Distance learning in K-2: student agency & self-direction while learning from home

I've written and presented in the last couple of years on how we can support our primary students with being more self-directed & independent learners at school, and the last few months of school definitely put all of that work to the test. 

Our schools closed mid-March and after a short break, students were asked to continue work at home via distance learning through the end of our school year (mid-June). While some of our classroom structures and practices did prepare our 2nd graders for working from home, there were also a lot of changes that we had to make from week to work to better support the new learning situations that everyone was in. 

After weeks of reiterating on our lesson design, and numerous meetings and conversations with parents and students, and surveys of both groups, below are some of the lesson design elements and structures that were most successful in supporting more self-directed learning for our young scholars. 

Note --> The student population at our school is incredibly diverse-- linguistically, economically and in terms of number of students with special needs. With that, our school & district ensured that all students had a Chromebook and internet access at home, which students will get to keep through summer. Our school library also continued to offer a modified book check out system, and our school office organized a packet pick up system weekly for those who needed or preferred paper-based assignments. We also were able to continue offering counseling services remotely to those students who were receiving them before school closed. I mention this because I know that not all schools and students had the same access to devices or resources at this time, and the privileges we enjoyed in our district also directly impact the work that students were able to continue at home.

Provide tech training & tutorials

Our 2nd graders had been using Chromebooks, Google Classroom and Seesaw all year long up to this point, so we assumed that the transition to using these tools at home would be seamless... we were wrong. Plus, we were going to need to use a couple of new tools for distance learning (i.e. video conferencing, etc.) and not all parents were familiar enough with these tools to help their children get up and running at home. 

So we started recording tech tutorial videos and including tech training into our live class time. We posted the videos on a class website that we'd already been using all year (and revamped for distance learning communications), and shared them to students in both their Google Classroom and Seesaw. 

We also taught them how to view the tutorial videos during our live class time, covering topics including:

• where to find the videos 
• how to rewind, pause and fast forward 
• how to skip ahead & rewatch a section that best answered their questions

What tech tutorials might you provide to students? 

Consider not just app tutorials, but what general tech skills students might struggle with at home, or what new challenges might arise when sharing a computer at home. Some of the topics that we developed training on included:

• How to create & navigate multiple Google profiles on a shared computer
• How to use multiple tabs in your internet browser
• How to use ZOOM (both on a Chromebook or on a tablet)
• How to view & turn in work on Google Classroom
• How to find & turn in activities on Seesaw
• How to use our online reading curriculum
• How to use our online math curriculum
• How to copy & paste links/web addresses

Tip--> try to record screencasts using the student view of an app. Open an incognito browser in Chrome, log into one of your students' accounts (with permission from the student, of course), and screencast the app exactly as a student would see it rather than from the teacher app.

Parent office hours

While this is a post about helping young students be more self-directed, I am also realistic about the fact that we are working with 5-8 year olds who are not going to be completely independent all the time. They are going to need to ask questions, and in this format without their peers and teachers nearby, the people that are most available to them all day long are their parents or caregivers. 

When distance learning first launched, and the emails began streaming in, many of our teachers began setting up regular parent office hours. My team chose to stagger these office hours so that families who couldn't attend an evening session, could choose a morning session, and vice versa. Office hours became a work help, tech help and Q&A session for family members supporting students, and allowed parents a time to connect with, commiserate with, and support each other.

Work Flow -- keep it simple

After lots of reiterating and lots of feedback from students and parents, we knew that we needed to keep the workflow as streamlined as possible. (And I'm sure this will continue to update in the new school year!) What we came up with was a 2-part system for pushing out weekly assignments.

• Week-at-a-glance Overview document for families

• This document was mainly for parent and caretakers to use. While we regularly emphasized that it was okay for families to create their own weekly work schedules based on their specific needs/situations during this odd time, many did request that we send home a suggested plan that somewhat mimicked what our school day might look like.

• The document was organized by overarching subject area and then noted what assignment was to be worked on each day of the week (see example attached).

• Google Classroom for students

• Use topics: After a lot of revising to this system, we finally settled on an organization structure that my teacher fiancé, Scott Denman, had put into place with his 5th graders after a suggestion from a colleague-- we created topics for each week of distance learning, with the dates in the topic name.

• One post per subject each week: We created one post for each subject area, outlined the whole week's worth of directions in that post and tagged the post with that week's topic. 
• The type of work that students engaged in might be in other apps (Flipgrid, Seesaw, Formative and Quizizz being some of our favorites for our 2nd graders!), but this was always their starting point.

organizing Google Classroom

• Video overview on each post: Also at the suggestion of my fiance, we began recording screencasts of ourselves reading the directions on each Google Classroom post and attaching the video to the post to support our non-readers or anyone overwhelmed by all of the text in the Google Classroom post.

