PK Education. Your Destination For Inspiration.
Adjusting to online ways of working hasn’t been an easy and straightforward process for many of us. While we all continue to find our feet, we thought it would be useful to share some of the top tips that we’ve been hearing about from our own awesome team of PK educators. 👇
- It may sound obvious but preparation is key. Think about the materials your students will need during the lesson and start with a screen share showing what you’ll be using in your class each day to minimise disruptions.
- Get students to use gestures such as thumbs up or a wave as a way of communicating with you. You can also use gestures to poll your students. For example, if you want to give them the choice of watching a video or reading a story, say. This works really well for younger pupils, for example, “If you want to listen to a song, put your hands on your head. If you want to read a story, put your hands in the air.” Then count aloud how many learners choose each option.
- If you’re moving to online teaching after working with your students in a traditional classroom environment, it’s good for them to have some consistency. Try and include as many of your usual routines as possible.
- Put on a show. It’s really important to act a little when delivering a class. Try using bigger gestures, facial expressions and movement. Your aim should be to bring lots of positive energy to the class, offer praise and encouragement where you can. This keeps your students interested in you and what’s going on.
- Muting and online classroom management. As we all know, an online class won’t work if your students are talking over you or there’s lots of background noise. Ask them to mute their microphones when they are not using them for a task. If students are likely to unmute without your permission, you can take away the right for participants to unmute within the platform.
