Teaching online - what worked for you?

[Workyticket]

I teach GCSE maths to adults and 16/18 students

Just used screen sharing and PowerPoint last year. It wasn't too bad but I'm looking at things to make my life easier just in case we go back online

Desperately hoping we stay face to face but who knows!?

My team are much the same as me - basic laptop knowledge but not very techy

I've heard about visualisers but have no clue how they work.

Different subject so maybe not that useful. My biggest breakthrough in online learning was using live documents so that I could pop in and out of students work as they were progressing. They loved the live comments on their work and would often reply.

use of the online whiteboard, simple stuff with yes/no answers I used to do ‘send me the best happy/sad emoji’ (my year 11 class had a best laughing monkey gif going on for weeks!). Blooket/quizlet live/Kahoot/quizziz. Lockdown tally of who answers the most/best class work etc for reward once back in school (leaderboard on a PowerPoint each lesson). Seneca learning is useful and has had more added every time I look. Playing music whilst they work to keep them with you rather than them disappearing when you set them a task (and letting them choose the next song as a reward) means they are more likely to ask when stuck and actually complete the task.

We use Teams and I found the lesson lag was very much improved if I was organised enough to send a message 10 minutes prior to the lesson saying here’s your worksheet/open the whiteboard app/we’ll be using page 21 of the online textbook etc so they had everything ready.

But the best thing is joining a subject specific online learning Facebook group where people are sharing their stuff because it can cut hours of planning time and gives you in-the-moment ideas which are already tried and tested.

I found that an Avervision U50 visualiser saved me masses of time and made it much easier to explain things. You need the software too. Print out the PPT slides and put them under the visualiser. Then you can share the visualiser screen and write on the slides like you would on a white board. No need to mess around with adding solutions to examples, you can just write them.

Also, lots of T/F type questions that can be answered in the chat. Also, you can get them to click like on one of the options you put e.g. I know what to do and I can do it, I know what to do, but I can’t do it, I don’t know what to do.

And forms. Set short forms with a short deadline and then it gives you feedback with the answers as soon as they’re done. Then they can either move on to the next or you can delete their response and let them try again etc.

Whiteboard.fi is free and was used extensively by our maths department.

• jamboard (particularly post-it notes for matching exercises)
• blooket (gold chest is the best game)
• kahoot
• flippity (scavenger hunt is brilliant; I get them to screen shot when they've completed it and put into the chat on Teams for a merit)
• mentimeter for live feedback from kids
• Google docs so that you can set a task and then hop between their documents and see what they're doing and give feedback
• definitely join a Facebook group for online Maths teaching as I got so many ideas from the MFL one I'm in
• online timers with music from YouTube
• don't try and be 'on' for a whole lesson, it's so exhausting. Set them tasks and bring them back
• I put all the resources/Powerpoint for the lesson on Classroom beforehand so that they can have it ready and if they need to print anything out I tell them in my message on Classroom

Let's hope we don't need all this again after Christmas :(

This is a list of ideas
Games
Quizzes