Learning to Teach: Synchronous

Many people are new to synchronous and asynchronous teaching. To connect these terms to distance learning and what we are doing in our current situation, I will give you the basic explanation of these terms.

Synchronous: Teaching while students are present. This type of teaching allows teachers to give immediate feedback. This type of teaching offers engagement with others. Students are on the same time frame and work at the same pace.

Asynchronous: Self-paced, independent learning. The teacher provides materials for students to learn from. This uses self-guided modules with a specific time frame for completion.

The Purpose of the Post

Some of us are teaching asynchronously and are needing to move towards a more synchronous approach the longer we are out of school. I have been doing some research on how to best handle this shift. I found a lot of good articles, talked to co-workers, attended many online mini-conferences, and got a ton of information from this video sent out by my district.

Best Practices

There are a few best practices I have compiled for doing a “live” remote lecture synchronously with students. The most important thing you can do is to compile everything from your lecture/lesson into one Slide Deck (PowerPoint or Google Slides). This will help you stay organized and sane during distance learning. There is also an order to how you give information that really is not that different from being inside your classroom. Let’s explore the setup of your lecture.

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Bellwork

Just like in your classroom, you should have some type of bellwork for students to do as they enter the online classroom. For online teaching, the bell work should only be about 5 minutes in length. Bellwork for this purpose is to give students who are logged in something to do while waiting for others to join.

Ideas for bell work

• Tech tasks – open this webpage
• Grab what you need for the lesson – go get a notebook and your textbook
• An activity (usually not connected to the lesson you don’t want others to miss out and you to have to reteach) – a joke, brainteaser, meme

You can find more bell ringer ideas here.

Rules and Norms

Make sure you place the rules and norms for online teaching into your lesson. Take a moment to go over them with students. Remember this format of online teaching is not normal for them. Some teachers worry that a student is laying in bed. If this is against your policy, you need to put this in your rules. However, remember that some students work best doing work in their bed. Think of this as flexible seating.

Post and discuss your rules each time you meet. If a student is not following the rules, you can stop during the lesson and refer back to the slide. Eventually, students will understand this process and they become more familiar with it.

Connection Time

Try to make time to make connections and celebrate things you would in the traditional classroom. If students did well on a test, concept, or project – acknowledge them. Celebrate their birthdays, show their Tic Tok video, or highlight a particularly great job someone did.

Student Learner Outcomes

You will want to map out the daily agenda for what the day’s lesson will be covering and go over this with students. This is the same thing you should be doing in your face-to-face classroom. I also like to add the outcomes in the form of I can statements for students. This will help students focus on the goal of the lesson.

In the agenda, it might be helpful for you and the students to place times for each activity. This will help you manage your time and keep students informed of the layout. For example,

Warm-Up

Next in your online class, you can do a warm-up. This can be a review of what students have been learning, a vocab task, student reflection. You can do these activities in the chat feature of your conference call platform or use Pear Deck to gather your answers/responses.

Start the New Lesson

Now it is time to do the lesson. And this will be the same way you teach in your classroom except you are not face-to-face. First, it will be whole-class instruction (Teacher does) then group practice (we do) followed by individual practice (student does)

The teacher lecture portion should be the shortest. In the video I referenced above, it states that adults can focus for about 6 minutes during a conference call. My friends, we are working with kids. Keep that time in mind and break your lesson up into much smaller I (shortest time), we (a little longer), and you (longest) chunks.

Some tips that I have learned:

1. Make sure you give students plenty of time to respond. Think about what it is you are asking them to do and make sure they have the time to complete the task before you jump in. It is a bit awkward at first because we are used to walking around, checking on students, and providing guidance.
2. The you portion of the lesson does not have to be online. If you are giving independent work, feel free to release the students to get offline or leave the call. There is no need for us to hover over students while they work independently. Offer time for office hours where students can return and ask questions.
3. Build in interaction with your slide lecture so you keep the focus of students. Again, Pear Deck is a great way to do this.

Summarizing

I hope this process helps you plan better for your online teaching. I know I was incredibly nervous to start lectures online but learning from mistakes and fine-tuning how you present information will help you get better at this process. Just remember that the attention span is not the same online as it is in the classroom. Do not lecture for 15 – 30 minutes. Break it up into smaller sections of lecture, practice, question, repeat until you have covered all of the content.

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