If you're a teacher looking for some best practices
when it comes to setting daily schedules and distance learning,
or you're an administrator trying to outline clear teacher responsibilities
during distance learning, this video is for you. In it,
we're going to go over 10 best practices that you can start using today to start
leveling up your distance learning and meeting the needs of your students
Before we get started, I have to share with you that after this video,
you're going to want to bookmark our free back to school resource hub.
Our team at Albert has done all the hard work for you and broken down a list of
the best educational resources for distance learning,
as well as important topics,
like how to run a virtual parent-teacher conference. So,
if you're looking for a ton of resources,
any one-stop-shop for help when it comes to distance learning,
be sure to check out our resource in the link in the video description below.
Other than that, if you're excited to learn about these best practices,
hit that like button right now,
and subscribe so that you can get new videos that help you with your distance
learning. Without further ado, let's jump into it. In a traditional school,
it's super easy to get into a set schedule. However,
when it comes to distance learning things kind of go a little haywire. So,
having some best practices when it comes to setting daily schedules can be super
helpful for teachers.
Here's some best practices for teachers when it comes to creating daily
schedules. The first best practice is to create a teacher work schedule.
It sounds super simple,
but simply by having a clear outline schedule can make it easier for your
students to know when they can expect to get help from you as well as for you to
know when you are off duty. Depending on your class size,
you can incorporate biweekly or monthly calls to your students, parents,
or guardians to make sure that they're in the loop about their student's
progress.
You can also incorporate 20 to 30 minutes at the beginning and end of your days
to field any emails that you may have received from parents or students,
and also to set a hard cap as to how long you're going to be stuck in your email
inbox. It's also important for you to set aside some time for grading. So,
make sure that you're doing that.
The second best practice is to make sure that you're sharing your schedule with
both students, as well as families.
If you've taken the time to create the schedule for yourself,
you need to make sure that you're communicating it with everybody else that's
involved.
We recommend continually updating your teacher website with your latest teacher
schedule.
You can also use tools like Remind101 to send important reminders or updates
to students and parents.
The third best practice is to make sure that you're integrating homework into
your schedule. Since students are often going to be working all day,
distance learning kind of changes the rules when it comes to homework.
To avoid overworking your students,
aim to have 45 to 60 minutes of instruction time,
depending on whether you're on a block schedule or a traditional schedule,
along with 20 minutes of homework.
By setting some time to help students get started with their homework,
you can open up some doors for your students to ask you more questions and also
get more engaged with the work they're going to be doing later on.
The fourth best practice is to make sure that you're incorporating regular live
session.
As much as possible live session should occur at this same time as your class
would have normally occurred during school day.
A lot of schools that have block schedules are hosting live sessions four to
five times a week whereas traditional schedules are working out to two to three
times a week. Whatever the case may be for you,
live sessions should never exceed over an hour in time.
It's also helpful to think about what you can push to asynchronous learning
environment so that you're not using this valuable instruction time.
The fifth best practice when it comes to setting a daily schedule is to make
sure that you're sending regular check-in surveys with your students.
Get a pulse check as to how they're doing at home,
how they're doing with distance learning as well as how you can support them
even more. Now that we've gone over some daily schedule best practices,
let's transition to talk about some best practices that administrators can take
when it comes to outlining teacher responsibilities. Before we do so,
be sure you hit that like button and subscribe if you want more videos like
these, when it comes to distance learning.
The first thing we recommend that administrators outline for their teachers is
to make sure that their teachers are creating virtual absence folders.
These folders are aimed to help prepare schools for the situation in which a
teacher has to step away from their classroom or has to call in sick for
whatever reason.
It's really helpful for teachers and departments to figure out whether or not a
substitute is going to be hired,
or if there's going to be another teacher from the department that can help plug
in. Once you decide who's going to plug in,
make sure you include these things into your folder,
at least three days of asynchronous lesson work,
and also things such as the contact information for each of the students,
as well as the parents and guardians.
You're going to want to also include things like student accommodations and
modifications,
as well as behavioral management systems or classroom strategies for your
particular class. Lastly, if your administration requires it,
you're going to want to also include some synchronous lesson plans that can be
worked through.
