Start the class
How you start your remote learning class helps to set up a successful learning experience.
Post announcements with the day's expectations
Announcements are a wonderful way to provide a visual reminder to students about upcoming assignments or activities. Because the announcement feature allows you to add a colorful banner or an illustration to your post, you have the ability to color-code your announcements.
For elementary students, you can use announcements to organize topics for the day. Red for reading; blue for math; the bee illustration for science - you can use the same banner every time you have an announcement about that content area. Your students and their parents are able to quickly find the key information they're looking for so they can focus on learning.
For secondary students, in an asynchronous setting, you can use announcements to post the week's tasks. In one announcement, educators can communicate the expectations for the week and offer students some guidance on when they should complete the tasks. Students can then easily reference this one post throughout the week as they complete their various tasks.
Check out this printable guide on how to create announcements you can share with faculty.
Start a Teams call and have students join
Synchronous meetings with your students are easy with the Meet Now feature in Microsoft Teams. You can start a call for an immediate meeting with your students, or you can schedule a call for a later time.
Although you may decide that most of your remote learning is conducted asynchronously, periodic calls with your students can benefit you and your students in many ways. Your students miss you! They need to see your face, hear your instruction, and connect with you. They also miss their classmates! Allowing them to join a call can help create a sense of unity and normalcy in an abnormal time. A Teams call is also incredibly beneficial for answering students' questions and reinforcing concepts that students have been reviewing throughout the week.
Asynchronous learning and synchronous calls can resemble a flipped learning environment in which students review content, watch videos, and read materials before class. Then, in class you and students discuss the content, practice what they studied, and ask follow-up questions.
Record your Teams calls
Although it may not seem necessary if all of your students are in attendance, it's important to record every Teams call that you conduct for your students. Because bandwidth can be an issue, recording the call ensures that students can go back and watch the video if they have a tech issue during the call. It's stressful for a student to think they're missing valuable information because their computer froze and they must restart. If they know you're recording, they can trust they'll see the information later, allowing them to calmly solve the tech issue they're experiencing. Moreover, students who are inattentive or get distracted during part of the call can catch up at a later time. Finally, students who struggle with a concept can go back and watch the recording as many times as they need.
Check out this printable guide on how to start and record a Teams call you can share with faculty.
Organization tip
The recordings of your Teams call are visible on the Posts tab where you started the call. One challenge is that the more announcements, conversations, and recorded calls you have in the Posts tab, the harder it is to find a specific recording. To help your students find them easily, you can:
- Download the video to your computer and then upload the video to a Stream channel of all of your lessons - live and prerecorded;
- Add a Tab in Teams that is connected to the Stream group for your Team; or
- If you use OneNote Class Notebook, create a new section in the Content Library called "Class Meeting Videos". Then, create a page with the date that the video was recorded as the name. Then, go to the video in your content in Stream and copy the Share link. Paste the Share link onto the OneNote page. The video will then be embedded onto the page, and your students have one place to view all of the live lessons. (If you don't use OneNote Class Notebook, you could do the same thing in a Word document in the Class Materials folder in the Files section of Teams.)
Mobile device tips
- When students are using a mobile device, they download the Teams app. Within the Teams app, they can join Teams calls, chat, or call an educator or peer. They can also view Posts, Files, and other Tabs you add to the Team. Within the Files tab, they can view Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and Excel spreadsheets. To edit those files, however, they need to download the app for the program (for example, the Word app). Additionally, to view and work in the OneNote Class Notebook, students need to download the OneNote app.
- For some students, the chat feature may distract them from their school work. Students can mute their peers who are trying to chat with them when they're working by swiping from the right on the message, selecting "…More" and selecting "Mute."
- Students who don't want incoming phone calls from friends to disturb them can set their status to "Don't Disturb" so the phone calls are silenced during study time. See these directions to share with families.
iPad and Mac tips
- Similar to mobile devices, students who are using iPads or Macs need to download the Teams app as well as Office apps, Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, etc. that they plan to use for their school work.
Class management tips
- After an initial meet and greet at the start of the call (as if they were walking into your physical classroom), ask students to mute themselves and turn off their cameras. As beneficial as it would be to see your students for the entire call, turning off the cameras of your students lessens the bandwidth demands of the call. If, however, you don't have bandwidth issues, encourage students to keep their cameras on. It's a great way to help students stay focused because you are able to see when they become distracted.
- When they're muted, if they have a question, they can post a comment in the conversation thread on the call to let you know they need to ask a question.
- Set students to attendees so that students don't accidentally (or intentionally) mute you during the call. (Download this printable guide to learn how to set students as attendees.)
- Remember - attention spans will be shorter on a Teams call than if you were face-to-face in your classroom. You cannot see their faces (even if you keep cameras on, you can only see four students at a time). You cannot tell if they're confused, bored, or riveted. Be mindful of their limitations. Be sure to create checkpoints in your discussion where you pause and gauge understanding. You can ask students to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down if they're understanding or ask a question and ask students to insert the "wave" emoji to show they're ready to answer.
- When you pause to check for understanding or question, be sure to remind students they can unmute themselves to discuss/share insights and questions.
- Strongly encourage students to consider sitting at a table for your calls. They'll have a hard time taking notes if they sit in their beds or on a sofa. It may also cause back pain or neck strain.
- If you are teaching for long periods of time (with frequent pauses for check-ins), be sure to take a few longer breaks in which you encourage students to stand up, stretch, and move around a bit.
- When it's time to end the meeting, make sure you stay on the call until all students hang up the call before you leave the meeting. This way you are able to control when the meeting ends.