Today was quite an unusual day for me. It was my first lesson back with my upper-primary students. Campania, the region of Italy I live in, has been on a rollercoaster ride of misinformation and sudden changes to policy, which resulted in the first day of term online (with the expectation to remain that way until the end of January), followed by a sudden overturning of that decision. The next day the whole school system went back to teaching face to face.
Totally unprepared.
I saw my students for the first time since December. A group of sixteen lively young F2F learners class had become eight in the room and two online. I stupidly made the mistake of asking one of my favourites – E – How his Christmas had been. He said it had been awful, as both of his grandparents had had Covid-19. (They are fine; I just asked the wrong question).
Since September last year, I have been teaching all levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) online for two years and hybrid classes with my University students. It has been a steep learning curve, but I now feel in control of my teaching and feel I am supporting my learners to the best of my ability. However, none of this prepared me for my YLE Movers preparation class. Young Learners are different. They need more from us.
I won’t go into all the gory details. I will say I was lucky to have the support of my colleague. We team teach the class together, and we managed to monitor and keep the students engaged for the lesson, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best class I/We’ve taught.
But what if I hadn’t had that support? What if it had all gone terribly wrong?
Hybrid teaching is hard work. It’s like teaching two lessons at the same time. I can’t change Covid, the stressful situation in which we find ourselves (again), but I can reflect and plan for my future lessons….which is what I did.
Here are five things I plan to implement to help support my students’ learning better:
1 Downtime
Include tasks that take students away from the screen. Today we were learning about comparative adjectives. I asked my students to draw a monster to compare them. The five minutes they had to do this gave them a moment to relax after a long day at school. Where possible, plan for this, or send worksheets in advance, so students at home are not constantly looking at a screen. Include tasks where they can draw, make, find or create things offline.
2 Classroom layout
Have the students that are present near you (as far as distancing allows) and have a webcam that gives students a similar view of you. If your students are using google meet or teams, check with your school administrator that they have access to breakout rooms so they can continue to do pair or group work.
3 Equipment
As mentioned above, a webcam, positioned to reflect the classroom (and you) as normally as possible. This really helps. Have a headset handy, so you can connect with learners online and listen to your students closely.
4 Differentiate tasks
As I mentioned, I wanted my students to compare their monsters. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to breakout rooms today, and the two students online couldn’t hear each other and work in pairs. I gave them a slightly different task where they wrote about their monsters and compared them to themselves. They did it brilliantly.
5 Praise
Teaching online was tough. Hybrid is tougher. We are constantly reacting to change and need to congratulate ourselves and our students.