The second best practice for administrators to outline to teachers in terms of
their responsibilities is the importance of parent-teacher conferences.
These conferences should be current throughout the course of the school year so,
the relationship can be built with the parent and the teacher.
Some of these may be more informal and just be with the single teacher,
whereas others might be more formal and include people such as the guidance
department, administration, or other stakeholders.
If you're looking for extra tips and tricks for hosting virtual parent-teacher
conferences,
be sure to check out our back to school resource hub include some tips and
tricks there. Teachers should use online schedulers,
such as YouCanBook.me or Calendly to set up ways for their parents of
students to easily sign up for these conferences.
These schedulers are also great because they will typically integrate with work
calendars,
which makes it easy for your students parents to show up at the right time and
place. When expectations for teachers here,
make sure that teachers are both sending a conference agenda ahead of time,
in terms of what's going to be discussed as well as follow up after the
conference for next steps, from both sides.
The third best practice when it comes to clear teaching responsibilities is to
make sure that grading is completed in a timely fashion.
When it comes to remote learning,
we recommend that grading is done within three to five days.
Thoughtful feedback should be given as needed.
And teachers should also be encouraged to use tools such as Google forms to
create simple multiple choice assessments that will grade automatically for
them. As an administrator,
you're going to want to make sure that it's really clear as to your expectations
of how many opportunities students should get for establishing their final
grade.
As a standard rule of thumb,we recommend that you give students at least three
opportunities for major assessments. These are things such as tests, essays,
or projects include seven minor assessments. So,
these are things like quizzes or assignments that take maybe longer than three
days to complete.
And then 15 more formative assessments just to give students enough
opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge.
The fourth best practice that we recommend administrators outlined for their
teachers is to make sure that they are logging all student and parent
contact. This gets some time to get used to, but it's super important,
especially in a remote learning environment..Write down every phone or video
call that was had between students and or parents, and also outline what date,
what was discussed as well as who was in that meeting. If you find it helpful,
we've created a contact log that you can download and start using today.
Just check out the link in the video description.
This is important for a few key reasons.
The first reason why is because in the case,
in which an administrator has to ask about whatever is going on with the
student,
the teacher is going to have some coverage in terms of what they've already done
from their end to try to meet the students' needs.
The second reason is because it will help in the situation in which another
person needs to be looped into the conversation and they want to get caught up
really quickly. Written communication,
such as emails or texts are less important to log into this contact log.
And the reason why is because there's going to be an easy record,
that you can always reference there.
It's also really important for administrators to tell their students to keep
active attendance logs in terms of which students are showing up for lessons,
as well as who is regularly participating in class.
Take note of things such as which students,
they didn't have their cameras on during class,
which ones didn't join in on the discussion.
By collecting these sorts of data points,
we can better address the needs of students when it comes to distance learning.
The fifth best practice we can share to administrators is to make sure that your
teachers are regularly attending both staff and department meetings.
You should be setting clear expectations as to how frequent these meetings are
going to be, who's going to be in them and what's going to be discussed in that.
Teachers should be attending these regularly occurring meetings,
actively participating in them and have a clear outline as to when to expect
them. Both staff and department meetings should be had at least once a week.
And the reason why is because any distance learning environment,
it is so much easier for disconnect to happen between administrators and
teachers. Communication among staff has to be made super clear,
both in written communication, via email, as well as in these meetings.
By no means do these meetings have to be long. In fact,
we recommend you keep these meetings to 30 to 60 minutes max,
just make sure that you are sharing your agenda ahead of time so that your
teachers all is know what's ahead of them.
If you found this video helpful and giving you some things to think about,
we'd greatly appreciate it if you hit that like button and you subscribe with
that notification bell so that you can get notified whenever we create some new
distance learning resources for you. Lastly,
if you haven't already checked it out,
check out our free back to school resource hub. And it,
we have a ton of resources including our ultimate list of tips for teaching
remotely, as well as our guide to how to run virtual parent-teacher conferences.
That's it for this time though.
I'll catch you guys next time when we discuss another topic related to distance
learning.