Fulton Literacy Council
Check out this article on connecting with students and assisting them with reading during the pandemic.
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5 ways teachers can connect with students during COVID-19
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As a Reading Connections teacher for middle school students, I usually get to spend two or three years teaching, working with, and getting to know my students. I prioritize building relationships and I believe that’s the foundation of education.
Not surprisingly, when school as we know it shifted due to the coronavirus pandemic, it really affected me and my students. For example, I usually get to say goodbye to my eighth graders when they go off to high school, but that wasn’t possible this time around.
The COVID-19 school shutdowns created many other disconnects between students and their teachers. The good news is that teachers are a creative bunch, and we have technology at our avail to help fill some of those gaps.
5 tips for staying connected
Through the shutdown, and as we look to the upcoming school year, here’s what I learned about how to maintain human connections even when teaching remotely:
1. Communication with parents is huge
When we started teaching remotely I handed out the assignments and let my students know that we’d continue using the Lexia PowerUp Literacy platform. Unfortunately, about 50% of my students fell off the bandwagon pretty quickly. I couldn’t get in touch with many of my students or their parents. I learned quickly that communication with parents plays a major factor in their children’s participation.
2. Finding new ways to keep students engaged is valuable
It’s not always easy to keep the attention of students when you’re not standing in front of them. Something I tried was to have them “help” me cook remotely. I’d pull out a home chef meal and send them the directions. I had a huge Zoom-room full of students reading me directions on how to cook. For them, it wasn’t just adventure; it was reading for information.
3. Reading platforms are foundational
I started using Lexia for the 2019-20 school year after my administrator suggested it. She heard many great reviews about the platform and knew our existing tool was a bit outdated. I personally don’t like monotony, so I was eager to change things up. When the pandemic hit, we made up packets for the kids — including those who didn’t have access to technology or the internet at home — and used all of the offline activities and lessons that come with the program to support learning. I would print everything out, circle each student’s level, and have the front office distribute the packets to families.
4. Small virtual classrooms are best
Teaching a full class using Zoom is very difficult. I saw some schools doing this, but it just didn’t align well with my teaching (or their learning) style. Instead, I used small groups and paired the virtual conference with the Google Classroom platform, where students could get all of the support materials that they needed. Working in small groups made it much easier to identify students’ needs, determine their challenge areas, and then address those issues. Sometimes we would just chitchat and talk about whatever was on their minds—because maintaining that relationship is so vital. Small-group sessions were both engaging and way more effective.
5. Recognize the individual “wins”
I had one eighth grade student who struggled with reading his whole life. When we went into a shelter-in-place mode, I made sure to stay engaged remotely. He finished his reading program through Lexia within two weeks of us being home, way ahead of the school year calendar. Here was a student who wouldn’t read three sentences out loud when I met him, to one who now was reading on grade level and ready for high school — all within one school year. I celebrated his success by making him a “congratulations”yard sign. He was so excited and his parents sent me a picture of him standing next to it.
Uncertainty Ahead
As we continue to work toward a workable educational approach for the 2020-21 school year, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air. The good news is that everything I learned through remote learning this spring will make me a better teacher this coming year—no matter where my students are.
Ashley Perkey is a reading teacher at Carroll County Schools’ Bay Springs Middle School in Villa Rica, Ga.
Writing Strategy
Fulton Literacy Council Newsletter    Note from the President: Hello Everyone, As the year comes to an end and we approach 2021, Let’s remember to be thankful for family, friends, the opportunity to collect ourselves, and just being here in this moment. Are you still staying put!? Do you feel anxious these days because you are and have been locked in for so long? Hopefully, it won’t be long before we are able to get out again and resume our normal activities or our new normal activities. But until then, please remember the following:  |
Freewriting
With freewriting, you start writing without quite knowing where your content will end up. You write as fast as possible to uncover new ideas.
The process usually works as follows:
- Write down your ideas as fast as possible
- Find the essence of your content
- Revise your content to build on your key idea
- Edit sentence by sentence
In his book “Accidental Genius,” Mark Levy recommends freewriting as a method to boost creativity:
[Freewriting] pushes the brain to think longer, deeper, and more unconventionally than it normally would. By giving yourself a handful of liberating freewriting rules to follow, you back your mind into a corner where it can’t help but come up with new thoughts. You could call freewriting a form of forced creativity.
And in his book “Writing Without Teachers,” Peter Elbow recommends freewriting as a way to overcome writer’s block:
Practiced regularly, [freewriting] undoes the ingrained habit of editing at the same time you are trying to produce. It will make writing less blocked because words will come more easily. You will use up more paper, but chew up fewer pencils.
As Elbow suggest, freewriting also helps discover your voice and write with more energy:
In your natural way of producing words there is a sound, a texture, a rhythm—a voice—which is the main source of power in your writing. I don’t know how it works, but this voice is the force that will make a reader listen to you, the energy that drives the meaning through his thick skull.
I use freewriting when writing more personal posts. I often have an inkling of what I want to write about, but the post often turns out completely different from what I had in mind.
- Renew your membership for ILA
- ILA has been providing virtual workshops. You may want to check these out! Stay current!
Just a little Humor