15 Ways to be the Best Teacher This Year: Online Teaching Ideas Too
Are you struggling to come up with and use online teaching ideas and strategies? I initially wrote this post to give advice to new and first year teachers and veteran teachers, who needed a pick me on of the best ways to support their students in elementary, middle and high school. I've since revamped it to include tips to be successful in online teaching, digital learning and any other teaching capacity in which you find yourself in. Before we get started with online teaching ideas and strategies, here are a few concepts and best practices that relate to online teaching.
What is Online Teaching?
If you are seeking online teaching ideas and strategies, it is a good idea to have an understanding of online teaching. Online teaching typically describes instruction that does not occur in a traditional classroom setting where the teacher and student are physically present. It covers instruction that occurs over many online platforms and uses several tools, which allow the teacher to share knowledge, provide feedback and evaluate mastery. There are a large number of online teaching ideas and strategies that can be used to help your online teaching more successful and less stressful.
How is Online Teaching Done?
When you consider online teaching ideas and strategies for teachers, you will see that online teaching can occur in two main ways, synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous learning happens where students can communicate with their teacher and peers through immediate messaging, but asynchronous learning can be delivered on and offline and does not allow for immediate communication with peers and teachers.
Whether online teaching strategies and ideas for teachers are used synchronously or asynchronously, students should still be engaged in learning and in the creation of products that demonstrate their level of understanding, while receiving feedback from the teacher.
What are Some Online Teaching Ideas,Tools and Strategies for Teachers?
There are many online teaching ideas, tools and strategies available for teachers to use with their students. The main things that teachers should consider before using any online teaching idea, tool or strategy are the safety features it offers, ease of use and age appropriateness, accessibility, compatibility with learning targets and material as well as the online learning tool's overall capacity.
Some of the most common online teaching ideas, tools and strategies that teachers, especially elementary teachers, currently use include Google Classroom, Zoom and Screencastify, to name a few. Also, here are some of the best online learning resources for students that I have used for years in my classroom and 19 tips about creating an epic distance learning classroom.
How to Be the Best Teacher with Online Teaching or Otherwise This Year ?
The increased need for online teaching ideas and the use of online teaching in general is yet another challenge in education. Teaching was already an extremely challenging profession. Now, with the pressures of a pandemic and the need to resort to online teaching, educators are dealing with even more challenges. As a result, I wanted to remind you of 15 important tips and advice I've accumulated in my years of teaching.
Best Practices for Online Teaching and Regular Teaching Settings
Even though almost everything about the way we go about our job has changed, we all have the same goal, to support our students and parents, to help them learn, grow and maintain previously acquired knowledge, in short to be the best teacher possible. Being the best teacher, in my opinion, is not only essential to your students and school, but also to your sense of purpose and fulfillment.
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This is year 15 for me and over those years I’ve come up with essential components, or words of advice for teachers if you will, which help to remind us of what's truly important. In my career, I’ve taught English Language Arts and Social Studies for third and fourth grade regular education students. Currently, I teach English Language Arts for first through fifth grade gifted students.
I want to share my advice for new and veteran teachers alike in the hopes they can help you navigate the world of teaching more effectively than I did, especially in the beginning.
I think these words of advice are appropriate for all teachers at every level.
You are the single most important factor in a school setting for your students. You directly affect your student’s opinion of learning, teachers and more importantly how they view them self.
Yes, that’s a lot of pressure, but I know you’re up to the challenge. Remember that even if their home life or previous school year or first half of the school year was terrible, you can be a part of the change that is needed to turn it all around.
Without further ado, here are The Top 15 Words of Advice for New and Veteran Teachers (Yes, it still applies in online teaching):
1. Meet needs
As you prepare and collect online teaching ideas and tools, please remember that your students all come to you at varying levels of readiness for whatever you will be teaching. Remember even as you plan for your class to try to see each student’s individual strengths and weaknesses. As best as you can, try to meet t