Tips for Designing an Online Learning Experience Using the 5 Es Instructional Model
Covid 19 has educators and educational institutions worried about and preparing for possible school closures. What happens if students have to stay home for days or even weeks? How can we keep them learning remotely? What strategies and technology tools can teachers leverage to take their traditional classes online?
With protests over the violent deaths of black Americans dominating the news, it’s understandable that many kids are feeling scared, confused or angry about the situation. How can parents, many of whom are struggling themselves, help children process what they’re seeing and manage their feelings?
There’s no one right answer. That said, there are a few guidelines parents can keep in mind to help kids deal with troubling news about race and violence.
CBS News This morning Youtube video about how to raise kids to be anti-racist and talk to them about racism. Protests across the nation over the death of George Floyd are forcing parents to have tough conversations with their kids about racism. CBS News contributor Ibram X. Kendi's upcoming book "Antiracist Baby" is about raising anti-racist kids. He shares how to talk to your kids about racism amid the protests over police brutality.
The National Council of Teachers of English Children’s Literature Assembly offers a bi-weekly blog with resources for preK-university educators. Each entry highlights a great online resource available for teachers and how it might be effectively utilized or offers a description of a short lesson using children’s literature that educators can use in their newly located classes.
If you’ve found yourself teaching in a distance-learning situation, especially if it’s been foisted upon you by circumstance, you’ll discover pretty quickly that distance learning offers different challenges from face-to-face instruction. And if you look online, you’ll find tons of ideas and resources that can help you tackle those challenges, so much that it’s easy to get paralyzed at the volume of it all. This is especially true if you’re expected to hit the ground running with very little notice. To help you, I’m going to take my best shot at sharing clear, carefully curated information on distance learning.
Best Tools for Virtual and Distance Learning
Making virtual learning or distance learning work for all students is challenging. You can have all the best tools in place, but without equitable access at home for all your students -- and adequate prep and training for yourself -- it's tough to replicate a traditional, in-person learning experience. This list assumes you've got those problems worked out and are focusing now on how to set up an effective virtual learning environment -- either adapting your existing curriculum, or designing a brand-new one from the ground up.
Many teachers tell us they're new to remote instruction, but it's our K–2 teachers who are coming to us urgently with the following question: How do I turn my classroom into a distance learning environment when students have little or no experience using digital tools independently?