I don’t know about you but I absolutely LOVE fresh starts! This can be personal or even for your classroom. As one year comes to an end, another one begins. I’ve created these FREE 2021 Classroom Calendars with you in mind!
You can use these calendars for all of your communication needs between parents and students. These calendars are also make great behavior calendars or even simple personal calendars!
Since they are editable all you need to do is create your text box and go to town!
I’d love to see how you use your calendars so please make sure you share your pictures!
It is 7:45am and you are getting ready to greet your kiddos as they enter Google Meets. You want to build those relationships with your kiddos but with all the content that needs to be taught, it seems impossible. How does one actually start and end their school day (virtually), and build those relationships?
Best Ways to Start the Day Virtually
I LOVE the beginning of our virtual day together! I love seeing my kiddos smiling faces as I wave to them from a totally different location. This is the time where I can be personal with them and can truly let them be themselves. There are a few things that I do that are ultimately the best way to start the day virtually.
As I am welcoming my students into the room I make it a habit to mention everyone’s name. Yes, this may seem like a bit of an overkill, but what I’ve found is that they find true enjoyment in hearing me say their name. I have even had a parent or two on occasion, email me to say, “Ms. Cook, such and such is here too. I just wanted to make sure you saw them in case we missed you saying their name.” It really makes me crack up.
Something else that I do is a morning meeting. During morning meeting, I ask them questions to get to know them. We have discussion, play virtual would you rather games, do exercises, and discuss what our day ahead looks like. I truly do feel that morning meeting is so important to have in all classrooms, including virtual. Having a virtual morning meeting may even be more of an importance factor.
Students break off into small groups with me or independently with the way the district has set up our schedule. Before small group time, I make sure I go over the work with my students and answer questions that they may have. I let them know that I am “here” to help them, and just give them that extra confidence boost to let them know that they can do it!
Best Ways to End the Day Virtually
Our final wrap up is quite fun. There are a few things that I do that are ultimately the best way to end the day virtually. I do my absolute best to mix it up and make sure that incorporate many different things into our final wrap up. some of the things that we have done during this time is:
Read Alouds from Awnie’s House! … FYI WE LOVE Awnie’s House!
Home Pet Check
Student Breakout Rooms
Sharing Time (Students can tell a story or as questions)
SEL Check
What Did You Learn Today Discussions
Dance Parties
Friday Virtual Awards
We like to have fun with our final wrap up. Not only have my kids worked hard that day (for the most part), but I want them to be able to relax and enjoy the end of our day together.
Doing these things in the morning as well as at the end of the day really helps us to get to know one another and enjoy each other. How else would my kiddos know that I have an obsession with Tacos and Pizza?!
I’m not gonna lie, when I found out that I was going to be teaching virtually, the first thing that popped into my head was, “Whoo hoo!” The second thing that popped int my head was, “what did I just sign up for?” One of my main concerns was being an excellent teacher for my students. In addition to this, I was also concerned because having relationships with my students F2F wasn’t an issue. How was I going to be able to have genuine relationships with my students virtually? We’ve now been in this thing for five months, and I wanted to share 5 Virtual Teaching Relationship Builders with you. These are ones that I have used and still use!
To be honest, establishing genuine relationships virtually wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. There are a few things that I did that I do believe really helped me in this area. I would love to share them with you!
Hold Private Meet the Teacher Meetings
I’ve discussed this in a previous blog. I truly do believe that this is what set the tone and the relationships for the entire school year! Our district set up two Meet The Teacher Meetings for virtual students. I thought that this was great, BUT I knew that I needed to speak to as many of my new families as possible.
To set up individual meetings with my families through Calendly and let me tell you. WOW! This was amazing. It was a lot of work, because if I had followed the districts schedule, conferences would have been finished in under two hours. With my new schedule, I held conferences for twenty minutes a piece, over a two day period.
This was a lot of work on the front end of our virtual learning adventure together, however, now that we’ve been on this journey for 5 months, I can definitely see how this laid the foundation to our classroom and learning environment.
