- Happy children seem to be making more progress. Some children are simply not as happy as others, and I noticed a progress impact with respect to happiness. This is not surprising.
- Some children are better able to learn new skills on their own than others.
- Some children simply need more time to process and learn virtually than others.
These might seem like obvious observations, however, these observations will impact the work I do in the days ahead in the following ways:
- I want to think about the happiness factor--what can I do to help students be more positive and happy during this time?
- I wish I had taken the time-on-task with virtual lessons factor a bit more seriously and scheduled my small math groups with that in mind providing some students with more repetition than others. I want to think about this during typical school too--how can we provide those students who need more explicit and direct coaching the time they need. Of course, there are already supports in place for this, but we can always work to add more and do it better.
Moving ahead, I think I may ask some students to do less work on their own and attend more meetings as I think that will assist their learning more. I also think I'll scaffold the learning menu a bit more to provide easier and more challenging practice exercises. I'll leave all exercises open to all, but I don't want to overwhelm those who are struggling more than others.
Even when we are at school, I use a fair amount of online tools and independent exercises so this close look at how this remote teaching and learning works will inform the teaching I do at school in the fall too.
