Online Teaching Ideas And Resources During COVID-19 School Closures

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Ideas for e-learning during the Coronavirus school closures

This blog post is designed to offer ideas and support to any person who may be struggling with the current changes to education brought on by the spread of COVID-19. The school I work at in Beijing has remained closed since the end of January. Therefore, I have adapted the way I teach and helped to create a digital learning programme. While the tips and resources in this post might not be useful for all students, I hope that this post could offer help to teachers who are new to e-learning, or assist parents who are now the main educators for their children in many situations. The ideas and resources shown within this post have been used for a Year 6 mixed ability group, but could be adapted for different age levels or abilities. I will update this page with new ideas as time passes, so feel free to check back in the future. If you are wanting more information about how to set up an e-learning programme, please check out my post here.

General structure of digital learning lessons

Our school has been providing live lessons on Zoom in which our students can attend half hour sessions. Our lessons generally comprise of a mixture of teacher-talk, discussions with the students (sharing responses/ideas in the chat box or speaking on microphone) and multimedia (such as videos, images or audio files). We have found that having a short break with an educational video takes the “lecture” feeling away from our sessions. Our school has a subscription to Brainpop (they do also offer some free resources without subscription), Twinkl, and Britannica for Kids. YouTube (despite being banned in China) also provides some useful short videos which supplement our lesson content.

The lessons usually have the following structure:

Welcome – check in with the students to see how they are feeling and discuss the Learning Objective of the session.

WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) – review the previous session/talk about examples of work that were good.

Warm-up: A task to focus the students on the subject area or content.

Learning: The main focus of the lesson, usually including a video or other multimedia file, questions for the students to answer and a discussion time.

Independent task: this is introduced towards the end of the session and is based on the content of the lesson. These tasks are talked through and shared with the students as a pdf. We include examples of what we would expect for each task and add extra ‘challenges’ for those students that want to be extended.

Below I have provided some ideas, examples and suggestions of activities, lessons or project work for English, Math, Science, Geography and History, Music and P.E. 

English

Short Story Writing Unit (approximately 3 weeks)

As a Year Six team, we felt that our students could benefit from revisiting a story writing unit. Students already have experience of narratives, so we believed that covering content that is familiar could be comforting to the students during a strange time. We of course changed the parameters, focus and expectations of what the students should be including in their writing so that they would be building on their existing knowledge and understanding. This unit can be adapted for younger or older students and more/less time could be given depending on the ability and age of the students.

During our English lesson warm-ups, we generally give students a discussion task or an activity to make them think and focus on English (generally a SPaG activity). The following website offers a large number of editing tasks (students must identify and change errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar) which we spend around 3 minutes on: https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/archives/edit.shtml

Week 1

During the first week of our story writing unit, we spent time discussing the purpose of storytelling and how it has changed over the years (from cave paintings, to sharing stories verbally, plays, radio shows, movies and television programmes and now to the internet and video sharing sites such as YouTube). We explored examples of different genres of narratives and spent time talking about favourite stories. Next, we looked at examples of short stories that many of the students were familiar with. We covered a range of skills such as retelling/summarising a story, identifying the various parts of the plot and placing them on a story mountain and brainstorming alternative dilemmas/resolutions to stories.

Here are useful videos to remind students on how to summarise stories and the main elements of a story:

Summarising a story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsB73dRuGcE

Story mountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWHZJZQDSE

The YouTube channel ‘Cool School’ has some short funny videos that are appealing to primary school students (even though the content is mostly fairy tales, the humour and animations were engaging for our Year 6 students) and were useful to show quick examples of how stories are structured.

The Princess and the pea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRIQaGCXdZY

Mulan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5HTGdGEHEg

The Three Billy Goats Gruff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOkbABj3RU

We later spent time as a class creating a rubric/checklist of what we thought were important features in a short story.

Week 2

In the second week, we wanted students to begin brainstorming and planning for their own story. There are many examples online of story mountain templates that you can use for your students.

The following videos were useful materials.

