Remember UDL strategies and guidelines. Also, simple language is needed consider your sentence stems, visuals, front-loaded vocabulary and other accommodations that you normally provide in your face to face classroom. This is needed for your online classroom even more. Equity of access - technology, information, learning - is important to always consider.

How can you use your LMS and tools such as clips, flipgrid, snapchat, bitmoji, voxer, remind, facebook, twitter, anchor, Talk and Comment, Kaizena, Voki, Vocaro, online voice recorder...to showcase your warm and inviting personality at the beginning and end of the week. To be present. To present an opportunity for students to complete a Wonder Day ...

Individual and to the whole class. Even include a message to parents. Updates, information. Knowing students are overwhelmed, just like their children. Keeping messages simple and clear. With a way to contact you if it might be needed. Again, using an app such as Remind, Talking Points, email, MS Teams.

Students need to receive timely feedback from you and their peers. It must be more than good job. it must be positive, thoughtful, and constructive to encourage them to try and engage. To learn and to grow. To overcome struggles that they may be having.

If you want your students to be present, you must be present. Balancing this is important. Finding interactive and engaging ways for students to share their knowledge in more personal ways, authentic ways, might also be helpful. Such as recording a video on their cell phone walking around their house and identifying acute angles and naming them. Posting on Flipgrid to share with their classmates. You interjecting with talking points to get students thinking about visual appeal and efficiency when considering angles. Just like you may highlight a similar discussion in your face to face class. Using the classrooom as a prop. You now have a more place based environment that surrounds your students at this time. The home environment which is at a distance connected to your online classroom. How do you make sure a connection is made. One way, incorporate the students environment into your online class through discussions.

A tool like Google Meet is good. It provides closed captioning capabilities while you are speaking. Zoom and Teams are also good tools. Each can be used on a smart phone with an APP. Possibly, video and audio will need to be turned off for some students and/or only turned on in limited ways due to connectivity issues. This may also need to be optional for students. These sessions can be recorded and posted or sent to students for them to view when they have better access.

in your LMS you want to provide an easy way for students to contact you if they need to. Email, Remind App, phone number.

Twitter, or Apps might be good options as well. Other Apps such as Voxer, Remind, or even MS Teams. You can even have a discussion forum for Q and A's in your LMS. Even a FAQ shared document. Note that students should also be able to communicate with you privately. This will allow them more ease in asking a question that they may have. if questions are always public, a student may not feel comfortable asking their question...just like in our face to face classroom. Balance is important.

We cannot be online 24/7. We need to set up schedules just like we ask our students to do during this time. So, when will it be feasible for you to return a message? Set this up with your students on the first day. Do not forget to follow through.

Do not forget we are not alone as teachers. We have paraprofessionals, specialists, fellow teachers. In a remote learning environment, it is important that we do not forget the supports we have set up in our schools in our face to face classroom. How can we best utilize these supports in an online environment. It is important to consider what this will look like for each person on this collective team.

Think about this statement. In our classrooms we communicate with our students in a variety of ways - presence such as standing next to a student, looking at a student, smiling at a student, saying a warm hello as they enter the classroom, or have a good day when they leave. We redirect students to focus on an activity. How do we let students know we are here and paying attention to them at a distance.

Simple language with fewer words is important. This helps to creates a clearer message for the student. In a classroom, we may use more words. We also use body language and expressions. In an online environment, we do not have the visual cues available to us. Stressing the need for simple language and a clear message. One message at a time. Not grouped together.

This is an opportunity to expand your teaching and create more engaging and problem based activities with new ways to interact with others. Be positive allowing your students an opportunity to relax and be comfortable with trying something new. A learn as you go model.

The way we communicate in a face to face setting and an online setting is different. Brevity, clarity, simple, professional but friendly are important. If you do video chat or create video, make sure you are looking at the camera directly so your students see your eye at the appropriate level and the expressions of welcome on your face. You do not have to be perfect in your delivery. Mistakes are okay. It humanizes you and creates a more friendly and welcoming environment

The activities and messages that you convey must always demonstrate your interest and excitement about the content and topics being explored. Your language should be directed and written to and from your students perspective. Language and words they are familiar with.

What are some best practices for us to consider when as it relates to approachability and our use of language?

considering supportive learning environment at a distance. What does this look like? How can we help create this and continually develop this while separated from our students?

Creating a virtual experience that aligns to learning goals for your curriculum and meets leaners needs (access, connection, instruction, and learning needs)

Finding ways to engage parents and support parents in this new experience to support their child learning.

What does this mean for you as a teacher? What does this mean for your district?

How can you design for this flexibility in a remote setting?

What might this look like? What must you consider as a teacher if technology is not used?

What parts of your course teach verbal information? How can you break up this information into small chunks using relevant images, mnemonics, organizers?

