Teachers Resource Force Blog

Bell ringer starter activities to do with your online class during distance learning

21/9/2020

It can be tricky knowing what kind of bell ringer starter activities are suitable to do with your online class while you're waiting for everyone to arrive. Distance learning is a very different world to navigate!

Bell ringer starter activities to do with your online class during distance learning | TRF.one

It can be challenging keeping students engaged from a distance:

You’re not alone if you’ve been finding yourself stuck not knowing what to do with your students while you’re waiting for them to arrive online. You want to have fun yet meaningful activities to do with your students and ensure that they are engaged and excited to be there. If you’ve been struggling to think of suitable digital bell ringer activities for distance learning, keep reading for some ideas to help.

Distance learning bell ringer activities can transform your online lessons:

Imagine preparing for your online lessons, and instead of the awkwardness as you are waiting for students to join, you can have a foolproof list of go-to activities ready in your arsenal. Knowing that these activities will help keep your online calls fun and engaging as well as help build a classroom community, tenders them influential in encouraging attendance to your online lessons.

Quizzes are always an engaging and meaningful way of keeping students entertained:

Fun tools to keep in your online lesson arsenal are quizzes. For example, many students love riddles as they stimulate their minds. Theseriddle bell ringers are easy to use in an online call: you can share your screen with the class and then click to reveal the answer when you're ready. It's a good idea to leave some time for personal reflection before you do so. To encourage engagement, students can record on a piece of paper or device what they think the answer is, and then everyone can hold up their answer on the screen at once! If you would like a set of riddles to try out in your online classroom, you can download a week's worth of questions for free here.

Another fun game you could introduce is "True or False". These games are ideal if you want full participation from all your students as you can send them a link to a true or false web-deck where there are a range of questions based on a particular theme. Students flick through each fact and select whether they think it is true or false. They receive immediate feedback on the answer, so as they are playing, they are learning facts about that particular topic as well. The beauty of this method is that every student can participate! If you would like to try out the true or false web-decks, you can check out this one for free on the Coronavirus.

Quizzes are always an engaging and meaningful way of keeping students entertained | TRF.one

There are also some physical games you can do during online calls which are great to get students moving. Some examples include scavenger hunts, virtual contests and show and tell activities. If you would like to learn more about how they work, you can read the article on building community while distance learning here.

Finally, if you are looking for some interactive activities where the whole class is involved and playing together, here are some great online quizzes that would work exceptionally well for online calls:

Kahoot is one of my all-time favourites, and students cannot get enough either! You reveal a question on your screen, and students can use their devices to select the answers simultaneously. This means everyone is involved in taking part, and it's always an enjoyable time for all concerned!

Some other sites that work similarly are Quizizz and Gimkit: all students are interactively involved in competing against one another based on a topic of your choice, and engagement is always through the roof!

To conclude:

There are lots of fun activities that you can do in your online calls to help your students remain engaged, motivated and excited! In addition, these games can help increase attendance and help keep the classroom community spirit alive while distance learning.

Download free riddles to use as bell ringers for your online lessons:

Students love riddles, so if you would like to download a set of riddles for free, you can download them below:

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Distance learning backdrop ideas for online calls

17/8/2020

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Tired of that blank wall behind you during online calls? Or are you someone who scrambles to tidy up your background before an online call to make sure it looks presentable? Backdrops can actually be a lot of fun and can make your online lessons with your students that extra bit more special too!

Distance learning backdrop ideas for online calls | TRF.one

Why do you need backdrops for your online calls anyway:

With more lessons being delivered remotely via online calls such as Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet, you and your students might be missing the special decor from your classroom. Those personal touches and pops of colour you use to decorate your classroom, help reflect your personality. It's not particularly inspiring for your students to be looking at a blank wall behind you while you're talking to your class, but you're certainly not alone if you haven’t had a chance to think about this. It's hard to know where to begin, and many wouldn’t have even considered creating special backgrounds for online lessons.

