Reflecting and Looking Ahead: What is Normal?

As the world slowly goes back to normal, I can’t help but think “what was normal?” When I came across this TikTok, everything made sense to me. This year was a weird combination of hyper isolation and online connections . It was full of frustrations, and hope. As a teacher, my students’ resilience is something that is admirable and I am honoured to be a part of their academic journey this year, despite the challenges.

Something New that Worked... 

1:1 Conversations

With our course sequence condensed and lesson time expanded, I wanted to make sure that I could still connect with my students like I would during a normal school year; after all, authentic and relevant teaching only comes from knowing who’s in your classroom. Through 10-15 minute conversations with my students, I go over my classroom expectations, then we set SMART goals and discuss strategies that will help them become successful in my class. My students genuinely appreciate it and I love it that my students are more inclined to turn their camera on . This allows me to actually see their face and have more genuine conversations despite us not being in the physical classroom.

Google Drawing

I sometimes use these 1:1 check-ins to check for understanding. These are informal conversations where I can address any misunderstandings.  Students feel more comfortable making mistakes in front of me rather than in front of the entire class so I found creating templates for  Google Drawing is helpful for me to immediately view/see what the student is doing. For example, in my grade 8 class where we’re reviewing Bohr-Rutherford Diagrams, I’ve created this template and shared the link to my students as editors; without having to share their screens, I’m able to view what my students are doing live. These templates minimize the time it takes to set-up for my students (screen sharing, drawing circles, formatting…) and put the focus on the assessed skill instead.

Multi-camera view

I wanted to use both my document camera and webcam simultaneously in my classroom so that I can provide different views of resources and demonstrate things easily without having to go back and forth between cameras. With my students unable to be in the classroom for various reasons (remote, online), I realized that it’s important for them to see my face as it personalizes the curriculum for them. Even if the students are not turning on their cameras, my students have reflected at year-end surveys that they appreciated it. Without feeling too jarring by removing myself from the camera view and switching over to the document camera, I’ve been able to create a set-up where I can show my students what I’m holding (front facing) and demonstrate how I’m conducting the experiment (birds-eye) seamlessly, like so.

Something New that Didn’t Work...

Padlet

I love Padlet and I know my students do as well. However, I personally have not found it an integral piece in my science teaching and learning. Should I need to use a collaborative whiteboard with my students, I can use Google’s Jamboard instead. It exists in my students’ Drive immediately when I share it with them, students can view their peers’ work live, it’s a great alternative to Padlet (and it’s free!)

Lesson Presentations

Call me old-school but my students have found it extremely helpful where I complete the note at the same time as they are without a slide deck. I’ve created slide presentations that have extensive information, including step-by-step calculations in quantitative analysis. I will move away from heavily relying on lesson presentations, and instead using live note taking as part of my lesson delivery moving forward.

How was your experience teaching this past year? What are you taking away from this last year? How has your teaching practice changed? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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