AFK, or Away From Keyboard, is a status no teacher wants in their virtual classroom.
Last March, my preschool went from being in person to suddenly on Zoom, and my new challenge became keeping a 3-year-old’s attention on Zoom for more than 5 minutes.
I will never forget one of my first Zoom lessons. I was talking with the students, and one slowly closed their computer while watching themselves sink on camera before their rectangle finally disappeared from our Zoom classroom. I realized at that moment that I had to start to plan differently and use what I knew about students to plan my content. Once my lessons featured their interests, from Barbies to dinosaurs, the students wanted to learn. They stopped slowly closing the computer. As virtual teachers, it is our goal to keep our students from digitally backing out of our classroom. We want them to be as glued to our virtual teaching as some are to video games!
Step 1: Collect student-interest data.
Student surveys or student interviews are both great ways to collect this type of data, but interviews allow you to see if students are answering just to provide an answer or if it is because they are answering with passion. Here is an example of an interest survey that we created using Google Forms. Another popular way to learn about students is creating heart maps. Georgia Heard’s beautiful book “Heart Maps” discusses how you can create a map of your heart and use it for writing. Watch her Ted Talk here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyYDzDHV_As
Heart Maps can be used for so much more than writing, They can be used to see where the students have been, what’s really important to them, and where they want to go.
Step 2: Organize the data to look for commonalities.
We often collect data about students’ hobbies and interests in the beginning of the year. We use it to establish some initial relationships, and then we put it in our student-data binder. To keep our students’ attention in virtual teaching, we need to use this to look for commonalities among student interests and hobbies. This requires an “Interests at a Glance” record sheet that allows you to see everyone at the same time. Free to our subscribers is an “Interests at a Glance” so you can easily input your student interests. Seeing the whole class enables you to determine what interests would meet the most students. Does your class all like Fortnite? Do you have a group of soccer players? Are there enough dancers in your class to incorporate it into your lessons, or is it something you should only use with a few students? Once you see the patterns, the planning becomes easier.
Step 2 1/2: Research.
Some student interests may require a half step between steps two and three, which is researching what it is that the students are interested in doing. If you already know a lot about their subjects they share as hobbies and interests, you may skip this step. If not, you need to add some research. For instance, my preschool students love PJ Masks, which I knew nothing about before connecting with this group. I am watching a few episodes as research so I know how to better connect with them and use it in my planning.
Step 3: Brainstorm how to build students’ common interests into curricular areas.
Using the patterns you saw, you can brainstorm how you can use this in lots of different content areas. Allison and I recently did this with Fortnite by figuring out how to use Fortnite to teach coordinate grids, descriptive writing and military strategy in WWII. The potential is endless. Another subscriber freebie is “Planning for Student Interests”. This document can assist you in organizing your brainstorm! You can also plan how you can incorporate their interests into motivation for the students. If your student loves Frozen, act out the problems using Frozen dolls. If your students love dinosaurs, use dinosaurs as a reward if they get the high-frequency word correct. If they love TikTok, have them teach you a TikTok-style video! Use what you know they love to motivate them!
Step 4: Extend interests to make connections.
We want our students to also be engaged when they are not virtually with us and are working at home. One of the best ways is to have the students create connections between content they are learning and their own interests. One rotation during the day can be connecting content to your interests. This could be a flipgrid, a jamboard, a google doc — you name it! One example I recently saw was a teacher having the students take a picture of something they love and write a ratio. They posted these pictures in Canvas. Another was having students create captions (focus on text features), for a picture that was important to them. Not only does this allow students to express their own interests, but it also gives you more ideas of how to connect their interests to the content.
We know that when we use what kids already love to plan our content, they will have videos on, work completed and will be excited to log onto Zoom for their lessons. FTW!
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