Lockdowns are hard. We are so impressed with the ability our educators have to just keep going, whether they’re with their students face-to-face or virtually. However, being teachers ourselves we understand the extra stress and uncertainty that lockdowns bring.

To help you and your school carry on and prevent learning loss, we’ve compiled below our best tips from teachers globally in remote learning situations from the last 18+ months.

Using Digital Technologies

What repetitive or data management tasks could be done better with technology or improved processes? See our 6 tips to Excel video. Microsoft has incredible accessibility tools, like screen readers and dictation tools. We also have a Hotkeys and Hyperlinks video to help you streamline your screen captures, keyboard swaps and shortcuts.

Preventing learning loss

We believe students are most engaged when they are exposed to a variety of learning methods; videos, apps, books, games, quizzes and more. Subscription sites like Education Perfect, Mathletics, Reading eggs and Code Avengers step students through specific curriculum-aligned content at a scaffolded pace and appropriate level. Have you visited the Australian nationallibrary’s digital classrooms? Or spoken to the New Zealand national library about your current unit / topic? (They’ll send you a box of resources!) Don’t forget the TVNZ home learning channel too.

Remember these evidence-based learning strategies:

• Explain the learning outcome.

• Plan backwards from the goal.

• Include formative assessment.

• Scaffold learning.

• Use higher order questions. See our Learning Verbs Synthesis

• Give space to practice a concept in multiple ways.

• Have space to create and play.

• Create an environment in which it is safe to fail and that has a shared sense of purpose.

Finding support

For one-on-one support, reach out to our education consultants HERE.

Additionally utilise local, national and international online forums and social media groups for educators - there are plenty of like-minded teachers and support staff willing to help, or reach out to your subject association for specialist subject guidance.

A Code Avengers EDU license provides lesson plans, learning outcomes and scaffolded activities. Within the teacher dashboard specific lessons or courses can be assigned to students or whole class groups as appropriate. Our professional development team are more than happy to walk you through our course curriculum alignment and help you to set up your online classrooms. Please let us know if you need any help!

Collaborate with staff, caregivers, and students

Share your resources with the students' family. The better understanding family have (whether on task instructions or in understanding their child’s response to a learning task), the more connected the whole home will feel in the learning journey. One strategy is using Google Docs to share a piece of writing between home and school, editing one piece of work until it meets an exemplar standard, for the student to use with future pieces of writing. Or giving a document of questions to a group of students, each with an assigned line in a table to answer. This way students can model work to each other.

On Code Avengers, older students can complete our HTML/CSS course and share a live website with you and their families, or program their own games instead of just playing them.

Connect with experts and innovative content

With video conferencing becoming commonplace around the world, it’s even easier to connect with specialists and bring outside expertise to the classroom environment. Many professionals would be happy to share their time remotely, to benefit younger generations. Alternatively, find some bite-sized educational videos to share (1000’s of our teachers and their students have enjoyed these videos in their Code Avengers courses):

• The challenges with making AI (From Data Representation 3)

• History of the Internet (From Digital Infrastructure 4)

• Digital Farms (From Impacts of Computing 400)

Find or record concept videos

Videos are powerful learning tools, they can be paused, rewatched and do not require teacher attention. Where an educational video does not currently exist, you might find yourself wanting to assign a quiz task with video, or articulate something specific to your class’s assignment. Save yourself time, see how to make a video here (comprehensive step by step training using free software).

Make student achievement tracking simple

Use innovative, valid and fair ways of recognising achievement, without overburdening yourselves or the learner with too much assessment. One method is to identify your criteria of success on a unit or through learning outcomes, and make a checklist with the class that they can use. Keep data collection simple.

Use the Progress Tool in the Code Avengers teacher dashboard to see how students are progressing through a course. You can see at a glance how far students have progressed and how many attempts have been taken throughout the course tasks.

You can use the lesson plan within Code Avengers to cross-check course content and direct purposeful teaching to support learners who are struggling with course lessons or tasks.

Take things slowly, implement strategies over time and see what works for you and what doesn't. There is no such thing as a perfect teacher, the best thing you can do for your students is to be kind to yourself. We really value you and your dedication to our young learners.