What is an imaginative narrative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ3RwPeerOg

Brainstorming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJULQ0xBHFs

Planning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAVW3b7E0TI

Writing a beginning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJaOISwPjAc

Writing a middle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhm3tK41uWQ

Writing an ending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvg7CcaPJSs

We have also included sessions on how to edit and revise the work we have done. Rather than leaving all of the editing until the end, we placed some editing sessions during the story writing process.

How to edit/revise texts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T6PmQQlKss

Examples of story writing/writing process:

A humorous video which outlines the elements of a story plot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4fT-sdqNI

A series of videos that outline parts of the story mountain and include emphasis on descriptions of characters and setting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5pqeHpQnHc

Week 3

In the final week of our unit, students continued to write their stories and spent time during the lessons sharing their work. I have been giving the students the option of what or how much they share:

§  Reading part of what they have written.

§  Discussing an edit or ‘up-leveling’ change they have made to their work.

§  Explaining what they plan to write ext.

Once the students have finished the writing, they will self-assess using the rubric we created. Next, students will share their work with peers. We will spend time discussing how to give helpful and useful feedback before asking students to read other stories and share their advice and thoughts. Posting the finished stories to a platform such as Microsoft Teams or Seesaw will be a celebration of the story writing and will help to maintain the sense of community and pride in their work.

Reading Challenges (ongoing)

We want students to feel encouraged to continue reading during this time. While websites such as Raz Kids and Read Theory provide a good platform where students can be assigned leveled books which match their ability, we are also aware that we want students to have time away from devices. So, we have encouraged students to consider using physical books for reading challenges (this has not always been possible due to the location and restrictions of some students).

The idea of the reading challenge is for students to feel enthusiastic and engage in what they have read.

The students can be reading various books during this time; however, we want them to select one book which they have enjoyed. Then, the students will have the choice of an activity (or a number of activities) which can show their understanding and comprehension of the content and allows them to express their ideas or creativity.

Below is a list of post-reading activities we have suggested to our students.

Mathematics

Show what you know (a stand-alone activity which could be repeated for various content)

A good open-ended activity in which students can work at their own level, is to assign students a ‘knowledge harvest’ activity. This is when you select a mathematical topic (for example, fractions) and ask students to show all of the facts they know about this topic on a poster. This activity is good for students as it makes them think critically about what they already know and can challenge the students to think about all of the facts they know about that topic.

Below is an example:

This knowledge harvest idea can be used in other subject areas. You can scaffold the activity by including sentence/fact starters (like the example above: how to find fractions of an amount...) or you can keep it completely open-ended and just give them a topic in which they will need to show what they know.

Shape books (project work 1-2 weeks)

Another activity that students could complete is a project where students will create a resource on geometry (shapes, lines and angles). Our students have done this before during school time, but it could also be done as a home-schooling activity. Our students were given the task to create a bilingual (English and Chinese) educational resource which would teach other primary school students about 2D and 3D shapes, different types of line and angles. Students could choose to make a physical book, comic, video or other digital resource. The books and resources that we created were then shared and sent to schools in other locations within China. Having a purpose and an audience for this project really motivated our students and if this was completed during time away from school, their work could still be shared online or printed once normal routine is resumed.

Science

Our students continue to be in many different locations. Some were on holiday when the issues surrounding the virus became more serious and therefore some children did not have access to many materials or resources. There are still however, some activities that you could try to assign your students. Here is a suggestion:

States of matter

We asked our students to create a resource (PowerPoint, poster, video etc.) which would show their understanding of the states of matter. We also asked our students to include demonstrations of reversible and irreversible changes.

The students were quite excited at having the opportunity to do practical activities.

Some of the demonstrations our students included frying an egg (irreversible change) or mixing vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. As part of the demonstration, the students had to be explaining the science behind what was happening using the correct vocabulary. We shared the following links with students so that they could get some ideas if they were struggling:

https://lifestyle.howstuffworks.com/crafts/science-projects/science-projects-for-kids-states-of-matter.htm

https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/categories/experiments/states-of-matter/

History/geography

Global citizens/people who changed the world

Project work has been quite successful for us, as students are able to dip in and out of the work at times which are convenient for them, there is an element of choice for the students and it is differentiated by outcome.

