On Sunday, March 15, 2020 Governor Tim Waltz ordered schools to close and gave the school districts two weeks to prepare for distance learning in Minnesota. At this point in time many states have done the same and many teachers are required to transition to some form of distance learning. This post is intended to help teachers in designing and using daily learning activities so students can continue learning from home. It is a follow-up to Distance Learning for Teachers: Part 1 - Hyperdocs which explains the structure I use for setting up online learning in my high school science classroom.

To keep things simple, I will focus on 2 types of activities, front-loading and follow-up or “processing” activities and only on a few tools I use to give you a good start to distance learning. I will also include links to additional resources in the “Key Points” section at the end.

STEP 2: Activities

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I will stick to daily lesson plans that consist of two activities only - one intended for front-loading the information and the second follow-up activity to allow the students to process the information they are learning by using it immediately. My plan is to keep the entire lesson to around thirty minutes; ten spent on front-loading and twenty on practice.

Front-Load First

The front-loading stage involves delivering content to your students. For example, when introducing the new unit you might use a PowerPoint or Google Slides to give them an overview of what they’ll need to learn over the course of the next few weeks. It’s okay to give them too much at first as long as you don’t expect them to remember everything right away or ask them to produce products that show mastery.

The lessons that follow this initial, perhaps a little overwhelming lesson should focus on one or two (and no more than three) main concepts and their processing. The front-loading activity could again be something presentation-like but it’s important to mix it up and include other media such as web pages, readings, videos, and visuals such as infographics or diagrams.

Notice that in my first “distance” chemistry lesson (image below), I chose to use two front-loading activities: What makes up a solution? and What happens when stuff dissolves?. The first gives students a choice between reading one of the two web pages, which allows differentiation as the chemkids page is more accessible to ELL students or struggling readers. The second involves watching a 4-minute What Happens When Stuff Dissolves? video in EdPuzzle. There are two main concepts I have my students learning: (1) What a solution is and (2) the difference in how ionic and covalent compounds dissolve. I was also deliberate about including some processing during each front-loading activity by asking my students to take notes and including 4 questions for them to answer in the EdPuzzle video. I.f you need help getting started with EdPuzzle click here.

However, most of the learning magic happens during the last activity…

Give Them the Opportunity to Process

Follow-up activities are about practicing new skills or using new concepts to learn them. Refer to the last activity in the image above and you’ll see that I chose to have my students compare and contrast salt (ionic) dissolution vs. sugar (covalent) dissolution. Doing so forces them to recall what solutions are and how different types of chemicals dissolve in water. It is important to note that any time a student creates a mental or physical image of a concept he or she will be able to encode it more effectively for understanding and future recall.

Another follow-up activity I use and highly recommend involves Flipgrid video responses (check out Activity 3 in the image below from my presentation at an educational conference in Minneapolis). Ask students to respond to questions or assign each group a topic and ask they create instructional videos. Limit them to 15 or 30 seconds or give them the full 5 minutes.

You can also use Twitter to keep track of class assignments. Just create a unique hashtag such as #MsJchemZone (does not yet exist) and ask your students to turn in pictures, videos, or typed reflections by tweeting and including the hashtag in their tweets. This will allows them to see each other’s responses as well. Check out #cymdogchem I used in the past.

More Distance Learning Resources

Screencastify - record, edit, and share instructional videos with your students.

Adobe Spark - students can create digital flyers, videos, Instagram posts, memes, collages, web pages, journals etc.

Padlet - students can collaborate digitally by posting to a teacher-created board.

Piktochart and Canva - digital posters, infographics, flyers.

The Key Points

1. Use 1 or 2 front-loading activities to deliver content and try to keep it to 10 minutes. Include some processing if possible.

2. Give students the opportunity to process the information by using it. Ask them to summarize, draw, post to a discussion, record a video, make an infographic etc.

3. Keep it simple - Stick to 1 to 3 concepts and have students dive into them to (hopefully) achieve some deeper learning and stick to a few apps to ease your and your students transition into the uncharted waters of quarantine-induced distance learning.

If you enjoyed this post or found it helpful consider signing up for my newsletter below.

Hi! I'm Oskar.          I teach, write, and speak to make learning better.

BOOKS