BONUS Episode: Distance Learning Made Simple

speaker 0:   0:00
Hey, teachers. If you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host. Rachel and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers toe want actionable tips, simple strategies and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go. Hey, guys, what's up? It's Rachel. I'm your host for the classroom commute podcast. And let's be honest, there's not so much commuting going on these days at the time of this recording, most schools, if not all, have been shut down for the time being, as we are kind of navigating the whole Corona virus situation. And a lot of us are now just teaching from home and trying to figure out a new normal. Except nothing about this really feels normal. In fact, it feels a little bit odd to have my entire family around with me all day long as I'm trying to work and then also keep my daughter engaged with her schoolwork and my 1.5 year old son keep him from falling off of everything that he seems to be climbing on these days. It's been a little abnormal, to say the least, and the only comfort that I really finding it all is that we're all in this together. We're all experiencing the same new normal together for the first time and hopefully, you know, a few weeks into it. Now we're starting to feel a little bit more in control of what's going on. And that's why I wanted to jump on today for this bonus episode of the classroom commute podcast. Because I know that so many things are out there right now that are confusing us and overwhelming us, and I want to help you to make this time of distance learning more simple. I've already put together several resource is in our members resource library that you can use with your students right now, in this time of distance learning. And if you haven't already gotten your hands on those, you can go to the Members Resource Library over at classroom nook dot com and you'll see the link for it up in the top. If you're already a member, you can jump right in with your password. But if you have not yet joined the free members, resource library. You can do so real quickly and easily and get in and see what's there available for you. Unstoppable. The distance learning resource is there's also tons of other resource is of video tutorials and such that you can use with your students. Maybe not right now, but maybe hopefully someday soon. Either way, get in there and grab those distance. Learning resource is okay. Before I jump into today's topic, I want to tell you that the majority of what you're going to want to get out of this episode is actually over on the website at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcast forward slash distance learning because I have some video tutorials there for you that you're gonna want to see that I obviously can't do for you right here on the podcast. And I also have some freebies. So after you've listened to the episode, definitely go over to the website in the show notes. For all of the things that I'm gonna be talking about today, it's gonna be really valuable for you for helping you and navigate this whole distance learning situation. All right? Like I mentioned, there is a new kid in class, and his name is distance learning, and we're not really sure how we feel about him. He's been a little disruptive. He's come into our lives with almost no notice and warning, and he doesn't seem to be moving on any time soon. In fact, it looks like most of us might be working with distance learning for the remainder of the school year. You know what I'm talking about. We're all in this new state of teaching something that most of us have never done before. Suddenly, words like Zoom have become part our of our everyday vocabulary as we try to carry on instruction. Virtually, I know that in my own conversations with teachers, they're trying out these new modes of teaching. And some teachers who have never used a gun platforms like Google classing before are now becoming Google pros overnight, thanks to Google, as we can search online and find answers to our questions. But not surprisingly, teachers are actually doing amazing guys. We were built for this. We know how to go with the flow, make quick changes, modify and keep going. We know how to do that. We're trained for that, but we'd also be lying. If we said that it wasn't a challenge exhausting, really. We don't know when this is going to end, so we need to just keep pushing forward and pushing on. And so, in today's bonus episode, I wanted to share with you some simple tips for making this distance learning more manageable for you and your students. My first tip for you is to keep it simple. Don't overwhelm yourself with options Right now. There are so many things that you could be doing with your class. But now is not the time to be testing all of those things out, especially if you're using things like Google class him for the first time. There are so many things you can do with Google Classroom, but you don't need to do them now. Find a few simple things that you can do to keep your kids moving along and stick with those few things and then later on down the year. If you find that you've enjoyed using Google Classroom, you can explore some more things that Google classroom has the offer or whatever platform that you are using and in the same boat. Don't overwhelm your students with too many options, either. Teachers just want to be helpful right now, so they're just like e mailing parents with tons of things that their students can be doing at home and trying to provide them with all of the things. And it's easy to just want to post a ton of websites that they can go to or give him a bunch of choices of activities that they can complete. But that could just result in feeling overwhelming for your parents and your students. So it's best in this time to be specific, be simple and prior toe prioritize the most important things that you want your students to be doing right now. And in my opinion, right now, I think some of the most important things that your students can be doing right now is reading and writing because those air skills that they can do anywhere and those air also skills that they need to do regularly even in the summer, we always talk about the summer slide. We need our students to be reading and writing so that when they do come back in the fall or whenever they do end up coming back to school. If they do come back this school year, we need them to have those skills sharpened, practicing them all along. You really need to just prioritize what is the most important thing that they need to be doing right now. And I think that could be reading and writing in activities that promote the students to continue their reading and writing at home and along those same lines of keeping it simple. I would suggest that you develop a simple learning schedule for your students to follow each week, something that's predictable, that they can know to come to expect each week. So, for example, on Mondays, maybe you always have your students watch a video tutorial of you introducing a skill. And of course, there are tons of options out there for how to actually get this done. Technology speaking. But there is a free resource out there right now. It's called Loom L 00 M. It's free for teachers right now, and it's an online tool that will allow you to record your screen as well as capture a video of you in the corner while you're teaching, so you could continue to teach those many lessons as you would in the classroom, and you will just recorded on your screen instead. So I will link to loom in the show notes if you want to sign up for something like that. But of course, you could always use just any tool that you might already have on your computer that would allow you to videotape your screen on your