A project which we have completed is looking at people who have made a positive difference to the world/global citizens.

First, we discussed what we thought a global citizen was. Next, we looked at some videos showing examples of people who have made a positive impact.

Malala Yousafzai:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48pFoAObv_w

Michelle Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88YYnw6lsE

Mohandas Gandhi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWhCniD9VkI
Greta Thunberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzLuAHLR53A

After watching the videos, we discussed what skills and attributes those people had displayed.

Finally, we gave the students the choice to choose one of the people we had learned about or selecting a different person to research in more detail. The students were given a planning sheet to do research, before using that information to create a fact-file or biography on that person. A geography link to this could be for students to focus on people who made a positive impact to a particular place or location. What was that place like before and how has it changed? Students could delve into the culture and geographical features of that place and later share their findings.

Physical education

It is important for our students to remain active. Some students may be able to go outside and maintain a relatively normal routine. Others have access to parks or gardens. When my school first closed, some of my students were unable to leave their apartments for a number of weeks. Therefore, we tried to offer our students some ways to keep active. The P.E teacher at our school has been posting videos each week with some exercise routines for student to follow and try at home.

If this is not possible, there are a number of exercise/fun activity videos available on YouTube or other websites which students can use. Searching for ‘just dance’ videos provides many different options for students to copy the dance moves to some of their favourite songs.

Students could also create their own obstacle course or design their own active game. For example, you could inflate a plastic bag and try to keep it from falling on the floor by hitting the bag or doing kick-ups. Students can then share their obstacle course ideas or games on platforms such as Seesaw or Teams for their peers to try.

Music

Some students may be lucky to have musical instruments to play with. Others may have access to different genres of music. Ask the students to listen to various genres and share their opinions of each style, with a comment on the rhythm, tone, melody and any instruments they can identify.

Another activity for students to complete is a game which I think could be described as an audio version of charades.

First ask students to brainstorm the sounds they might hear around their home during the morning/afternoon/evening. Some examples they might say are snoring, brushing teeth, buttering toast, closing doors, walking up/down stairs etc.

Using household objects, their voice or body parts (clapping hands, stomping feet etc.) students will need to reenact a sound(s) that they might hear as part of a daily routine.

Can others guess what sound they are trying to represent? This game could be played as a family, or students could record their different sounds and share them on platforms like Teams for their classmates to guess.

Allowing time for interaction and collaboration for some tasks creates a sense of community which is lacking for some students as we adhere to social distancing/isolation/quarantine.


I hope that you have found something useful in this blog post. If you have any other suggestions or resources, please get in touch and we can try to create a bank of e-learning ideas. Take care everyone!

Creating A Digital Learning Programme During COVID-19

Teaching from home
As a teacher of over ten years, I have at times dreamed of being able to work from home and deliver lessons using Skype. On those cold, dark, wintry morning, I have wished that I could just stay on my sofa. Be careful what you wish for!

Since the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January 2020, my school has remained closed due to the spread of the Coronavirus within Mainland China. Many educational establishments have created a range of e-learning experiences for their students.

The aim of this post is to share the experiences that I (as a Year 6 primary school teacher) have had and make some comments on the pros and cons of the activities we have crafted as a school. I will also include some information on how students have been affected by long periods of being away from their normal routine (and in some cases, prolonged isolation).

Creating an e-learning programme
It is important to discuss this with your team or leaders and gain clarity on how you will have a consistent approach to e-learning.

Here are some considerations:

How will you deliver tasks to students?

Written tasks
During the beginning of our school closure, while we started to formulate an e-learning programme, we were posting activities and tasks for our students to do on platforms such as Seesaw or Teams. We gave students differentiated work to complete and included examples so that they were supported as much as possible while working mostly independently. Our students could contact us if they needed help, however it became clear that they were missing contact with teachers and their friends.