Hold Morning Meeting Sessions
There are so many things I can say about morning meetings! We love our morning meeting time together! We use Distance Learning Social Emotional Learning Daily Check-Ins for our time together. Each morning, one student is in charge of telling us how they are feeling that day. As a class, we then discuss why they are feeling that way, and we check to see how others are feeling as well.
Each day the slides have different activities on them along with an exercise move or a solve the problem. It really gets the students thinking and interacting with me and their classmates. Through these morning message slides, I am able to get to know them on a more personal level. They enjoy our morning discussions and interactions.
Use Google or ZOOM Breakout Rooms!
Our district uses Google. I had been hearing that they were coming out with breakout rooms, and could not wait to implement this in my virtual classroom.
Breakout rooms not only allows students a chance to speak with me in a smaller setting, but it also allows them to know their classmates. You would be surprised to hear that I have students who call each other “best friends” in our virtual class room. I think it is so cute to see them interacting with each other. Their personalities come out and they are able to be a “kid”.
Breakout rooms can’t happen all the time, but I do like to hold them on Monday morning, allowing students to talk about their weekend with their friends, and Friday afternoon.
Put It In The Mail… Or Drive By!
As a teacher, when we are in the classroom, it is easy to give our students little treats and treasures throughout the week or months. Well, teaching virtually does not allow for this luxury. Virtual teachers have to be creative with their gift and incentive giving.
This past year, I decided that I would give my students “Thankful” gifts for Thanksgiving as well as Christmas gifts for the holidays. Well after I packaged my Thanksgiving gifts (candy, stickers, encouraging note), and mailed them off for a whopping $87.65, I decided that their Christmas gifts would be in the form of a card and anything that could lay flat in an envelope.
What I Came Up With!
The Christmas gift that I came up with, that did not break the bank was perfect for my kiddos. I was scrolling through IG one night and came across @Shakirajanise’s instagram page! She had a Flat Teacher elf gift that she was giving to her kiddos, and so I went ahead and created one for my kiddos!
The Flat teacher includes a bitmoji of myself, along with a board of activities that they can do with “me”. They then take pictures of their completed activity and send it to me to see! The festivities have already started, and the pictures are coming in! I am loving this chance to see them during our break! You can find the Flat Teacher activity in Shakira’s Teachers Pay Teacher’s Store!
Along with our Flat Teacher, I also gave students a bonus points coupon for any activity that they would like to have extra points on. Since I am teaching virtually, I do have an expiration date on these coupons. It will just help me to keep track of who has used one and to have a cut off on the coupon.
Our virtual awards are probably the highlight of the week!
Every Friday at 2:00 my kiddos hop back onto Google Meets and we have our Virtual Awards. During this time, I award students who truly have worked hard that week! For my students who have been awarded, I then email a copy of their award to their parent. A lot of my students are now trying to see their name in every category.
I do have students who struggle with virtual learning so I always make sure I have an award for those who are making improvements as well as group awards!
Genuine relationships can and will happen virtually if you create an environment which fosters their growth. often times it is so hard to think about even setting aside 5-10 minutes for anything other than teaching, but this is how those genuine relationships will be formed.
My Key Take Away!
These are just a few of the different ways that we can begin to build those relationships with our students. The more we get to know them and invest in them personally, the more we will be able to actually teach them.
Just because we are teaching virtually does not mean that what we used to do when we were face to face can’t be done. We virtual teachers just have to have a bit more magic up our sleeves to get the job done!
If you don’t have genuine relationships built with your students, it will make your year a lot harder. Building genuine relationships through e-Learning will be KEY.
Going from our classroom to e-learning was a true adjustment. How was I going to continue to work on those relationships? How would I keep my students engaged and interested virtually? Would I still be able to create a learning environment where they felt valued and loved? It is a little easier establishing genuine relationships with our students in person. With just a little work, those same relationships that you build in the classroom can also be built virtually.
