Module 3, Session 7 focused on the importance of explicit instruction for all students. The steps of identifying a clear, specific objective, chunking information, modeling, verbalizing the thinking process, providing practice opportunities, and giving feedback could be challenging in a remote setting. Can you provide an example of you have achieved one or more of these steps in a remote or hybrid instructional setting?
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Great idea. Love it!
In teaching art, demonstrations and modeling are the primary way students learn the material. During remote/hybrid instruction I used modeling as my chief way of demonstrating art techniques to my students. I was fortunate that my district purchased a document camera for all the art teachers in the district, so I was able to continue using the "I do, We do, You do" method in real time. Although there were some constraints for the most part it worked well. I also made sure to video record each lesson and upload it to google classroom for later viewing.
One way to be clear about the learning objectives is to provide a daily agenda with the learning target (s) for the lesson. The agenda should be posted in the class stream and discussion should take place over the learning targets in the beginning of the class. This way students will know exactly what is expected of them. Sharing short videos during the warm-up to build engagement and connecting the learning targets to the content is essential. For modeling, I have found that "I do, we do, you do" is an effective strategy even within the virtual environment. The teacher can model the behavior/ strategy on screen for the students and then have the students go into breakout rooms for the "we do" or participate together as one large group. Giving feedback is certainly challenging in a remote setting but we have found that monitoring students on Go Guardian and utilizing the chat feature to give feedback works best.
While we are not currently doing remote or hybrid instruction, during COVID remote learning, I made a point to post the learning target/objective. Additionally, if sharing the screen and using a screen capture video, it is possible to do the modeling and verbalizing the thinking process. Allowing for practice is difficult during remote, unless you have access to digital platforms, such as learnig.com, or IXL. It has been four years since remote instruction, so I cannot think of a specific example.
In 6th grade Library class, I introduce students to many different library resources, such as, databases, print, digital, primary and secondary sources in order to conduct research. I always break this down into sections. First I introduce the resources, then we have the opportunity to try out these resources. I first model a basic search, have the students try it on their own, and then come back to a discussion of their findings. We discuss the key words that they use and if they found something different from what they were looking for. This turns into a discussion about editing their search terms. We then compare researching with shopping..changing our search words, using filters. Once we make this comparison, it is much easier to for students to see the importance of using search strategies. These are the same strategies that we use when shopping-If we don't find the sneakers that we are looking for, we change our terms, we use filters to narrow our search. This practice teaches students how to better navigate the internet to find the specific information we are looking for. I have the students answer a few short questions, to evaluate how effective their searches were and what needs to be done to make their searches more specific in the future. I also provide feedback to each student. These are all skills that they will need to be successful as they transition to the higher grades. This can be easily transferable to hybrid and virtual teaching environments.
I have found that leaving audio and/or video feedback on student writing has been very helpful in the remote setting. I teach social studies at the secondary level, so there are many written assignments. Paragraph structure is something I explicitly teach using a coding system, and I have seen increased growth when I provide short feedback videos or audio comments imbedded into Google Docs submitted by students. Feedback from my students is that it helps for them to listen to my comments while reviewing their unedited work, which they can then edit to reflect my comments in real time.