Recorded lessons
Our school tried recorded lessons that students could access and watch at a convenient time. This was useful due to having international students in many different locations and times zones. Creating and editing videos was certainly time consuming. In addition, this method of sharing lessons does not provide a lot of interaction for students.

Live lessons
Our school uses Zoom or Teams to deliver live lessons for our students. This offers students the opportunity to interact and discuss topics and content with their teacher or peers. We have also been recording the live lessons and uploading them to the cloud (Microsoft One Drive works best for us since Google Drive is difficult to access in China) so that students who are unable to attend live sessions may view it at a later time. We are currently holding live sessions for English, Maths, Social Studies and Chinese. Activities and recorded sessions for specialist classes such as P.E, Music and Art are uploaded to the cloud for students to access at a time of their choosing.

Timetable
Once you have decided on your preferred method of delivering lessons or tasks, it is important to create a daily/weekly schedule that will be shared with your students. More than ever, our students have been craving routine and this will help them to gain a sense of normality during these unpredictable times.
The timetable includes the time of live sessions and suggested time slots of when they could be having breaks, completing other lesson content or extra curricular activities.

Lesson content
In primary school, we have established that we will not be covering new content (at least for now). Reviewing skills and revisiting learning that students have already covered since the beginning of the school year (but in new/adapted ways) offers students something familiar and builds on their existing knowledge and understanding. For example, in Year 6, we have looked at creating an imaginative narrative. The students have already covered the features of short story writing before, however we can see that it has been beneficial for the students to do this again and they have appreciated the chance to express their creativity.

Submitting work/non-contact time communication
It is important for students to know how and when (acceptable hours) they can contact their teachers. Each week, we share the weekly timetable with our students and include links and passwords for students to access live sessions. We also remind them of how they can contact their teacher and our preferred methods of sharing their completed work. Our students have been submitting their work to us via Seesaw, Teams or email. In Year 6, we have been using Microsoft OneNote which is a useful tool in storing student work all in one organised space.

Child protection
You may need to talk with your leader(s) about any changes to your establishment's child protection policy.

Delivering your e-learning programme

Setting norms
For the first week (at least one week), it is important to establish a set of understandings of how you are going to be running the digital learning experience. We spent much of the first week allowing our students to become familiar with the different apps and online resources. During our live sessions, we spent time checking in on the students and giving them time to share their feelings. We also provided them with suggestions of what to do if they were feeling stressed or bored. It has also been important to set up a list of agreements on how we expect students to participate during live sessions and how we can decide who will be speaking or sharing. Scheduling in circle time style sessions was really important. In Year 6, when we hold live classes on Zoom, we generally ask students to mute their microphones and type responses or questions in a chat box. Students can also digitally 'raise their hand' and can un-mute their microphone if they wish to share something verbally.

Sharing content with students
Zoom has mostly been a very useful tool to hold live lessons. It allows the host of the lesson to share their screen with the viewers. When this happens, I have generally been playing a custom-made PowerPoint with a mixture of text, images, videos, examples of work and an explanation of an independent task that students should attempt once the session is over. The independent task is saved as a pdf and shared with the students on Seesaw. Seesaw cannot host files as large as the recorded lessons, and Seesaw did begin to feel cluttered with many different posts and files, so this is why we took the decision to also upload files to the One Drive.

Screen time concerns
Since my school has been creating and delivering digital content for seven weeks, we have noticed that some students and teachers have complained of headaches and feeling tired. We have tried to create independent tasks (following the live online sessions) that will not rely on devices or technology. Wherever possible, we have tried to design activities that students can do on paper or without the use of electronics.

Supporting students
Personally, I have found it helpful to provide some allotted time at the beginning or end of the live lessons for students to talk to each other and discuss their feelings. Sometimes the students just want to talk about something they have done, a piece of news they have heard, or to show their pet on the camera. Students have at times expressed feelings of loneliness or boredom. Some of my students are in locations where they are rarely able to go outside. I shared with them a list of activities to promote self-care, which they could try while at home:

A handwritten diary - taking time to think about your feelings is important. Writing a diary will help you to practice your language skills, but you will also be working through your emotions and creating an interesting document to revisit in the future.

