1# Captivate your students’ attention from the start

Start welcoming students with a smile. Call their names before they show up. Say is John here? Where is Jane? Paul ?… and ask them to respond by saying”Hi”. Don’t start immediately taking for granted that everyone will join in or show no interest if they do so or not. Even if you’ve already started and someone showed up welcome him/her. This shows you care a lot about their presence.

Besides, create some rituals for starting your lessons. You can choose a background image, play a piece of music, and ask your students to tell you what these represent. You can also start with a joke or a funny short video.

It’s also interesting to ask your students to bring and share those videos with you. Yet, you need to show them the KIND of videos you allow to be shared. So, start doing it first, then invite them to take turns.

By doing so, you are not just going to grab your students’ attention online, but you’ll give others the chance to join your class without missing anything from your lessons. So take some time (5-10 minutes) to entertain your students before starting your lessons.

2# Simplify things

For more engaging lessons in distance learning, simplify things. Whatever lesson you have: science, math, guided reading, or shared reading lesson….try to make it simple. What does this mean?

You’re going to share this content with your students using a screen. This can be Google slides, PowerPoint slides, printables, etc. Don’t overpack them with too much writing.

Besides, to explain further things, you can use a blank screen. Yet, this is not like your board. Avoid too much writing and talking. Go slowly through that content, highlighting or stressing important points using colours and raising the pitch of your voice.

In online teaching, it’s not necessary to cover one complete lesson. For more effective instructions, divide your lesson into chunks and cover each separately. Because students can get easily bored working with that device and following you.

Learning at home is not like learning at school and being surrounded by the teacher, peers, and school staff which all relate to this formal learning context called THE CLASSROOM.

3# Allow more interactions

Another way to create more engaging lessons in distance learning is by allowing more interactions. When you go live with your students, you can see them, chat, and listen to them. So, you can get an idea about how they’re learning that content, check for their understanding, and get their feedback. To this end, allow more interactions to make your online teaching more meaningful.

In Zoom, students can raise their hands to speak. So, while you’re explaining your content, tell your students that they can raise their hands to ask questions, add more ideas, discuss, etc. Unmute them to listen to their questions or ask them to write them down (either in the blank screen or the space on the left).

Also, to encourage their interaction vary the way you check for their understanding.

Prepare your questions ahead and share them. To give all students the chance to participate give them time to think then tell them to hit their answers.

You can also invite them to ask questions. But, avoid always answering them. Make from those questions the stimulus for their interaction and debate. You can say for instance: «Here is an interesting question from Emily. So, what do you think about it ? ». Allow them to chat their ideas with you and each other.

After giving them some time to think, students can also reexplain and help each other understand what they’ve just seen. Then, others can rate how well they did the job, giving them starts. You can have some fun. Still, remember always to praise students’ effort even if their performance was wrong.

4# Mind your assignments

To involve students in practice, you’d better assign one or two tasks to do online. These should not be too long or time-consuming. Working individually or in groups, try to clarify your instructions, by modelling and providing illustrations.

In online teaching, students may feel they’re watched by everyone (their teacher, classmates, parents, and people living with them.). So, they may not dare to say that they have not understood what you expect from them.

In addition to that, give your students time to think and try to elicit more responses. If you want to assign other tasks to them to do after class try not to overload them with many. Not because they’re at home they will do all of them.

Select those you see more relevant for their learning progress and make clear the deadline for submitting them and how they should do that.

To handle effectively those assignments, create your tasks using Google Docs. Use a particular structure. At the top, indicate the date of submission. Leave a space for students to write their names and put down their answers. Also, devote some space for your grade and/or remarks.

Send your document via email to your students or simply share the link after saving it to your Google Drive.

5# Build more connections

Before the end of your lessons, it’s a good idea to devote some time to relaxing, having fun, and enjoying meeting online (5-10 minutes). Here are some ideas to choose from :

• Ask parents to join you. They can work in pairs with their children to answer quizzes or make guesses. They can tell about what they like most about their children, what they want them to be in the future, what their children like to eat, to do, etc. They can play roles, sing, play games, etc.

• Bring a box (a big one), put something inside, then ask students to guess what’s inside your box. They start asking questions: Is it an animal? An object? Why do we use it?….

• Ask them to make some movements to relax while they are sitting.
• If you have a pet, introduce it to your students and ask them what kind of pets they have at home, how they take care of them…
• Sing together, playing music, and sharing the lyrics of the songs.

Creating engaging lessons in distance learning can help you shorten those distances, making more connections with your students and stimulating their interest in learning more online. So, make it your goal whenever you plan. You’ll see the difference. Take care.