So – remote learning has been thrust on you – and, since you’ve spent your career teaching actual students in actual classrooms, you’re feeling a little bit out of your comfort zone. Here are a few tips about what to do over the next term to help you out:
Keep the technology simple
Yep, we’ve now all heard of Zoom – and you’ve probably been sent links to lots of other online apps you can use to support remote learning. However, you need to keep in mind the more apps you use, the more accounts you need to create, and the more digital skills you need to teach, and the more remote learning becomes about navigating technology, rather than actual learning. In the English classroom we can keep it basic. Use no frills digital tools which allow students to focus on practising writing and reading, rather than getting distracted and frustrated with the technology. This means:
- Post PDFs/Word docs for students that provide instructions and steps about what tasks to complete
- Provide more PDFs and Word docs that have writing scaffolds such as sentence starters, word banks and template paragraphs
- Get students to email you their writing or upload it onto a platform like Google docs that is dead easy to use
- Get students to keep practising their handwriting: They write in their books, take a photo of a draft and send it to you as an attachment
Create clear and consistent remote learning routines
One of the things students will find most difficult about remote learning will be time management. They won’t have the cues of you moving them on in the same way that they would ordinarily have, so you will need to provide an indication of how long you expect them to take on each task. In order to help students be focused and organised in their learning, create a simple weekly routine which you can consistently follow.
| Student | Teacher | |
| Monday |
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| Monday-Tuesday |
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| Tuesday-Wednesday |
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| Thursday |
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Implement skill based mini units
Don’t try and persist with conventional units that really rely on a lot of classroom based discussion and activities. To make teaching and assessment easier, move to a skill based mini unit approach, where each day and week you can set students micro writing and reading activities that can be clearly and simply explained. For example:
Year 7s – Three week unit on persuasive writing
- Week 1: Initially set students activities about practising brainstorming arguments
- End of week 1: Move on to practising openings
- Week 2: Practising using examples and evidence
- Week 3: Set a timed persuasive task, so that students know there is an end-point and they don’t have to spend hours and hours on it
Year 8s – Two week unit on analysing short films
Use short, online films to get students to practise their text response writing. For each film, students can practising writing about a different element.
- Black Hole (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk)
– students practise writing about characterisation - Dangle (https://vimeo.com/channels/618647/46383515) – students practise writing about symbols
- December (https://vimeo.com/19140096) – students practise writing about lighting/sound
- To assess students – give them two short films to pick from. They must respond to an essay topic on the film and use a range of types of evidence in response