A passion project - perhaps there is a certain topic that you are interested in. You could research it using books, digital resources or having discussions with friends or family members. This project could include you building a model or replica of an animal, building or invention. Share your research project with your peers so that they could learn from your findings.

Working on a hobby - listen to or play music, draw or paint, knit or make something out of clay! Doing something practical or creative could help you relax or build on your skills.

Get in the kitchen - design and make a healthy meal. Share it with your classmates so that they can try your menu!

Keeping active - use videos such as Just Dance or create your own routines that will act as good exercise. You could even invent your own P.E game for others to try out.

Further ideas
If you have any questions please get in touch. If you would like to look at some examples of the resources, projects and lessons that my school has delivered during this time, please get see my blog post here. If you have some ideas for me, I am more than happy to listen. It's important to help each other during this time. I hope to post again with some examples of activities/templates that will helpfully be useful to other educators who may be in a similar situation. Take care everyone!

How Wechat Changed My Life

Wechat is a hugely popular messaging application in China. Not long after moving to Beijing in 2012, I discovered that many people use this app to communicate. According to its developer, Tencent, as of August 2015, there are over 600 million active users. Wechat, or Weixin (微信-micro message) provides features associated with similar messaging and social media platforms. You can send multimedia messages to other users and also post text, photographs and links on your “moments” for your contacts to view and comment on.

For the longest time, I used Wechat for the sole purpose of sending messages and sharing information with my friends. After some time, I heard whispers and rumours that there were more exciting Wechat features. But just like my feelings in relation to leprechauns and politicians, I wasn’t yet ready to discover more about these unknown entities. How was I to know that there was so much untapped potential in my mobile app, just waiting to be utilised…

…Things had to change. A couple of months ago I decided to bravely take the plunge and get a Chinese bank account. Previously, I only had a card with a Chinese branch of an international bank, which restricted me in terms of paying for things online. However, with a genuine Chinese bankcard, the world (or in this case, China) is my oyster.

Once I had become the proud owner of my very own Chinese bankcard, I swiftly linked it with my Wechat account. Yes – I could now explore those unchartered territories that I’d feared for far too long. I could embrace the majestic wonder of WECHAT WALLET. With this option at my disposal, I felt like after three years of living in the Middle Kingdom, I would finally be a truly accepted and functional member of society. All the cool kids were using Wechat Wallet. Now, all the cool kids and a Welsh foreigner could. It was as if I had been welcomed into a club of elite social media users. I believed I now qualified as a “real person” by my perhaps misguided perception of Chinese standards.

Wechat Wallet allows users to send money to other contacts. This is perfect if you owe a friend some money or need to share the bill for a meal and don’t have enough cash. Some shops and supermarkets now allow you to pay for goods using Wechat, with just a quick scan of a QR Code.

The biggest convenience that I have discovered is online shopping. Can’t find what you want at the local supermarket or mall? Not wanting to venture outside during a smoggy day? Then you can order almost anything online and have it delivered straight to your door or workplace. This can all be paid for using Wechat Wallet.

My most recent purchases include a laser egg that measures air pollution, a hotpot cooker for the cold winter months and a Chinese set of ‘The Walking Dead’ comics (行尸走肉) in the hope that they will inspire me to keep studying Chinese characters. These treats have certainly cheered me up when the pm2.5 pollution levels have reached over 600 outside.

Buying things from the comfort of my home while avoiding crowds and toxic smog is still a novelty for me. Has Wechat changed my life? Well perhaps the title of this post is a tad dramatic. But it has made buying things a lot easier. Now I’ll just have to work on my self-restraint. I wonder if I can buy a guidebook on how to do that…

Please note that Wechat is not sponsoring me for this blog post (although if you are reading this Tencent, I am happy to receive some kind of payment or praise).

