Although moving from traditional brick and mortar teaching to online instruction can be challenging and scary, you have the skills and the resources to be successful. Continue to focus on professional and educational best practices when approaching online learning! While the format and circumstances around remote learning are different than in a physical classroom, it's essential to rely on existing pedagogical and content knowledge to adapt to the situation. Below are some considerations for planning remote learning needs, including various methods, tools, and best practices from across the state and nation.

Schedule. What's the schedule? This is useful even if there aren’t any synchronous classes being held. It gives kids predictability.

Attendance. How will you take attendance? What constitutes “present”?

Community. How will you support kids’ needs to socialize and connect? Opportunities for peer-to-peer connection will be especially important.

Clarity. For kid's sake, clearly put all assignments in one place (LMS), explain objectives and expectations up front, and meter the workload.

Administrators. Provide some measure of accountability and support for students and staff. Decide what the school will record and who will have access.

Assessment. Have a game plan for assessments (Formative only? Allow summative?).

Screen time. Think creatively about what students are doing/working on so they aren’t glued to a screen for 8 hours each day.

Set Expectations. Clarify expectations for students/families, including attendance, participation, work load, communication if absent, etc. Also set clear expectations for Teachers.

Tech Support. Clarify expectations for home technology requirements. Have a plan for non-tech teaching. Packets? If so, how will those be distributed. Create office hours for tech help just as you would for curriculum content help. (think about leveraging students for this)

As stated earlier, you have the skills and the tools, but we feel it necessary to again address some common mistakes when moving to online teaching and learning.

Teaching online fundamentally changes the way we teach. Plan out your teaching and consider teaching in chunks. What does your day/week look like. Remember, online teaching is not just assigning work and collecting that work in various formats, nor is it plugging students into online content and doing one activity a day. Consider how you can be creative and vary your assignments. If you were a student, you would check out quickly if asked to do the same activity/assignment over and over each day.

It is very hard to post work everyday for all your classes. Instead, you want to make some decisions. Do you want to post everything for a week-long chunk? Do you want to post a 2-week unit? How are you going to scaffold the work for students? How often are you going to commit to do updates and post resources? Because of this, you need to rethink how you will lay out your course.

Remember your students are not just taking your course, but trying to keep up with all courses. Although they do that now, doing this totally online will be different and take some practice. You will not be able to “read the room” to gauge their understanding, so you need to figure out ways to check-in on every student individually. It is super easy to fall behind virtually and hide in the back of the virtual room. You’ll need to be very consistent on checking for understanding and touch points.

Below are some suggestions:

Create Updates that are Clear and Thorough: Your LMS updates need to be clear and thorough. Think about how you will give context for the week’s worth of work, including your objectives (in student-facing language), expectations for learning, a preview of the assignments, and where to find the resources, and assessments. Start with the end in mind: what do my students need to know and how will I know they learned this? If you do one big post with everything in it, you will help students plan out their week. If the unit spans several weeks, you will still need weekly updates with assignment checkpoints to ensure they are progressing and not waiting until the very end.

Create Screencasts with your Directions: We recommend that you create a screencast of yourself walking students through your post, just as you would in class. This is your chance to tell them verbally what they will be doing that week/unit and what your expectations are. This practice is especially important if students are working for multiple weeks on one project or one unit. They need to know where they are headed in their learning, not just what is due right now. Post the screen cast in your LMS update. You may want to screencast a sample final project or a model of student work so students know what to expect. Importantly, a screencast with your voice will help make a switch to online learning feel less impersonal and more relational.

Vary Your Resources: Consider the types of resources you expect students to access. It’s good practice to add PDFs of readings and to vary the type of media (ie: screencasts, TED talks, video tutorials, etc.) to make up for you not being in front of them. Be sure to check out our suggested online content resources.

Assessments: Assessments with online students require careful planning. Traditional assessments can put remote students in a tricky position where a quick Google search makes cheating both easy and tempting. This is a good time to consider other types of assessment. If a traditional test is out, how else can you evaluate what students understand? How else can you assess the development of a key skill? If interested in digital tools for assessment, see our list of tools.

Check ins: You need to make sure you are checking in with students frequently. Attending virtual classes, posting to discussion boards, email, submitting assignments, etc., all constitute check-ins. The point is that you want to know students are working and not falling behind. If they are not checking in, we want to catch them early. Consider creating a “water cooler” discussion board for students to post questions and write about issues they are having.You can call it “Questions, Concerns, Comments” as an example. An open forum like this will allow not just you, but classmates to respond as well.

Flexibility: This is the time to adjust your curriculum to fit into an online environment. What is your comfort level? How will you use the synchronous and asynchronous tools? Make your plans, lay out your course, take a deep breath, and be flexible. If something doesn’t work, just like in your classroom teaching, adjust and go back or move on. Remember to reach out to your colleagues and tech team for support.

Equity for all students must be at the forefront of a successful remote learning plan. Keep in mind that some students may not be able to access the Internet or even have a device at all. Other students may have unreliable or slow Internet connections or other technical difficulties. Remote learning may sometimes need to happen offline. If your school uses the Google environment, check out or resources on using Google tools offline.

Try to plan coursework that can be downloaded and completed offline. It may be necessary in some cases to deliver printed materials via mail or packet pick-ups. While digital activities make remote learning easier, it's not always necessary or appropriate to do everything online.

Activities don't necessarily have to be digital! Design lessons that allow students to be engaged within their own environments. Hands-on activities keep learners engaged — consider activities like nature walks, family read alongs, simple science experiments, art projects, or PE challenges. These are available to almost every student and don't require a device or connectivity. Students can submit reflections and artifacts back to teachers either online or via mail, or a physical drop-box if needed.