Remote Learning

2021 in Review

As 2022 gets underway, one of the top concerns of educators continues to be the mental health of students and teachers alike. Below are five of our most popular posts from 2021 focusing on strategies for supporting resilience and emotional well-being.

Rethinking deadline-based-learning in the pandemic

By David Nurenberg

A student turns in a paper two weeks late—do you accept it? A student fails a major test—do you let her re-take it? Do you deduct points? Are there a certain number of “chances,” but then no more?

Do our answers to any of these questions change amidst a pandemic?

5 Ways to Use Digital Storytelling with Your Students

By Kyleen Gray

If slews of Google Document essays and hours of Zoom oral presentations are feeling less and less bearable–you are not alone! As many North Americans approach the one-year mark of pandemic-induced school closures, remote learning fatigue is very real. Whether you’re teaching online, in a hybrid classroom, or in-person but behind masks, the time has never been better to introduce a fun and digital-friendly presentation format into your classroom.

The Carousel Method: A Cure for Zoom Silence

By David Nurenberg

Since remote learning began, we’ve all had moments when we’ve asked a question of our class, only to be met with a grid of faces—or black boxes—that is utterly silent. Whether you’re trying to generate a discussion or assess learning, the hardest part can often be simply drawing the students out of their shells.

Of course, this dilemma predates remote learning, and teachers have developed many tools for shaking a class out of that stupor and making sure that all students, and not just the avid hand-raisers, get involved in an activity. One of my favorites is the Carousel: it gets every student engaged and cooperatively thinking about an idea. The pace is quick enough to keep them active, and both you and your students can assess knowledge or assemble understanding quickly and thoroughly. Fortunately, all parts of this activity can translate easily to an online environment.

STEM and SEL in Tandem, at Home

By Eric Iversen

For a long time, advocates of STEM education have worked to bring STEM learning closer to students’ lives outside of school. This year, though, COVID has made STEM learning a part of students’ lives in ways nobody ever imagined or wanted. As schools were forced to close, educators have been managing the switch to emergency remote learning to the greatest of their abilities, and the resources and strategies that have been shared across the K-12 world are voluminous. Even so, there is no doubt that uprooting STEM education from the school building comes with many kinds of loss, including carefully designed classroom and lab spaces set up with technical equipment and materials that are impossible to replicate in the home.

A special offer for K-12Talk readers!

As a thank you for your loyal readership, Norton Books in Education is pleased to offer one FREE Quick Reference Guide (QRG) to our subscribers. Each QRG is an 8.5” x 11” multi-panel laminated card focused on an important instructional topic. Learn more about these new resources in a past post
here.

Going or “Going” to School: One Student’s Decision to Remain Remote

By an anonymous sophomore

The age-old high school social dilemma of where to sit at lunch has finally been solved—it only took a global pandemic.

I am a sophomore who attends a private school in Manhattan. My school has recently announced that they will be switching to an optional hybrid model after previously stating that they would remain remote until mid-January. I was extremely happy and proud of my school when they initially announced they would be remote for at least five months, and I was shocked and upset when they declared their decision to switch. Upon receiving the news, my parents informed me that the decision to attend school in-person or remain in my pajamas was mine.

Quick Reference Guides from Norton Books in Education

As schools resume classes this month, teachers and students are engaging in online learning to an unprecedented degree. To help educators meet that challenge, Norton Books in Education has recruited experts in remote instruction to address the nuts and bolts of teaching online. The practical tips below are excerpted from five Quick Reference Guides to be released this fall:

Teaching English Learners from a Distance by Laura Alvarez
Teaching Math from a Distance by Samantha Bennett & Alaina Barkley
Teaching English from a Distance, Grades 6-12 by Troy Hicks, Andrew Schoenborn, Sharon Murchie, Janet Neyer, and Becky Schwartz
How to Design Interactive Online Learning by Stephanie L. Moore
Six Teaching Moves to Tactically Close Gaps in Learning by Suzy Pepper Rollins.

Building Classroom Community from a Distance

By Louise Goldberg

Since early spring of 2020, the classroom experience has changed dramatically for students across the country and worldwide. School closings, remote learning, and social distancing have created extraordinary disruptions to the classroom environment and left many feeling isolated and distraught.

Even when schools reopen, many children will continue to stay home and rely on their screens for instruction and social interaction. Those who do attend school may find sparsely populated classrooms with curtailed opportunities for group activities. What was once the hub of their social lives may prove to be an almost empty landscape void of playful encounters such as bus rides, recess, hallway jostling and joking, school lunch, and other once banal occurrences. Who knows when these activities will resume?

A Wakeup Call for Differentiation

By David Nurenberg

Even if a course is designated “honors” or “remedial,” anyone who has taught real children knows that there is no such thing as a homogenous class—unless it has just one student. Forty years of research tells us that just because two dozen students share a classroom, it doesn’t mean a one-size-fits-all approach will serve them.

Thanks to the pandemic, those students don’t even share a physical classroom anymore. Students are in so many different situations vis a vis their ability to engage with class, and the amount of support they have available at home, that we can no longer harbor any illusions that “teaching to the middle” will suffice.