Verbal Information and your online course.

correct order, keywords, relevant explanations, and images have been broken down into chunks for students.

Teaching verbal information by chunking information down into manageable parts (chunks) in the correct order. Using images, keywords, relevant explanations to help students relate to their prior knowledge and cognitive structures (schemas)

This is a great way to save, organize, and even help you cite your resources in your paper.

When you look and review this resource, make sure to USE ONLY the APA 7th ed. Resources

This is how I see assessments. Information. Your pre assessment is the first step in gathering information from your students. You collect information throughout to help continually inform your practice but also student learning as well. This is not just for you, it is also for your students to be able to gauge their own learning and needed learning throughout this entire journey.

I do think this is important. How else do we know if we had any impact.

As you begin to officially take note, record, organize your assessment data, you become more purposeful with student learning expertise or skills - gain or loss. You can adjust if needed in more meaningful ways.

there are so many ways to do this...only thing, it must be recorded. It should be systematic. This allows you analyze and make informed decisions.

This is important. You never judge. You seek ways to collect as much information as you can, to notice, observe ...like a researcher...to collect data sets to help you choose materials, supplies, methods, strategies, ...that suit the needs of individual or groups of students.

finding ways to inform our practice is needed. It is believed that the data that we collect from our students informs our practice. But what data is good data? How might we collect this data?

These are more formal pretests. For you at this time, you can use something like this as a template. For our purposes, until you feel more comfortable with the idea of pretests this is the best way to gain an accurate measure. You really need to know what you want your student to know after your lesson is over. This is how you consider your instruction, activities, materials, methods, strategies....This is the only way you will truly know if you had a gain in learning.

Sometimes, we get caught up in the lesson itself and lose site of what we truly want our learner to know. We do not know what they know before we teach them. We might make an assumption. We may even adjust naturally while we are teaching, but when we do that, have we truly captured the true needs of all of our students?

How can we as teachers capture a snapshot of our students understandings before we teach them our great lesson to better prepare ourselves (and them) for what is to come?

From your pretest, you will have information about what your student has some concept of and does not understand or know. Such as concepts, vocabulary, terms, ideas, processes, etc.. This data that you obtain, is what you use when you are teaching. Highlighting specific problems, concepts, providing practice, questions, feedback, ...extra games, worksheets, activities...

This collecting of data never ends....You collect more data throughout instruction (formative assessments) which helps you continually adjust instruction...strategies, methods, materials, resources, ...

After the lesson, you could use questions from your pretest (that highlight your intended learning aims) in your post test. The use of the same questions will make it easier to identify what or if any learning gains have taken place at the end of your instruction for each individual student. You do not have to use all questions in your post test, only the 3 - 4 that focus on your intended learning goals. This gives you a systematic measure of what it is you wanted students to know and if they in-fact now know these concepts after you taught them. Did their scores improve? If scores move up just a bit, there is a slight gain. A slight gain is good. No gain, not so good. Now what?

Assessments can be informally presented. They just need to be systematic in design. This will allow you to collect meaningful data from each student. You must Identify specific questions to ask that align to your final learning goals/aims. This will create a clear picture of what each student knows before you begin instruction.

otherwise, how do we as teachers know what or if our students learned?

Sample Constitution

What would you like to share about...you can choose any topic. You can choose technology, teaching, your subject, a strategy....

this principal shared information with others. His ideas were shared with his online community. What would you like to share with others?

UMW program requires the following professional studies courses to help prepare you to meet the needs of your elementary students

This is the four graduate level courses that you are taking at the bottom of the checksheet, helping you earn your masters degree.

UMW provides a Collegiate Professional Teaching License if you complete the program, to include student teaching/internship.

UMW is an accredited institution.

Connectivism takes social constructivism a step further complimenting diverse social connections (nodes) that individuals create within the dynamic nature of the Internet. Technologies become learning tools. Consider Twitter and the connections that we make on this social tool. We are designing our own learning environment. The media, news, individuals we connect to inform us. As they connect with us, we begin to inform them. This becomes an extension or even a new system of learning. The more diverse our connections the broader our experiences will be. The more we participate and engage the more meaningful it will be. As an educator, how can the connections that we make inform our practice in more broad and meaningful ways? How can we help our students create connections that impact and enhance their learning?

Thinking about technology as a cognitive tool and this idea of learning together, with one another, social constructivism - we consider knowledge as being constructed through the development of complex thinking and negotiation with others. How can you incorporate this idea into your activity to engage learners in complex or deeper thought using concept maps, video, resources, etc.?

a resource that provides an overview of key ideas to include similarities, differences, even extensions of both cognitive theories. Key theorists in these theories.

Important points to consider when thinking about technology as a cognitive tool.

constructive tools that extend capabilities, intellectual partners