Lessons Learnt

With a few weeks of live lessons complete I will reflect on a few lessons that I have learnt.  1. A colleague suggested this 'quick fix' to me, and it has been a really useful adjustment; Within the chat function on google classroom ask all the students to write their answers without pressing send and to 'raise their hand' when they have finished, then after a count-down the students simultaneously press send. It has really helped with whole class participation and allows me to have a quick scroll through the responses, use praise and assess their learning. 2. www.teachermade.com allows you to turn pdf files into interactive activities and I have found this effective with KS5. Although I have learnt that if you leave any feedback on the teachermade assignment you need to re-direct the students to log back into the assignment to see the feedback, i.e., it does not notify them. So, I have taken to reviewing the class responses submitted on teachermade and then leaving ...

So here we go again, but this time it feels different. I am not claiming to be an expert in remote learning and I know I still have many lessons to learn but I am hoping that these thoughts might help you and in return you might help me. I will draw on my own experience and 'Teaching in the Online Classroom' by Doug Lemov to share the lessons learnt. Doug Lemov and his team admit that they are no experts in this field but quickly embarked on a thorough investigation into the Online Classroom by observing as many online lessons as they were able. The main lessons I can take away from this book is the reflection on the difference between Asynchronous (learning occurs at different times in different places) and Synchronous learning (learning happens at the same time) and how there are benefits and limitations of both.  Obviously in the book these are all explored in detail but in summary;   Asynchronous (pre-recorded lesson delivery)  Synchronous (live lesso...