How should an online lesson begin? Generally with a warm and gracious greeting and a teacher’s smiling face. Students should feel seen and cared about. They should see their teacher’s face and also be seen. Then we should get down to learning. And the first step in that is often making sure students have everything they…
Online learning is brand new- for teachers and for students. That means figuring out and communicating consistent expectations for how things are work. The more transparent we can be the better. That’s why we love this video produced by teachers at Kea’au Elementary School in Keaau, Hawaii. It’s fun and playful but it makes it really clear…
Good online instruction will probably always involve a combination of synchronous and asynchronous methods. After all they have different strengths and limitations. Synchronous instruction allows us to connect with students and build relationships. And it lets us understand and support their learning in real time. But asynchronous instruction deals better with technology problems: it resists glitchy…
I’m happy to say we’re still tracking for a December release for my book for sports coaches, The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. I’m trying to post some excerpts here. Though most of the book focuses on what we can do during training and practice to accelerate learning, in Chapter 6 I try to reflect on two…
Just wanted to take a minute to share some fantastic video of Susie Kim’s 7th grade Social Studies class at Achievement First’s East New York Middle School. It’s a great example of a lot of good teaching things, not least strong Ratio and Checking for Understanding Susie and her students are reading a passage from teaching…