Teachers Resource Force Blog

Distance learning backdrop ideas for online calls

17/8/2020

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:

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How to build community and nurture relationships with students while teaching remotely

22/6/2020

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Has lockdown got you panicking that your classroom community and the relationships you have spent so long nurturing are going to deteriorate after being apart for so long? You are not alone and there are ways to help, even while teaching remotely!

How to build community and nurture relationships with students while teaching remotely | www.TRF.one

Why lockdown might affect your classroom community and relationships:

Lockdown has had a significant effect on schools. The fact that you and your students have been apart for so many months is certainly challenging for all involved. It's hard to maintain good relationships when you don't see each other, spend time together, and bond in familiar ways. There is a fear that all those months and years of hard work building relationships between students and yourselves could be undone by the time you go back to school!

This is a concern for a lot of teachers as no one has been in this situation before: these are unprecedented times. No one is quite sure how to navigate the situation and no one is sure what kind of lasting effects this will have, in particular on staff and student relationships.

You can still build a classroom community and develop relationships while teaching remotely:

Fortunately, there are ways that you can help nurture relationships and classroom community using the wonder of the internet and some exciting techniques and strategies that will enable you and your students to bond from a distance. Keep reading to learn some top tips to nurture relationships with your students while remote learning and socially distancing.

1. Understand each student’s needs and struggles during remote learning and social distancing

The first way to help build classroom community and nurture relationships with your students is to get your students journaling. Journaling will help them process their feelings as they deal with isolation and the challenges of distance or blended learning. Furthermore, they will be sharing these insights with you enabling you to understand their needs and what struggles they might be facing. This insight will enable you to support them as individuals, which in turn will strengthen your relationship as you help them through their challenges. If your students have not gone back to school yet, now would be a great opportunity to encourage them to share their experiences of lockdown, how they are feeling, what they did with their time and what fears or concerns they may be experiencing in anticipation of going back to school.

This can all be easily achieved through a journal; you can access a back to school journal for free here that is Google Slides ready, meaning you can share it with your students via Google classroom, or whatever platform you are using to communicate with your students. They can then type directly into the document and share it with you. This will give you the opportunity to read what each student has personally experienced during lockdown and what their struggles and fears are. This will enable you to differentiate support based on their particular needs, and maybe even find connections between students to help build student relationships with one another.

For example, if you know some of your students might have learnt a new skill over lockdown, then you could team them up and they can communicate their experiences with one another. This will also help build community and bonds, especially if your class are new to one another.

2. Check-in on your students’ well being:

The second idea for building community and relationships with students is doing quick well being check-ins. This can be in the form of simple questionnaires such as Google forms where you ask your students a series of quick questions each day. By offering this, you are providing your students with an opportunity to share how they are doing and raise any issues that they might be having. Knowing students feel listened to helps build rapport, and the responses they provide offer you an opportunity to act on any of their concerns.

You could also incorporate whole-class activities such as Fun Themed Daily Morning Meetings. This particular resource, as an example, focuses on a different theme every day of the week and your students can have discussions or type responses to these prompts. They are a fun way of helping your classroom community bond together even while remote learning. Your class can still have a giggle together on “Funny Fridays”, they can focus on their well-being and supporting each other on “Well being Wednesdays” and so on and so forth.

In addition, it is possible to help build classroom community by using different check-in style questionnaires such as theseGet to Know You Forms. These include “Would You Rather” questions and could even be shared publicly with a whole class, especially if the class is newly formed and doesn’t know each other yet. By sharing the form with the whole class, everyone is able to see each student’s responses and this can help students find commonalities with one another as a starting point for building friendships.

3. Encourage your class to bond through online activities:

The third way to build a classroom community during distance learning is through activities that can be played during online calls.

Activity 1 is a scavenger hunt. This is really easy to complete and is ideal for the first few minutes of a call or even at the end of a call to encourage students to stay right until the end of the lesson. All you need to do is create a list of items that are often round around the home, then reveal these items one at a time to the students. The idea is that they quickly, but sensibly, look for the item in their home and show it on their screen. You can even award points or rewards to whoever finds their items first! You can ask them to find a plant pot or some colourful socks and you will see a hilarious range of random products! Students find scavenger hunts really enjoyable and it helps them bond too.

Activity 2 is a virtual show and tell. The idea works exactly the same as a regular show and tell, whereby students will prepare something they want to share with the class, and they can talk about it in front of their peers: it's just presented online instead of in-person, but the benefits are the same. Students will be learning about one another and hopefully finding things in common as they do these show and tell activities.

Activity 3 is a virtual contest. You could arrange for students to prepare for a talent show, for example, everyone has to perform a special talent of theirs, that could be music, art or even their favourite TikTok dances! By sharing their special talents, each student feels valued and listened to and gets to share a side of themselves to help their peers get to know them better and find things in common: all contributing to a sense of belonging and a strong classroom community.

In conclusion:

As you can see, even though your class might be physically apart it is still possible to build a community whether with existing students or even a new group of students; you can help them get to know each other and bond, even while distance learning through these various activities.

Download the Free Back To School After Lockdown Journal

If you would like to use the back to school after lockdown journal to help your students process their experiences and share with you their fears and concerns, you can download it for free below: