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Tutor Svitlana Deikalo 's Column

Advices for online teaching

Weekly Topic: Advice for effective online teaching

Jan 23, 2024

 Get feedback. When we do language classes online, many children are too shy to answer questions or participate actively because they feel like they are in front of a camera. This can upset them. Since children do not experience the same direct contact with you as they do with one-on-one tutoring, they may become more anxious. Therefore, to interact with the audience, class, or group, you can use not only the method: I ask a question - I wait for an answer, you can create a chat in which children will answer, and write while completing tasks. In addition to creating interaction between children and the teacher, you can use emoticons and reactions in Zoom, where you can put a like or a heart while the person is speaking. You can show the children how to raise their hands and clap in Zoom and ask them to respond in this way. This will allow maintaining emotional contact with students during the lesson.

Change activities. It is difficult to do a 45-minute lesson in Zoom. It has been proven that a child's attention span online is worse than offline. Accordingly, every 5-7 minutes, as during a regular lesson, you need to change the type of activity. Demonstration of short English-language videos and cartoons works effectively. It helps you stay focused. Of course, the exercise can be on the same words or the same grammar rule, but the activities themselves should be different and last no more than 5-7 minutes. If the children wrote something down, then they answered the questions, answered - read the text together, read the text - and watched the video. When teaching online, there is often a desire for a teacher to complete one particular exercise or finish a page of a textbook to have a sense of completion. But it's important to understand that completion takes a backseat to the need to maintain motivation and focus – both yours and your children's.

Experiment with digital platforms. Zoom is not the only platform where you can conduct classes. There are many digital apps for teachers specifically designed for online classes. Try different platforms, and find the ones you like - the students will like them too. Different applications have different capabilities. For example, online tests can be done in Kahoot, just like in a regular lesson. You can use the capabilities of the Teams application. In addition, the ESL platform has ready-made educational videos with subtitles and exercises that are convenient to demonstrate online.

Record lessons on video. You can record video lessons for your class. This is a big plus of online. In difficult wartime, a recorded lesson allows you not to interrupt the educational process and also relieves the child of stress, if he has to be present at a certain time in the lessons. Now not all children can participate in time due to shelling and air raids. When recording classes, you need to agree with parents and students that they will not distribute these videos. Thus, you retain your right to privacy, and copyright. If your computer memory is not enough for all the recorded lessons, you can use various cloud storage and online services to store information. For example, upload a video to Google Drive or a closed private YouTube channel, having previously granted access to your students.

Invite native speakers.  During online training, it is quite easy to invite native speakers or just some interesting people who can participate in discussions in classes. This increases the concentration of attention of children. And in the end, it makes the class more fun, which is extremely important in such a dull time. If you don't know native speakers, you can find them through groups of English teachers on Facebook, where they can recommend speakers. For children, it is an interesting meeting, and for speakers, it is an opportunity to realize themselves as volunteers, to try something new.

Let's give an alternative to collecting homework. Of course, homework should be given, just like before. This can be done through the same online platforms that were used during the pandemic, for example, Google Classroom. But not all children now have access to a computer, and not all parents have technology. Therefore, it is necessary to show flexibility, to provide an alternative. If the child cannot post in the Classroom, let him take a photo of what he wrote and send it to the teacher in Telegram or any other messenger.

Make learning less intense. Children, like their parents and teachers, experience deep psychological trauma during war. This affects children's ability to concentrate and perceive information. Therefore, the learning process should now be less intensive, and slower than usual. Give less information and more entertaining exercises, do not pressure children to do homework. A huge role of a teacher is to bring positivity to his students. That is, a teacher must be a psychologist at the same time.

Take care of your mental hygiene. 

This column was published by the author in their personal capacity.
The opinions expressed in this column are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Cafetalk.

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