Structuring a Virtual Classroom.

 By now, most of us have realized that teaching via distance is so different than doing it in person.  The warm up we've done where we throw the activity up on the board or screen cannot be done in quite the same way.  In addition, the structure of the class has to be adjusted.

Furthermore, most of us will not see our students until the beginning of the next school year.  There are things we can do to make it easier for our students to succeed in today's new learning environment.

Here are some hints to help the students succeed:

1. It is suggested teachers use asynchronous learning rather than synchronous for several reasons.  Asynchronous allows the teacher to create lessons that are recorded so students can access them as needed.  They can rewatch the lessons as needed, watch them at their own pace, and they don't miss anything if there is a technical glitch.

When teaching is done in real time, it is possible to miss some of the material if the student or teacher experiences any technical difficulty.  If a student needs to review the lesson, they cannot unless the teacher records the lesson as it is being taught so it can be posted later.

2.  Plan on covering less material in each lesson because their home life might be quite distracting and it might be hard for them to focus.  Students may not have the support at home to help them keep up with the normal amount of work so plan on accomplishing less during each day's lesson.

3. Let them know what will be covered in the lesson.  Rather than spending all your time in class going through the usual lecture, assign a video to watch before the actual class.  When class begins, have them answer one or two questions about the video.  Spend the actual class time with activities to make it more interactive and then have them fill out an exit ticket.

4. When you teach a new skill, break it down into micro chunks to make learning way easier for students.  It is easier for them to learn if the material is chunked.  Let students talk to each other, ask questions, comment, and help each other via a back chat channel.  Often times, students can explain it  to each other in a way that makes sense.

5.  Be sure to include visuals when going from concrete to abstract to help students see the connection.  In addition to the teacher providing visuals, have students see if they can provide their own visualization of the concept.

6.  Look into using choice boards, or menus so students get a choice in how they do the assignment.  Provide different levels of choice so they can choose something easy, something of medium difficulty and something that might be a bit difficult for them.

7. Try to provide more tasks, open ended questions, low floor - high ceiling activities so students have to think and do not answer rote based questions.

8. Assume when you do an activity that is server heavy such as Quizzes, or Kahoot, the internet might slow down to the point, they can't do it.  There are some activities that can be done individually  while others work better in real time.

9.  Have "office hours" when students can meet with you one on one or in small groups to get their questions answered, get the help they can't get at home, and to provide security.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Remember, no matter how much you plan, get together the best lesson ever, things are going to go wrong.  Go with the flow.  Have a great day.