Sameena Quettawala a teacher at an Akanksha school has compiled the best practices to help remote teaching. With COVID-19 disrupting schools and education globally, we believe it’s important to get familiar with a few easy tips to prepare teachers in these uncertain times. 

1. Setting Norms and Clear Expectations

☑ Take them through the agenda of the day/lesson
☑ Set expectations of the times they can and when they should avoid contacting you
☑ Give explicit instructions

Eg: Rules about turning the mic on and off, taking notes, sit in a quiet place, how to ask doubts or answer a question.
Which book is the child to write in, what material to use for a task. If you’re expecting students to us a software they may be unfamiliar to, ensure you’re teaching them how to use it first

2. Prioritizing

It is important to re-priortize what can be taught online and what is important. There may be certain concepts that are more important to teach over others. There may be certain that are difficult to teach online. 

☑ Evaluate the syllabus 
☑ Consult a mentor or your Principal to deprioritize and make changes depending on the need of the situation and ease of instruction

3. Checking-in and Engaging

Have multiple check-ins with students, ideally once at the start of the day, middle of the day and end. 

☑ Take notes of everything
☑ Follow up where necessary
☑ Check in on what is going on in their surroundings
☑ Check in with their parents of your students
☑ Assign individual tasks followed by a fun thing to do
☑ Read this blog to explore tools to help drive engagement

Eg: Ask them to draw some, take a photo of something in their surroundings and send it to you.

4. Assigning Homework

☑ Use a buddy system to follow up
☑ Assign short tasks that aren’t vert difficult to achieve
☑ Leverage tools like Google Form. Here’s how.

5. Quiz to check for understanding

☑ Conduct a quick assessment right after the lesson.
☑ Use google forms to do this, or ask students to send you their answers on private chat.
☑ If you see a pattern in a student performing badly in each lesson, you can make time to understand the problem and reteach.

Remember to always ask your students, mentors, other teachers for feedback. Especially your students - do they understand the content taught and if they are able to see and hear you clearly.

We have curated some world-class tools to help teachers teach from home. Check them out!