Fellow Teachers: Distance Learning for PreK, K and grade 1

[Anonymous]

I will report any anti-teacher bashing on this thread. Please, keep the comments positive.

Teachers, what strategies have you found mist useful for distance teaching with the very youngest children? Especially those who can't read yet or keyboard.


Parents welcome to chime in if they have constructive comments.

[Anonymous]

I found small groups really effective. Whole group was okay (kids tended to wander off screen, eat snacks, get silly), but I really loved teaching my small reading groups each day! As far as not being able to keyboard, I asked my students to always have pencil and paper or white board ready for holding up answers. I kept their daily Seesaw assignments as multisensory as possible to limit the screen time.

[Anonymous]

At least for my kid, morning meeting - even if it was just for 5 minutes- was super helpful just to tell the kids the plan for the day. A bit of daily structure helped EVERYONE in my house focus and prepare.

[Anonymous]

Short zoom sessions- no more than 10 minutes.

Unfortunately many families never tuned in which makes it hard to know what would work for them.

[Anonymous]

I try to keep my zoom sessions very interactive. We do choral answers, play games on pieces of paper, use the chat box or polls on zoom. That way it's harder to zone out and keeps kids engaged. We also did some "go noodle" together to break things up and played "simon says" in between academic activities.

I agree, that small groups work the best because I can see everyone on my screen at once and include everyone better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Short zoom sessions- no more than 10 minutes.

Unfortunately many families never tuned in which makes it hard to know what would work for them.

As a parent, if a Zoom lesson is only 10 minutes, i am exponentially more unlikely to make sure my child tunes it. Just doesn’t seem worth it- by the time everyone is on and settled down and what not, the “lesson” is over. It seems completely useless to me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Short zoom sessions- no more than 10 minutes.

Unfortunately many families never tuned in which makes it hard to know what would work for them.

As a parent, if a Zoom lesson is only 10 minutes, i am exponentially more unlikely to make sure my child tunes it. Just doesn’t seem worth it- by the time everyone is on and settled down and what not, the “lesson” is over. It seems completely useless to me

Just to add- I say this as a parent who had my PK and K children tune in to every single lesson in the spring, except for a handful for my PK child. I eventually started letting my PK child miss a lesson here and there because they were completely useless and not even remotely capable of holding my child’s attention. They did things like read books on the lessons (this is probably the worst idea ever) and the teachers for some reason were always yelling into the computer which was really frustrating and annoying. They also didn’t grasp how to use zoom and the mute/unmute options so oftentimes the meetings were a disorganized mess. And I’m really not meaning to teacher bash - i love those teachers and think they were absolutely magnificent in-person teachers. They just didn't effectively do DL which is unsurprising given how they were unexpectedly thrown into it.

Some other things - games on a shared screen that require peer interaction were very effective for both my PK and K children; the smaller, the better for both children; the more interaction and “calling on” for participation, the better; and heads up preparation is so so helpful and effective. For instance, as to the latter, our PK instructors would email everyone ahead of the lesson and tell us what they would be doing and whether we should have any materials at hand for it (e.g., glue, paper, markers for arts and crafts or ingredients for cooking skills etc). With respect to materials, just make sure it’s stuff families are likely to have OR provide several days advance notice so they can order it - this is particularly important during a pandemic where many people aren’t willing to just hop into a car and grab supplies at the store down the street.

Packets that accompany lessons are also super super helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At least for my kid, morning meeting - even if it was just for 5 minutes- was super helpful just to tell the kids the plan for the day. A bit of daily structure helped EVERYONE in my house focus and prepare.

I love this idea! I wish our PK and K teachers did even a five minute morning meeting each day just to orient on what should be done for the rest of the day and what the goals/lessons will be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least for my kid, morning meeting - even if it was just for 5 minutes- was super helpful just to tell the kids the plan for the day. A bit of daily structure helped EVERYONE in my house focus and prepare.

I love this idea! I wish our PK and K teachers did even a five minute morning meeting each day just to orient on what should be done for the rest of the day and what the goals/lessons will be.

Another parent here (PK3). I really like this idea too, and I say that as someone with very low enthusiasm for DL at the PK level generally. This is something we basically already do in our house on high stress days where we know we’re not going to have as much time for our littlest. We plan ahead, give the day a theme, and then sit the kids down to introduce the theme to them (it’s usually “patience” or “being independent” lol) and tell them the plan for the day. This is the only way we survive days where one of us has to be out of the house and the other has a deadline or a full slate of calls/meetings.

If we got something like that out of DL, and it was short and came with lessons activities we could set up, I could see it being really beneficial for our 3 year old and working with our family’s limitations as well. Our biggest concern is having long DL sessions that don’t hold her attention because we’ve found she becomes antsy and difficult if forced to engage via screen for long periods, and it takes a lot of time and effort to get her back on track after.

[Anonymous]

I love BOOM cards-you can create interactive assignments where anything is an answer-a word, a picture, etc. BOOM has audio so you can record yourself asking questions, so if students are pre or emerging readers they can still be independent. They are also self-correcting, and let students know if they need to try again. There are a ton of free resources on there and you can also purchase some, as on TPT. My class loves these and parents agreed they were great.

I also used "Epic!" so that kids could follow along with the words while listening to books as they were read aloud. I did some screen-share read alouds with the sound off, and I assigned some stories for kids to work on independently. This was really useful as students who are already proficient readers could do so with the sound off and students who are not could leave it on. The books are also leveled. Vooks is good, too, but I found it less user friendly.

[Anonymous]

Tell me more about Boom cards!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At least for my kid, morning meeting - even if it was just for 5 minutes- was super helpful just to tell the kids the plan for the day. A bit of daily structure helped EVERYONE in my house focus and prepare.

This 100%. There needs to be live interaction each school day.

[Anonymous]

My daughter's Preschool teacher sent a 20-25 minute video every morning that was basically what circle time would be. She went over the day of the week, counted how many days they had been home, introduced a concept usually by reading a book aloud and then showed 1-2 activities. The activities were things that we could do with our kids after watching the video. I liked that I could project the video on the TV and my daughter could sit on the couch and watch. I would usually be cleaning up after breakfast and could listen in and get an understanding of the topics that I needed to work on with my daughter.

[Anonymous]

I'm a parent of a rising 1st grader and rising pre-K er. The biggest things that worked best were engagement - calling on kids by name, giving them opportunity to show and tell. The thing I would have loved to have more of was interaction with each other - small groups, as people up-thread suggested.

[Anonymous]

I have been teaching ESY this summer and it has been such a great experience! I have a mixture of students in my self contained k-2 class. DCPS has really enforced teachers using one platform teams. The things that have been the most useful has been having a morning meeting every morning followed by a read aloud. For morning meeting I use PowerPoint, starfall(calendar)and GoNoodle. For read aloud I have been using Vooks along with YouTube along with PowerPoint slides that I have created with questions and visuals -for responses. I try to have objectives posted on each slide and keep the questions similar each week so the students get used to structure. I hope to change it over time. Morning meeting and read aloud can go for 30-45 minutes.

I have been meeting with each of my students for 30 minutes one on one at the same time everyday.Families can get overwhelmed with different work times each day. Two days for ELA and 2 days Math. I send the PowerPoint lesson for ELA and Math before the lesson in case parents want to print it out. Downtown has also been printing out work for the students and mailing it to their house. I also send ELA and Math independent work at the beginning of the week to be completed throughout the week. Boom cards have been great to use to help students work on specific goals and then I can send the parents the link to the cards if they want to work on it later with their child.

During the school year I had only 50 percent of the students participating in online learning and now I have 87 percent.