Zooming Away with Remote Teaching

Zooming Away with Remote Teaching

Hello,

Is anyone out there surviving remote teaching? social distancing? have toilet paper? I was extremely excited that I scored two packs of six rolls. Whoo Hooo! We also have jumped on the Tiger King train with that being said, I am from this Oklahoma NOT that Oklahoma! ;) 

This week will begin my school's SIXTH week for remote teaching. 100% honesty there is NO tired like REMOTE TEACHING tired. Whew! I have gathered some ideas from the past few weeks that hopefully some of you can use during your Zoom, Google, MS Teams teaching. Discloser I am using Zoom but create all my things in Goole or MS and share my screen. 

How I do my Zoom time is this way. I start out with whole group. I usually give a few minutes to chat while I wait for everyone to show up. Then I do a welcoming activity, question, something to warm them up. We cover the day's objective and I teach a mini-lesson. We do some sort of break and we come back. I give instructions for their activity then I send them to breakout rooms with something to produce as a team (usually no more than 3 students in a group). I pop in and out of rooms often and ask on their progress. After most are done or close to done we come back and share out. I then cover reminders for the day/week such as what is due or what might be coming up. I keep some students after the class to do check-ins or extra help. 

Ideas that are "Wirth-It" while remote teaching.

1. I use many different backgrounds because I am pretty sure my students get tired of looking at the same wall each time we Zoom. 

My co-worker, Mrs. McConn, gave me the BEST idea to use a picture of my classroom as my background, something the students are familiar with.













2.  We have different themed days, one day we did make your own mustache from paper. Although I may have cheated and used one from my dress-up bin (I know all ya'll teachers have a bin with all sorts of costumes too!) They made the silliest, biggest, craziest mustaches I had ever seen. I taught the entire time with mustaches on heads, mouths, eyeballs, but it was fun and we all did it together. 

Other days we have done: 

• Favorite jammies
• Fancy hat
• Make your own mask from anything at your house
• Favorite sports team
• Sunglasses

...I try to think of any of those crazy days we have at school.



3. Other things we have done, that had to have teacher prep beforehand (pickup and dropoff items) 

• bubble gum blowing contest 
• mystery book open 
• popcorn party
• blowing bubbles
• make something with playdough

4. We have also played games and done activities during our Zooms to break up the monotony of teaching and the class sitting for too long. Our very favorite thing to do is to play Kahoot. My warning is, if you have NOT done this with your students at school before do not try it for the first time on Zoom. 

We have also played:

• What's in the Bag? (teacher and students)
• Simon Says (I like this video b/c I am not quick with thinking of things to do. It was so much fun watching all my students trying to keep up. Simon Says Video He has other Simon Says Videos as well.
• Would You Rather is a favorite with my kids-we use the Zoom Icons of clapping and thumbs up but this could easily be modified with something like thumbs up and thumbs down. 
• Go Noodle Dance break
• Show-N-Tell does everyone show their pet first?
• Scavenger Hunt
• Dance/Snack Break with songs that are popular from musicals, oldies, regional
• My students love when I give them "Chat Recess"- someone thinks of a topic and off they go chatting away. Where the story goes NO ONE knows.
• Start a story and pass it until everyone in the class has completed part of the story. Read it back, it is pretty silly.
• Mad Libs- on a slide add how many nouns, verbs adjectives etc...fill in the blanks on your side. The laughter is contagious and they will want more!
• I also did Headbanz but read below on how I made that happen.

Headbanz- all the students were notified that they need a piece of paper, they went to a parent, sibling, someone who could write or draw on their paper. *What I would do differently is email parents to write on the paper before our Zoom class.**The students kept their paper upside down until it was their turn. NOW here is the tricky part. Students have to show the camera/class their paper but they have to close their eyes or so they don't see what is on the paper. This could be done over a few class periods or in breakout groups. 

5. Coming up for us in the next few weeks are guest visitors such as our librarian, counselor, principal, and music teacher is sneaking in to be a mystery reader and have a sing-along. I know my class misses their faces. We will also be co-mingling with first-grade buddies and maybe even other classes in our grade. Why do it alone?

This is what I have for now. We have 4 more weeks so I better think of some more things!