EMERGING GOOD PRACTICES IN THE TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS IN THE NEW NORMAL SETTING
TOPICS FOR TODAY 01 Create a welcoming environment & Communicate constantly 02 Focus on building strong relationships with students 03 Explicitly teach students & Screen for those who need additional support 04 Provide engaging Assignments and assessments & Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition.
When teachers go back to school this school year, the classroom as they’ve known it will be gone, and their instruction will be more critical than ever. It’s what the pandemic has delivered. It produced crisis in schooling, and teachers and schools scrambled to find resources and master remote teaching techniques. A more deliberate approach could mean a better experience for students; the lack of one could turn equity gaps into chasms.
And engaging students is more essential than ever: Months of unequal access to instruction last spring mean that students will be coming back to school, in person or remotely, with varying degrees of learning loss. Teachers will have to address those losses as they introduce grade-level content.
Schools should acknowledge that they’ll likely have less instructional time this year and should plan to identify the highest priority for each grade level accordingly.
Create a welcoming environment Students are more likely to engage in learning if they feel welcome and believe that teachers are truly invested in their learning and growth. Greeting each student with a smile and thanking them for showing up is more vital than ever, as we know for many students the school day now includes the very real physical barriers such as face masks and plastic dividers in classrooms
Focus on building strong relationships with students To keep students excited about their learning, teachers need to invest the time and energy in really getting to know their students. This means taking the time to ask them questions, to check on how they are feeling, and to provide sufficient time for them to respond.
Communicate constantly Reaching out to students is important – and so is really listening to their responses, passions, and ideas. When we speak about personalizing learning for each and every student, we need to begin with listening.
Explicitly teach students Also known as explicit/direct instruction, this teaching strategy is highly teacher-led, and focuses on frequent questioning and guided practice to help pupils learn a topic and helps to make learning concepts clearer. Explaining the strategy, modeling the steps in the correct sequence, and then allowing students to practice
Screen for those who need additional support Despite educator efforts to engage all students, we know there are students who are falling through the cracks. They are experiencing trauma or may be reluctant to participate in the learning. Identify (isolate) Practice (develop) each of these one by one; assess pupils’ use of these skills before moving on; have pupils put them all together for a final performance return to this topic in later weeks and months to check pupils still retain those skills.
Provide engaging assignments and assessments Students are able to work on tasks that are relevant to their lives. Promoting the use of these kinds of assessment to identifies students misconceptions then this guides and adapts our instruction during the lesson, to better meet students needs.
Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition. Helping pupils make a link between putting effort into a task and receiving recognition is an important step in developing a classroom environment that fosters active learning.