It’s worth considering though if you have some time this summer, as students love seeing your personal touches in your classroom decor. So keep reading to learn some fun, easy, and cost-effective ways that you can add the element of your personality into your online calls through decor that is easily interchangeable to keep things fresh for your students.

Have fun with backdrops for your online distance learning lessons:

There are so many different options for backdrop ideas for your online lessons, and they don't have to be complicated or challenging to set up. You could change them up seasonally or random times just to keep things fresh for your students!

Distance learning backdrops don’t have to cost you a fortune:

Who doesn’t love cozy coffee shops? Now you can easily bring those hygge vibes to your own online classroom! If you would like some free bunting in a cozy coffee shop theme, you can download a sample here. The bunting is really easy to use: you just add your own text or letters to the page. They can be resized to fit the space that you have behind you perfectly, and the full set of coffee shop bunting contains 26 unique styles. Team it with your own favourite hot beverage as you teach, and hello Starbucks! You could also amp up the cozy hygge vibes with these wooden or slate calendars to highlight important dates coming up for your class.

Another way to decorate that blank wall behind you is by putting up photos of your class! You can find pictures that you have taken together in the past, or perhaps pictures that they sent through especially for your wall. You can then display them proudly behind you, and that will help your students feel really involved in the classroom community. You can even have a different student featured every day for fun! You may find this also encourages regular attendance to your online classes, as it’s exciting for them to see who is going to be featured on your wall that day!

Another idea is to use technology to help you with your backgrounds. You could add a virtual background if you are using Zoom, Teams or Meet, and you could even use a real photograph of your classroom for that familiarity. Alternatively, have fun with themed virtual backgrounds! If you’re teaching about the Egyptians, why not place yourself in front of the Pyramids for example? The world is literally your oyster!

Use technology to create virtual backgrounds for your online classes | TRF.one

And finally, for you DIY types who like getting hands-on, you could dress up your background very easily with props such as fairy lights! Or what about different scarves and have them pinned up or draped in different places and positions? and if you want to get really fancy, you can actually purchase special backdrops that are used in photography, that look exceptional. They’re simply fabric that you can pin up on your wall making it easy to change the background frequently to keep things interesting for your students. Here are some of my favourites from Amazon: affiliate links included below:

To conclude:

Changing up your background for your online classes is a fun way to keep things fresh and interesting for your students, and helps keep that personal touch in your lessons when you're not able to be physically close. As you can see, it doesn't have to be expensive or complicated: it's really easy to change things up and personalize it to your class!

Download the free cozy Coffee Shop bunting for your online call backdrop:

Reminder, if you'd like to try out the free coffee shop bunting for your backdrops, you can download them for free below:

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Things to have in place for back to school: distance learning style

20/7/2020

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Going back to school this year after lockdown is certainly a strange experience for everyone. No one can be sure of how exactly schools are going to function while Covid-19 is still around, and every school is likely to be doing something different anyway, which makes it even more challenging to prepare for!

Things to have in place for back to school: distance learning style | TRF.one

Covid-19 has turned schools upside down and no one is sure of what back to school will look like for them:

What is likely, however, is that schools will be adopting some kind of blended learning approach with a mixture of in-school learning and distance learning. This means it can feel overwhelming to know exactly what you will need in place to prepare for back to school. How will social distancing work in school? Then there are safety fears of Covid-19 potentially spreading in schools as they are high-risk environments. How much online learning vs in school learning will there be? What exactly will that that all look like, and what kind of tech skills will you need to develop? Understandably, there are many questions and unknown variables, so it's OK to feel overwhelmed and under prepared at first. Keep reading to learn some practical things that you can do to help prepare as best as possible for back to school after lockdown.