computer. Or you could just be a simple as using your phone and setting it up so that it videotapes you teaching a skill using chart paper whatever you need to get it done. But just keep it simple. But the idea is to develop learning schedule for your students that you can follow a week after week and your students will know what to expect, and so it doesn't feel so overwhelming that you're throwing something new at them each week. Now, if you are using something like Google Slides to teach your different lessons on another way, to keep it simple is to create templates that you are using over and over to create your lessons on. And I'm gonna help you out a little bit there, in that case, because I've already created several free templates that you can use in Google slides or even in Power Point. If you are creating, let's say, digital anchor slides to teach lessons to your students. I have a bunch of slides that have different backgrounds on it. That you all you need to do is just add text or images or whatever else that you want. And you even put together a video tutorial for how to use those anchor slides in Power Point or in Google Classroom, so that you know howto insert them into your slides properly. And then you can then share them with your students, along with any text or videos that you've put on top of the backgrounds. Because if you're anything like me, you still want your things to look nice for your students, and you just simply don't have the time right now. So I have taken a little bit of that leg work out for you by creating some of these background templates that you can just insert into Google slides or Power Point to create your lessons for your students. All right, in the spirit of keeping it simple, I also wanted to share with you Some video tutorials with some tech tips on how to use digital resource is now. I'm keeping it simple here. I'm not going to walk you through a bunch of really complicated tasks, but I've received so many questions about using Digital Resource is that I wanted to just put together a few tutorials that you could kind of go to if you have a question or if that you're using these platforms for the first time, and all of these video tutorials will be over on the website in the show notes at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcast, forward slash distance learning and distance learning is all one word, and that will take you to the show notes for this episode with everything that we've talked about, along with these video tutorials and the anchor slide templates freebie that I was telling you about just a moment ago, One of the things that I know teachers really want to know how to do right now is how to turn their P D efs into a Google Slides presentation that students could then type their answers on two. Maybe you already have worksheets or activity sheets that you were gonna use with your students in the classroom by printing them out and then having the students right on them. But now, since everything is going to be digital, you can turn those worksheets or activity sheets into something that students can type on on their computers. So I've created a video tutorial about how to do that. I've also created a little tutorial about how you can insert audio into your Google slide so that you can give your students directions if you want to do it. In that way, I've created a video tutorial on how to use any resource is that you might already have from me that our Google class incompatible how you might use them in a distance learning environment. So, for example, I have science and social studies units that are Google class incompatible, but they weren't necessarily designed to be used in distance learning. So I'm showing you how you can modify the unit to create it, so that it's easy for you to teach the content to your students in a distance learning format. And then I've also created a video tutorial about assigning resource is to your students in Google classroom. That's the number one question that I've been receiving in the past few weeks about not understanding how to get it to your students in the right way. So I've just created a quick video tutorial about that, so make sure you go over to the show notes at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcast forward slash distance Learning to grab all of those video tutorials or tow watch all those video tutorials and grab the freebie anchor slides as well. All right. Lastly, I just wanted to leave you with a couple thoughts on how to stay connected with your students during this time. You're not seeing them every day, and I'm sure that they're missing you and you are missing them. So here, just a couple ideas of how you might stay connected in distance learning the first simple way is just to create private Facebook group that you give your all your students access to. You couldn't go live. You can even teach right there on the Facebook platform, or even just connect with them by going live and chatting with them a little bit. You could do a weekly read aloud or even a daily read aloud. If you have been reading a chapter book with them, you could share a chapter every day, live on Facebook. And that would give some routine for students to always know that at 10 a.m. you're gonna be doing a read aloud with them or some other classroom community activity. It doesn't have to be a read aloud. It could be something else. You could have your students post what they're doing in the Facebook group at home to the others can see. I know that my daughter's teacher does that, and we post different activities and projects that she's working on and that her other classmates can then see. And it's always just fun to see what the other students are doing at home. You could host office hours for your students. You can be on live, and they can type in questions that they might have, and you can answer those questions as well. Another way to stay connected. I know many of you are already using Zoom to teach to your students, but you could also use Zoom to have lunch dates with your students or meet with a small group or again. Use Zoom Tau host office hours for your students if they have questions that they want to ask. And the most simplest way to stay connected to your students is to send snail mail in the actual mail to get in their mailbox. My daughter yesterday just received a note from her teacher in the mail, and it just completely made her day. So never underestimate snail mail. That is the simplest way to stay connected to your students, and it takes no technology at all. So send a letter to your students and give them a nice little smile when they get that in the mailbox. And, of course, remember the physical and mental health of your students and yourself is the most important thing. Right now, everyone is in the same boat. No one group of kids is going to be more behind than the other when we all come out of this. And so in the grand scheme of things the three months or the four months, however long it is that we are in this distance, learning and social distancing is not going to make or break your student's education. So just keep coming back to that thought. As you get overwhelmed, keep it simple and remember what matters most. All right, teachers. You can always reach out to me via email at hello at classroom nook dot com and shoot me an email. If you have questions or ideas and suggestions and, of course, make sure you head over to the show notes at classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast for its slash distance Learning to grab All of the resource is that we've talked about today to watch those video tutorials and hopefully get a little bit of inspiration as you continue this distance learning Thanks so much for joining me today, and we will talk again soon. Bye for now.