Teaching from anywhere has become the new normal during the coronavirus pandemic.
The ability to keep your students learning, even when not together, is fundamental to your school’s offering and your children’s development.
This blog post explains how to utilise digital skills to create a virtual classroom in order to enable teaching from anywhere.
How are schools currently operating?
The Government has announced they plan to return schools to full capacity from September – however they are open for specific students at this time.
Government guidelines are being followed to ensure schools can operate at a capacity which is safe.
These guidelines include:
Smaller class sizes: Primary school teaching should not include groups of more than 15. In secondary schools, only a quarter of pupils should physically be present.
Regular cleaning: If an area is touched by a number of students it should be cleaned several times a day. Hand sanitiser should also be readily available.
Not sharing resources: Children should be provided with their own personal equipment where necessary.
No parents on site: Methods such as staggered start times have featured in school reopening to reduce contact between groups. To reduce the risk of infection from Covid-19, parents are no longer allowed on site. Students are also encouraged to avoid public transport.
Social distancing: Schools should ensure pupils and teachers stay 2 metres apart whenever they possibly can.
5 things you need to enable teaching from anywhere
The following 5 things are vital to enable teaching from anywhere
Secure classroom:
Safeguarding is the number one issue concerning online learning. The NSPCC has reported that over 7000 counselling sessions with children have been arranged about the impact of coronavirus.
Many young people are at risk in the home, hence why the Government announced ‘vulnerable children are priority‘ early on in the pandemic.
Through methods such as alert mechanisms, eyes-on learning, chat functions, highly trained enhanced DBS checked teachers and more means any safeguarding concern can be instantly raised with the school and immediate action can be taken.
Read more about safeguarding children at home here.
Organisation:
Creating an easy to follow learning structure is vital for both the school and the pupil.
Using one platform means that the teacher can save time in teaching processes. A process of learning, tasks, assessment and feedback means it is easy to plan ahead and for pupils to understand the structure of the lesson.
Online learning means the pupil can benefit from instant marking and feedback using EDLounge.
Communication:
Communication is key in producing a high quality education – and this is no different online.
Ensuring students have the functionality to be able to ask questions is vital for understanding.
Plus it is important that your communication network is secure – to avoid safeguarding concerns.
Lessons:
To make up on lost learning it is vital that children get caught up as quickly as possible – and this requires high quality lessons and a personalised learning platform.
Being able to provide your students with a tailored lesson plan bring benefits for both the school and the student.
Using a combination of resource reading, exercises, quizzes and assessments means you can meet each pupil’s individual learning style.
At EDLounge we have 11,000 lessons which can be input into the pupils’ learning platform. This includes functionality including options to change font size and read out content (including e-books) which benefit a wide range of learners.
You can analyse feedback to provide the ultimate tailored learning experience.
Performance:
While catch up learning is imperative, tracking pupil performance is vital.
By using an online learning platform any type of summative and formative assessment can be tracked, monitored and recorded. You can make sure students are meeting your expectations and take action if not.
By using EDLounge you have access to graphical data which shows comparisons between classroom progress, student’s expectations and predictions. You can also use the software to identify strengths, weaknesses and behaviour.
For more information call 01909 568338 or email mail@edclass.com.