There are things you can have in place to help prepare for blended learning:

Back to school post-pandemic doesn't have to be disorganised and unsettling for you. There are some general things that you can have in place that will help prepare you for blended or distance learning as you go back to school that will make your life so much easier. If you have these simple things in place, you will not only feel more prepared, but it will also help lift the mood and help keep a sense of normalcy, even in these unusual circumstances.

Make sure your students know what is expected of them with clear online classroom rules:

Sadly not all schools are equitable when it comes to technology access. Therefore if you feel your resources are limited yet you will still be expected to deliver blended learning, consider whether there is there anything you can do before school starts to help build your resources. For example, could you reach out to your principal or district? Set up a Donor’s Choose request or reach out for any second-hand equipment or donations? It won’t always be possible, but it never hurts to ask!

If your students do have sufficient access to technology and you are hosting online lesson calls, it is fundamental that students have clear rules and expectations for these calls. You can download thesefree Intro Slides for online calls that include rules, which are fully editable to suit your needs. There a total of 6 slides that you can customise for the start of your online calls.

Make sure your students know what is expected of them in online learning with clear rules | TRF.one

Similarly to rules, students would benefit from clear share instructions on how they are to utilise the technology you would like them to use for distance learning. For example, if you would like your students to be using Google Classroom, it makes sense to ensure that they have access to clear instructions of exactly what you would like them to do, how to access work, and how to turn in assignments. This would also be helpful for parents/carers so they can support their students through this process as well.

Use home as a support network where possible:

Parents/carers are an important part of your students’ success while they work from home, so any support they can offer would be beneficial. Therefore, you might also want to create a way to get regular parent feedback and input on how well they feel their child is doing working from home, and you can also use that feedback to improve your own practice and help students transition better. You can access these ready to go Parent Feedback Google Forms here.

Use home as a support network for distance learning | TRF.one

Free digital tools that might help make blended learning easier:

There are a number of Chrome web extensions that you could use that will help make your life a bit easier. For example, if you use Google Meet for online calls, you can download Google Meet Grid View so that you get more of a “Zoom” style layout with all your students in a grid.

Kami is another great Chrome Extension tool that integrates with Google Classroom, Schoology and Canvas. It allows you to take any document that you have shared with your students, and make it suitable for writing, drawing, annotating, typing on, etc. Kami can also be used as a digital whiteboard overlay when teaching - ideal for online lessons!

If you’re looking to prerecord your lessons in advance to share with your students, then Screencastify is the extension for you! You can record both your screen and yourself (should you choose), as well as write on the screen while recording lessons. Your videos are then automatically saved to your Google Drive where you can upload them to Google Classroom or even YouTube!

Bring the familiarity of school into your online classroom:

Finally, a fun touch to help bring those cozy classroom vibes into your online learning is the use of decor. Many teachers love decorating their classrooms and students love seeing the fun personalized touches around the room. So, why not use the dead space behind you when you're on an online call, as decor? To add that personal touch you could put inspirational quotes and posters pictures up, or add photos of your class or your own family / pets. You could also hang bunting, such as this set of cozy coffee shop bunting, to spell out a special word or phrase which is easy to change regularly to keep things fresh.

Another thing that you can do to bring the familiarity of your classroom into the digital world, is to customise your Google Classroom banner or banner of any Learning Management System that you use. You could use graphics to make it look like your own personal classroom at school, or maybe even take a photo of your classroom and add that to your online classroom. You could even just choose the same colour theme or style as you used in your classroom and transfer it digitally to your Google Classroom banner. Keeping that familiarity between your real classroom and your online space will help make blended learning more seamless for yourself and your students.

To conclude:

While it's hard to know how to best prepare for back to school post-pandemic, there are some things that you can have in place that will make your life that little bit easier in preparation for either blended learning or distance learning. Clear rules, technology tools and familiar decor can make all the difference.

Download the free Intro Slides for your online lesson calls:

Reminder, if you would like to download the free Intro Slides for Online Calls that also includes completely editable digital classroom rules, you can download them below: