• 07 Mei 2020, 15:59 WIB
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An essential part of the recruitment process for any new teacher is meeting the pupils: but how do you do that under lockdown regulations?

If you are a teacher looking to move between schools during the coronavirus lockdown, how can you make the most of the online education experience with your new class? This is interesting new territory for many teachers. But there are thousands and thousands of teachers and pupils already learning remotely, in virtual schools – can they offer insights?

At a virtual school, lessons are delivered in line with each person’s personalised curriculum. Exactly as you would expect in a physical school space, pupils are taught how to interact with teachers, their peers and lesson content using whiteboard technology, quizzes, voice and video as well as receiving and sending assignment tasks. How should you introduce yourself to a new class, if you are meeting them online for the first time? If we consider how teachers deliver excellent classroom teaching practice in a physical space, how they prepare should not be approached any differently in an online environment.

Flipped learning
“Flipped learning” is a term used to describe how teachers can provide material for pupils to learn outside of the classroom. Although this is traditionally considered homework or coursework and typically completed without the teacher, increasingly this approach to enhance learning outside of the classroom has been set and completed online. During lockdown, teachers will be focusing on core curriculum content, meeting the needs of vulnerable pupils as well as enhancing student engagement, mixing between activities, types of assignments and differentiation techniques to support a range of pupils. One factor that must be considered for teachers who are working remotely, is how they can mix online teaching and learning with traditional methods that would be used in the physical classroom. A good tip for teachers working online, especially from home, is to have a simple whiteboard behind the camera and teach just as you would in a physical classroom space. Doing this over a sustained period of time will definitely present a new challenge, but it’s possible with well-thought-out curriculum plans, and a simple range of equipment.

Blended learning
Blended learning, first developed in the 1960s, was a method of instruction using technology-mediated methods. With flipped learning being the norm during lockdown, what can teachers learn from other educators who are already working in blended learning environments – teachers working in virtual schools, or online tutors?

If we look towards Barak Rosenshine’s 17 recommendations for effective teaching, these can quite easily be reapplied to online teaching, delivered through (at least) video conferencing. At the start of every lesson, review the last lesson with a simple retrieval exercise. This supports long-term retention, can easily be deployed with a simple quiz or competition and is a guaranteed way to get a lesson off to a flying start.

When presenting new material, successful teachers teach by giving a series of short presentations using many examples. Teachers should also provide guided practice by modelling various techniques. Where teachers present too much material at once, this will confuse pupils. Working online without sufficient verbal and non-verbal cues, means it will be critical for teachers to regularly check student responses.

One way that teachers can do this is to ask a large number of questions. Feedback can be provided by giving prompts, modelling and guiding pupils as they develop independent practice and asking simple questions such as “who, where, why and how” to help shape pupils’ thinking. When teachers check frequently to see if all students are learning, this processes information into long-term memory, developing schematic concepts to support retention. Teaching remotely, whether using Microsoft Teams, Google Suite or other platforms, gives teachers a significant array of strategies to deploy at this interesting time.

Finally, research recommends that teachers should try “scaffold learning”, helping pupils to problem-solve by thinking out loud and providing cognitive support. This can be achieved by completing the work alongside pupils; doing this online may require teachers to use “breakout spaces” by waiting to provide individual feedback in live video conferencing lessons.

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