• Live class meeting links: We organized all of the weekly meeting links together as one topic in Classroom. Students could use the same links each week for meetings that they needed to attend, including links to class meetings, art class, office hours, school clubs, etc.

Provide visual & auditory supports into instructions/lessons

• Emojis: Text-heavy assignments can be overwhelming for adult learners, let alone young

  

  using emojis in lessons

  learners who likely have not yet mastered the art of reading. Emojis were one way we could break up the text in a set of instructions and give students clues as to what the upcoming sentence might be about. We used emojis as visual cues mainly in Google Classroom, Seesaw and Flipgrid directions. This was especially useful in Google Classroom, which doesn't allow teachers to embed any visuals or videos into posts.

• "Multiple means of representation & expression"-- universal design of lessons: Without the just in time support of their teachers and peers at home, considering UDL guidelines is more important than ever in developing flipped and synchronous learning experiences for our students. If you haven't heard of UDL before, or need a refresher, I've linked resources for learning more at the end of this post.

• Video lessons: All of the lessons that we pushed out to students were presented in a video

  

  video lesson embedded in doc

  format. Phonics and ELD lessons were screencast, math lessons were recorded in Seesaw and science lessons were sourced from video curriculum providers like Mystery Science. Students could read along in their workbooks or rely solely on the video lesson, but in all cases they had both text and video lessons to support learning.

• Screencasting tips:  
• Keep it short. 5 minutes is my magic number. Cognitive load theory in learning design explains that our working memories are limited and if we overload working memory when teaching a new concept, learning can actually be hindered. The younger the student, the smaller the chunk of information that they can process in one sitting. 
• Try to include your face in screencasted lessons. Students love seeing their teachers faces AND it allows students to process facial expressions and mouth movements that may help them to better process or understand the information that they are learning in the video.

  

  listen to directions attached to post

• Video & audio read-alouds of instructions: Instructions for weekly assignments, practice pages and quizzes were recorded on video or audio files. For example, Quizizz was a favorite tool for quickchecks as we could record ourselves reading each quiz question and answer choices. In Google Classroom, we recorded screencasts of ourselves going over the typed directions on a post so students could both read or listen to the text presented.

• Diagrams and charts: Some students learn best from visual diagrams or reminders that can be printed out and referenced. Annotated screenshots or visual/icon-based how-to resources (made in programs like Piktochart or Canva) can be useful for students who are learning how to use a website or need to repeatedly reference step-by-step directions for a task or procedure.

• Student choice: When submitting their work, we gave our 2nd graders plenty of choice about how they could demonstrate learning. Choices ranged from workbook pages or other paper (turned in by taking a picture and attaching to Google Classroom or Seesaw posts) to video to digital drawings to typed responses to photo collages. Whatever worked best for the students or made the most sense for an assignment was accepted as a work sample.

Executive functioning supports for the win!

During the live school year, several of the 1st and 2nd grade teachers had done work in training our young scholars to make more choices for their own learning using structures such as the Bridges Math work places and The Daily CAFE literacy model. 

Part of helping students make choices for their learning also includes giving students resources for understanding what skills they have mastered and what skills they need more practice in. 

• Checklists: In class, our 2nd graders practiced using a template to create monthly checklists of "must do work", including documenting due dates to help them prioritize their work choices during the school day. We realized several weeks into distance learning that this structure might be even more important at home. Each Monday, when we pushed out the week at a glance document to families, we included a checklist document for students to help them develop working goals for themselves throughout the week and keep track of what they needed to complete by Friday.

• Goal setting & reflection: Another routine we'd practiced weekly in class, we asked students to continue this practice at home. During the live school year, we assigned a Seesaw goal setting activity every Monday in which students set a learning goal for themselves. Each Friday they would receive another Seesaw activity that asked them to reflect on their Monday goal and whether they felt as if they met that goal. During distance learning, we continued pushing out the Friday reflection, asking students to reflect on work or learning they were proud of that week and to post an artifact that supported their reflection.

Learning targets in assignments

• Learning targets: In order to help students hone in on what it was they truly needed to be able to do independently after each lesson, we continued to use learning targets in our distance learning model. Learning targets explained specifically what skill students should be able to demonstrate after a lesson, and were included in lesson videos, on practice slides, in Seesaw activities and in Google Classroom posts. Teachers reviewed the targets in video lessons and instructions.

• Data analysis for self-reflection: In order to set learning goals for themselves, students needed to know what they still needed to know. During live class time we had data talks with our 2nd graders, reviewing phonics, reading & math assessment data with them regularly so that they knew what skills they had mastered and what they needed to work on next. While distance learning students used data from Quizizz quizzes, feedback/comments from teachers on Seesaw posts and the reflection prompt, "what can you do mostly by yourself, and what do you mostly need help on from family members?" to help them reflect on what learning goals they should be setting for themselves.