WAHS Wisdom

Creating Interactive Classroom Experiences Creating an interactive classroom experience for students makes learning accessible and relevant to students while also creating teacher-student and student-student relationships.   As a classroom teacher I tried to engage all students every 5-10 minutes. During a lecture this might have been something as simple as jot down your prediction or turn to your partner and share. In online learning environments continuously engaging students is both more difficult and more important. We should strive for MORE frequent interactive opportunities for students. Fortunately, we can address the importance and difficulty with some simple and purposeful maneuvers.     First, let’s look at why creating interactive experiences for students is important. Research shows that when students have their laptops in college classrooms, they are more prone to multi-tasking--spending up to 42% of class multitasking. Knowing that our brains canno...

  8 Ways of Creating Opportunities for Student Social Connections  Online learning creates barriers to community, communication and connection. We ask ourselves and share in our PLCS: Are students showing up for online learning?  Are they interacting with each other?  Are they engaged in their learning?  When we answer “no” to the above questions, we recognize that many of these students are not connected with the content or peers. In a traditional classroom, we have standard practices to engage these students and build relationships. Some of our strategies translate well to online learning but others require us to be more intentional in seeking ways to build trusting relationships.  Here are 8 ways of creating opportunities for students to build social connections.  Story-telling . Stories, especially those that let students see the true you, are powerful at creating relationships and engaging students with learning. Purposeful stories share and nurtu...

We've Got This We are meeting the challenge of online teaching and learning. There's no doubt about that.  Over the past three weeks, we've seen engaging lessons and teaching strategies that demonstrate your professionalism, dedication and flexibility, thus making the transition to online learning smooth and worthwhile for our students.    Have you noticed that students are still showing up to your classes? This is proof that they are interested and engaged!  Below are nine strategies that I've seen used that engage students in their learning and have tremendous instructional value whether we're online, blended or in-person. Using Flipgrid to allow discussions outside of the classroom and to check-in with students on a weekly basis.  Prioritizing longer, student-driven assignments where students have more autonomy but include clear checkpoints, deadlines and ways to connect with students to ensure that they are engaged in their learning and meeting the checkpoin...

Text Rendering Text rendering is an instructional strategy that maximizes live learning time by incorporating individual responsibility, collaborative work and reading. Prior to class, students are assigned a reading to complete individually. They will render the text during class. This protocol can be used for all sorts of readings from introductions of topics, reviews or a deep dive. It works well with both fiction and non-fiction reading.  Individually and prior to live class: Students read and identify an important sentence, phrase, and word. They can answer "Why did you find this significant?" Have students record their words and insights on to a teacher-shared document. On this same document, share the learning intentions and the steps to the protocol to ensure clarity.  During the live meeting: Teacher provides directions and students are placed into groups. The first scribe is assigned.  Round 1: Students shares their sentences and explain why they chose it. ...

Building Teacher-Student Relationships During Online Learning Our first day with students is almost here and one of the questions we're all asking ourselves is, "How do we build relationships with students while teaching online?"  Strong teacher-student relationships are known to be instrumental to student success, and building and sustaining those relationships goes far beyond being "cool" or "liked." Strong teacher-student relationships require planning and purposeful actions, making it no different than differentiation of instruction, providing feedback or other teaching skills and strategies.  Here are some purposeful actions we can take to foster meaningful relationships with our students while online. What would you add?  Teacher Clarity Fisher and Frey refer to teacher clarity as, "when learning is organized and intentional, and when the learner knows what he/she is learning, great things can happen." While at first glance this might n...