4 Virtual Learning Ideas
Here are 3 virtual learning techniques that I used as a bridge in continuing to form those relationships. I plan to continue to use
Set Up Daily Morning Announcements
Hold One on One Virtual Conferences
Hold Whole Class Google Meet or ZOOM Meetings
Read ALoud Competition
Set Up Daily Morning Announcements
When we were in our regular classroom setting, each morning we would start with a morning meeting. Being virtual made is so hard to make sure all students were in attendance for our virtual morning meetings. To solve this issue, each night I would make a pre-recorded Morning Announcements video. I would let students know what to look forward to for that day, how they can work smarter and not harder, and would share other bits of information. I also included “Did You Know” facts and gave birthday shout outs!
The kids absolutely LOVED the morning announcements! Each morning I would push it out through Google Classroom at 8am. Whenever the kids popped on, they would start their day
Hold One-On-One Conferences
Whenever I felt my kids begin to get frustrated or seem to begin falling behind, I would offer one-on-one conference time to them. I also let my students know that whenever they needed me, I would be available for a conference. Several students too me up on the offer a few times a week, and I was able to get them regrouped and back on track.
These one one one conferences were also used to hold HELP classes. Towards the end of e-learning the students in our district were learning new concepts. Because we were learning new concepts, some of them needed extra help (with the math especially). I gladly jumped on for a conference and was able to guide them through it!
Hold Whole Class Google Meet or ZOOM Meetings
In one way or another I ended up meeting with my students every single day. I held our whole class Google Meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This time was used purely as time for the students to catch up with one another.
I added one fun “theme” to the meeting every other week. We did scavenger hunts and played how well do you know your teacher (HILARIOUS!). We also had a show-and-tell / talent show (SO FUN!). One student showed us his chicken (Mother-Clucker). Another student played the drums, and another sang.
I held our Google Meets this way because i didn’t want my students to be stressed out. We had all been together just weeks before and here we are staring at each other through a screen. For my students sanity, our sessions needed to be less “schoolish” and more like a hangout. Before we would end our meetings, I would make sure no one needed help on an assignment for that day and if they did I would explain it whole group)
Read ALoud Competition
One of the things that I absolutely loved when we were in the classroom was our read alouds. My students LOVE all things Andrew Clements and we just so happened to have finished NO TALKING right before schools shut down. When I packed up my things to take home with me, I grabbed another book of his Extra Creditand thought that I would offer a read aloud to them if time permitted.
Once I got a grasp on how to manage myself and my kiddos during eLearning, I asked them if they would like an optional read aloud competition. For the most part all of them wanted to participate and so it began.
I would read a chapter of Extra Credit and would ask 3-4 questions at the end of the chapter. The first student to get their answers in to me, and get them in correct would get a point. The goal was to be the first student with the most points. The winner would get a $5 Amazon Gift card! I thought this was great but after a while I noticed that one student in particular would always answer first and would have the correct answer.
Raising The Bar
In not wanting others to get discouraged and quit, I raised the bar. There was now going to be a first place, second place, and third place winner!
First Place Winner- $15.00
Second Place Winner- $10.00
Third Place Winner- $5.00
Now under normal circumstances I would not have offered nearly $30.00 to my students for simply listening to a story and answering questions. However, because of the new environment we all found ourselves to be in, I knew I needed to keep them engaged.
Once they heard about the new first, second, and third place prizes, I had students pouring in from all over! It was so fun seeing them wait for the story come out and racing to be one of the top three!
The Possibilities Are Endless
There are so many ways that we can continue to build genuine relationships with our students virtually. The possibilities really are endless, we just have to really reach, and think outside the box.
As we begin to prepare for the new school year ahead remember the most important thing you can do is to establish those genuine relationships with students.
Get to know what they like and dislike. Ask them what their hobbies are or what the enjoy doing when they are not learning virtually. This will be the singular most important thing that you can do!
