How to Support Home Learning in Elementary Grades
A first and second grade teacher shares his home learning plan for his students and how he is engaging their families.
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Like me, you鈥檙e probably now being inundated with emails, links to resources,聽and social media shares offering free access to educational programming for home learning. You鈥檙e also juggling directives and restrictions from your district, administration, and technology department. Your students鈥� families are scrambling to figure out working from home, child care, and what supplies they may need while awaiting information from you and the school about home learning. And you鈥檝e got your own life and family to take care of.
Know that nearly every educator is in the same boat. As a result, the educational community is focusing鈥攁 huge professional learning community鈥攐n the goal of providing our students with activities they can do to continue to love learning and not lose that spark we鈥檝e worked so hard to nurture throughout the school year.
In the current push for online learning, it鈥檚 important to remember that some households don鈥檛 have internet, and some don鈥檛 have laptops, tablets, or smartphones. If they do, device management may be a huge challenge for families鈥攖he adults may need to use the only device they have to do work from home.
Jumping Into Home Learning
Communication that builds community should be where you start. Reassure your students and their families that you鈥檙e in this together and that you鈥檒l provide options for them to continue learning in the coming weeks. Treat this like a new school year: Send home communication for the adults and students to help ease fears.
Here鈥檚 the first email I sent to my students鈥� parents and guardians when my school closed: 鈥淒ear Families, I鈥檒l be in touch soon with more information about home learning, including fun ways to keep your children engaged and focused on exploring life around them, albeit at home, and not lose that spark of curiosity and learning we鈥檝e worked so hard at developing up to this point in the school year. But that can wait a bit鈥攆irst and foremost please take this time to take care of聽your family鈥檚 needs. Hopefully you can find ways to reconnect as a family and still manage all the things you need to do professionally and personally.鈥�
I followed up with a short video directed at my students to reassure them there will be some familiar and fun activities coming their way鈥擨 have found that watching a video of their teacher can help ease students鈥� fears. And students will have fears about the coronavirus, so I shared a handbook for young kids from Amanda McGuinness, the Autism Educator, to .
Creating a Sense of Familiarity
Next up is sharing a classroom plan for how learning will take place. One of the challenges is to find a way to provide assurance, support, routines, and familiarity.
Let鈥檚 take a look at some ways you can take your current classroom routines and send them home. If you do a morning meeting, reflect on the elements you have in your meeting and what could be completed virtually at home. If technology allows, record and share daily video announcements and story read-alouds.
I鈥檓 going to use Seesaw for two-way communication. Communicate often鈥攕tudents will find comfort in seeing your face and hearing your voice. Record at school if you can, so they see a familiar setting. Have students share a photo or video of a toy, hobby, collection, stuffed animal, pet, or favorite book鈥攕tudents can share only with the teacher using Seesaw, not with each other, but teachers can create a blog to choose what gets shared with the whole class.
Dig out all your ideas for building a responsive classroom from the beginning of the year鈥擨 use 鈥攁nd see what you can use virtually to strengthen the learning community.
When you send work home, include daily SEL prompts for your students to reflect on, ideally one for the beginning and end of their day.
Possible SEL check-ins:
- How are you doing?
- What have you done today that was fun, and why was it fun?
- What鈥檚 your internal weather?
- Roses and Thorns
Get your students communicating with their peers. If technology doesn鈥檛 allow, create pen pals or other paper-and-pen activities聽by sending home envelopes, paper, and stamps if your school is able. Or mimic 鈥渢urn and talk to a neighbor鈥� by setting up phone pals where students call each other on the phone several times a week to discuss specific topics or prompts. Perhaps send聽home a link to a .
Just as you would in your classroom, be sure to have some individual communication with your students. If time allows, send a personal email, message, or video check-in, especially for students who may have a more difficult transition.
Getting Started on Academics
When you begin work on academic content, I would focus on no new material at first and keep it simple. Start with something successful and build from there. Send activities to students that they can feel confident in completing while they navigate working from home. Review topics are good, especially as your families figure out the technology aspect. We should remember the amount of pressure on families right now, and have realistic expectations about what can be achieved due to juggling work, child care, siblings, illnesses, and caring for extended family.
We all want the best for our students, so let鈥檚 keep things in perspective. While students will be challenged, they will be learning more about technology, problem-solving, working together, and communicating, as well as any academic concepts we can integrate into our plans.
In the big picture, we鈥檙e talking about a few weeks to a month or two over the course of a 13-year educational career. While we should try to provide activities that are as meaningful as possible, we should also remember that on short notice we can鈥檛 switch seamlessly to online learning and tackle everything we wanted to do, especially when many of us and our students and families have limited experience utilizing these technology tools.
It鈥檚 OK to give ourselves time and permission to figure this out. Please realize home learning will be different, and that鈥檚 OK too鈥攊t will be hard, and it won鈥檛 replace interacting face-to-face. But we can work to set up home learning activities that we hope our students will use to keep their love of learning alive.