group after school on Friday and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive too – they were really impressed by how occupied their children were, and hence how they could get their own work / chores done! One change we have made is to reduce each of our lessons by 5 minutes, to give everyone a bit more time away from the screen in between lessons.
Feedback from the students is that they much prefer live lessons to pre-planned and assigned work / videos as it gives them more of the interaction that they would normally get. I perhaps only used this a little in the video, but ‘narrate the positive’ has been more useful than ever, as I can provide commentary on the progress I see online which helps to motivate students who may otherwise feel rather lonely.
I think it’s better to spend less time than you usually would on whole-class teaching and provide links to videos, along with more individual or small group help. What’s nice about the Zoom setup is that the whole class can listen to (and watch, if they wish) any small-group tuition you are providing.
At first, I found it hard to manage a large group and would have most of the class muted most of the time, but over the course of the week, I can work with larger and larger groups of students unmuted, as we all grow accustomed to the process. Nevertheless, some lessons have been slightly stressful, as I struggle to help all pupils that need it and keep track of what a whole class are doing. But then this can happen with normal lessons too! I have read lots of concerns from leaders about workload. This definitely could be a problem for teachers who are having to look after their own children, but for me, work has been easier than usual (hence, I have time to write this blog!)
My back-up plan of extension work was initially Dr Frost Maths, but this was struggling under the strain of unprecedented demand. Instead I set some non internet-based problems, but it was difficult to assess how well individuals worked on them. I think I will return to DFM now the servers have been upgraded as it gives such a great overview of the work pupils have done and has a huge bank of challenging problems. I have also invested a lot of time to program my schemes of work into it (it’s very flexible in this regard – which is why I chose it over the competitors) and hope that this is now going to pay off!
One point that I couldn’t remember in the middle of making this video was the option to “view side by side” which moves the videos of students from the top, to the side. You can then slide the bar across to reduce the area given to your shared screen (as you don’t need to see it) and increase the number of students you can see. I have added this to the written guide which you can find here:
Next steps: Try out the ‘Breakout Rooms’ feature of Zoom in order to set groups of pupils working together on problems. Think of some tasks which get students away from the screen for some time – I may leave this one to subjects other than maths, but if you have any ideas, let me know.
Links Mentioned in the video:
And some other useful links:
Thank you so much. Best advice on using Zoom I’ve seen.
Thanks Sarah, very kind.
In terms of breakout rooms for Maths. I have used the Mathsbox starter activities which have a target, give out in pairs and the first group to have get the target wins.
I go through the rooms and get an idea of who maybe hasn’t grasped a concept from the previous lesson. Usually lasts long enough for me to go through all of the rooms at least once.
The kids like this as it is a chance for them to interact with each other and talk.