The Designer Monologues: Idioms and expressions

On smoggy days, when I am searching for things to do, I often use online painting applications to create images. You could say I am the "designer in China"...sorry, I just like things that rhyme. 
I have never really displayed strong artistic skills but I did enjoy making cartoons and comics as a child. Now I tend to focus on creating images and text that display idioms, vocabulary and slang that I have learned when studying Vietnamese or Chinese. Drawing and displaying interesting language is fun and helps me to remember the things I have experienced in Hanoi and Beijing. Some of the images I make have been used on this blog. Others I have printed onto T-shirts or mugs. I wanted to explain some of those images in this blog post:

This design is based on the Vietnamese expression "Không Sao Đâu" which means "never mind" or "no problem". But when you translate each word individually; "Không" means no, "Sao" means star and "Đâu" means where. Some of the younger generation of Vietnamese therefore use this translated version. So for example, if you arrived late to a meeting with your friend and you apologised profusely, they could reply with "no star where".

"Buồn Như Con Chuồn Chuồn" is an expression that means to be "as sad as a dragonfly". I don't think dragonflies are a particularly miserable insect, however the word "buồn" meaning sad does kind of rhyme with "Chuồn Chuồn" which means dragonfly, so I guess that's the basis of this idiom. 

"Chán như con gián" means to be as "bored as a cockroach". Again, the Vietnamese language uses an insect for an idiom to describe a negative feeling - poor minibeasts! I have seen some of my friends on Facebook using this expression as a status. I got this design printed on a T-Shirt and took it to Vietnam on my last visit. It definitely got some smiles from the people in Hanoi and some locals even came up to me and asked about where I bought it.

"Khỏe như trâu" means to be as strong or as healthy as a buffalo. So if you are feeling on top of your game then you can use this expression!

"Biết Chết Liền" translated literally means "Know die immediately". It's true meaning is: if I knew that, I would drop down dead. I guess it's not too dissimilar from the English expression "I'll be damned if I know!". So for example, if you were visiting Vietnam and were met with the usual barrage of questions:

"When will you get married?"
"When will you come to Vietnam again?"

"What is the meaning of life?" (Actually I haven't been asked that yet unfortunately).

You could choose to answer with "Biết chết liền".

This is the first Chinese design that I made. It translates to "Did you know this is how rainbows are made?"
The sentence includes a character that was introduced to me by a friend. The character “造” (zào )is used in place of “知道” (zhīdào) which means "to know". When spoken quickly, zhīdào can sound similar to zào. Apparently it is common in Taiwan to substitute “知道” with “造”.

For a while, I was joking with my friend Liz that I would open up my own café in Beijing and sell tasty treats that I missed from back home, like Welsh cakes and scones. Liz absolutely loves pugs and so for a Christmas gift, I decided to draw a pug and create a "pug mug". I decided that I would add "Crimmy's Café" as it's only a matter of time before I create a rival for Mr. Starbucks.  I was quite pleased with the result and so I ordered one for myself too. I will only need a couple more before I can open up that café!

This is the first design I did in both Vietnamese and Chinese. It is based on the game of "Paper Scissors Stone" or "Rock Paper Scissors" (depending on where you're from!). 

I really like how it is a universal game - I remember travelling to Guilin and playing this game with some of the local children. They were amazed that a foreigner could interact with them. So I came up with this design which translates to "The real story of paper scissors stone". The smug stone would clearly always come away unscathed if such a battle were to really happen, so in the drawing the stone suggests "Let's play one more round" resulting in an awkward silence coming from his battered opponents. 

There are two ways to say pig in Vietnamese. One is "lợn", the other is "heo". I first noticed this expression back in the days when Myspace and Yahoo360 were used as popular social media networks. It is a take on the phrase "What the hell?!". The word hell is replaced with heo as they sound rather similar. This expression is used in similar instances of surprise or shock. So when you are feeling astonished by something, you can utter the words "What the heo?!"

I will definitely continue to create different designs as I find it relaxing and a fun activity - particularly if I am stuck indoors due to high pollution. The designs that I have made can be printed on T-Shirts or mugs and found at the following website:

http://vinamike.spreadshirt.co.uk