Helping teachers and students make the switch to remote learning
Continuing to drive student engagement and focused learning while outside of the classroom can be a challenge, especially for those moving to remote learning for the first time. Both educators and parents need support from their schools to help make this work. To help parents and guardians support their children, we have created a Remote Learning Guide for students and parents.
In addition, here are some tips we have heard from educators who have helped create healthy and effective learning environments that allow students to thrive in this new virtual setting.
- Stay healthy and charged: Learning from home can be a new experience for students. Encourage them to take breaks between lessons to stretch, hydrate, or just unplug.
- Stay focused: Find a quiet place where they can focus on the lesson with minimal distractions.
- Stay connected: School is important from a social perspective. Not seeing their friends face-to-face every day can be hard for students. Help them adjust to this new reality by encouraging them to schedule a lunch session for classmates to stay connected. If they are out sick or can’t join class because of an appointment, remind them to change their status or set a status message so their classmates are also aware.
- Motivate your class: Use Microsoft Teams to encourage joyful challenges throughout the week by creating a Fun Activities channel. For example, hold a cooking contest and have students share their creations in the channel. Recognise your students by sending them Praise in the channel, inspiring more students to participate.
- Bring lessons to life: Make a lesson interactive by enabling Whiteboard in Teams during a live lesson. Have students come up to the whiteboard and solve a math problem or demonstrate their art skills, just like they would in a physical classroom.
- Connect with students individually: It can be difficult to gauge how students are faring without seeing them in person, so connecting individually is very important. You can support students 1:1 in a chat, creating a safe space for students to ask their questions and get the extra help they need.