Remote Learning Ideas for Educators
Are you required to teach from home for the next couple of weeks? Here are some Ideas!
Hey teacher friends. Not gonna lie, its been one hell of a week! Mercury in Retrograde is over, and we were thinking we can FINALLY breathe a sigh of relief…and boom! We get hit with a full moon, Friday the 13th, and a school closure due to the Coronavirus.
In Northern California we have been hit pretty hard by this virus, and we aren’t upset at all at finally being able to shelter up inside and try to flatten this curve. However, staying home for the next four weeks comes with some unique challenges…like how am I going to teach from home? How am I going to keep my kids entertained and learning, while also navigating online teaching? If any of these questions have crossed your mind, never fear, The Teaching Distillery has got you covered. We have been scouring the web for some great resources to utilize while teaching from home, and we are here to share our knowledge.
First, if you have not read our blog post about Showbie yet, stop reading this right now and check it out. Showbie is an amazing online platform that helps to keep all of our online curriculum organized and manageable for our students. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, they are offering their pro services for free right now! Check them out and sign up for an account pronto! You will not be disappointed.
Another online platform that we heard has made their platform free is Zoom. We don’t know much about it, but it may be a great resource for video conferencing with your students. Of course, be mindful of FERPA/COPPA and CIPPA. They are the federal laws that govern student information and internet safety. Under 13 are extremely protected. Please be careful and consult with your district and technology department before you make decisions.
Our school uses all things Google, and we have a Google Classroom all set up with our students. Definitely research that option if your students have Google for Education accounts already set up. There is so much you can do with Google, just be mindful of opening docs etc to a whole classroom. They may start off innocent enough, but if your students are middle or high school students, they may begin to write things not so appropriate for school. I mean, seriously, the stuff they blurt out in class alone…I can’t even imagine if they had free rein over a doc that is shared with everyone in class…and all the free time in the world to be writing on it.
If you would like an awesome resource that you can use for any short story, we have made our Short Story Analysis for Middle and High School lesson completely free. These short story analysis pages cover a variety of elements of fiction, such as plot, conflict, characterization, and theme. We use the analysis sheets to monitor our students’ understanding of the various elements of fiction and literary devices. We also use the analysis sheets to monitor reading comprehension when our classes are reading literary texts. They also require students to analyze story devices, such as figurative language. Last, students are asked to practice their reading strategies, such as: making connections, visualizing, inferring, questioning, and predicting. As a bonus, there are multiple character analysis pages so you can tailor fit this lesson to a variety of short stories depending on how many characters are within the text. Just delete the character pages you do not need and you’re ready to go!
Many, many teachers have been making a lot of their online lessons and content free for other teachers that will be required to start teaching from home. Some of our favorite resources are by Tracee Orman, The Daring English Teacher, and Write on With Miss G. Check out their killer free resources and ideas for teaching remotely for your Middle and High School.
Pinterest also has a vast bank of lessons and lesson ideas. We have our own Pinterest page, so feel free to check it out for inspiration! Not only do we have a board with all of our lessons, we also have boards on our favorite YA book recommendations, fashion, interior design, mom life, and health and wellness.
Facebook groups are also beginning to pop up for teachers required to start distance learning. They have already amassed quite a bank of teachers and lesson ideas. We have always loved the facebook group 2ndaryELA. Another group is Amazing Educational Resources. In times like these, crowd sourcing is a great way to get ideas and help with creating online curriculum that is beneficial and engaging for our students.
We would give anything to be walking through the Louvre or the Smithsonian right about now, free to roam about the amazing art and not worrying about the impending pandemic. I’m sure your students may be feeling much of the same. There are a ton of museums that have put their collection into virtual tours. Check out this list of virtual museums for you students to peruse. They can write about their favorite works of art and research the artists and time period. There is a lot of potential here. You could hold a virtual class discussion about art through the ages or how a time period affects art or influences art. Kids could come up with their own work of art depicting this time period and they could share and discuss.
There is a great article written by the Washington Post about Sir Isaac Newton being forced to work at home during the Plague. This could be a great companion article if you are teaching The Scientific Revolution. Have your students read the article and research a famous scientist of their choice. Or, even better, make it open ended. What could they spend their next few weeks researching that interests them? They could create a You Tube video to share all of their knowledge with the class, or a Tic Tock, or a one-pager. The options are endless. Choice is the key here. Give your students choice and agency in their learning at this difficult time. They just might surprise you!
There are a plethora of free novels online as well if you wanted to start a novel study for your middle or high school classroom. Project Gutenberg has a vast collection of free books in PDF format. Open Library is another great resource. Students can borrow many books from the Open Library to read at home. If you are using Showbie, or Google Classroom, you can have great discussions about the books your students are reading. Our favorite resource is the Library! Overdrive has a vast quantity of ebooks and audiobooks for your students to check out and enjoy. They have multiple copes, which would make for a great resource for book clubs.
Another thing we’re going to try out is having our students free write every day about their daily experiences when forced to be socially distancing and staying out of the public. This may become something that they look back on for years to come. History is in the making, and we want them to share their experiences. Kelly Gallagher, our teaching hero and guru gave us the idea when he tweeted about it the other day. Here are some other amazing resources from the King of Curriculum, Kelly G.
For those of you that teach young students, or are now home with your young children, we found this cute free resource on story elements from Michelle Griffo, owner of Apples and ABC’s. Scholastic just released lessons for teachers and parents today. Katy used the preschool Day One curriculum with her kiddo just today, and they really enjoyed it. Another great online platform for your own child is Outschool. We had heard that they would start making their content free or discounted, but as of now, they are still charging for their two week programs. Some classes are as low as five dollars, and some look really fun and engaging. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
We hope this has inspired you and got your wheels spinning about all the amazing things you could be teaching from home, while in your pajamas, sipping coffee (or tea), and trying not to kill your rambunctious children in the process. Really, choice is the key here. Give your students choice and agency in their learning at this difficult time. They just might surprise you!
Until next time teacher friends, stay healthy, stay sane, and when in need, drink copious amounts of wine!
Bottoms Up!