How to Keep Your Students Engaged While Teaching Online
Okay, so you’ve switched to online learning. Whether it’s for a short amount of time or for the rest of the school year, you’re probably looking for ways to keep students engaged while virtual learning. Let’s face it, online learning simply is just NOT as fun and interactive as in-person. It’s just expected. Students can’t be physically close with their friends, you can’t use the materials and manipulatives you are used to, the entire dynamic is different.
There is something important to remember though! Just because online learning is different, does NOT mean it has to be a bad time. I keep seeing all over social media that teachers really dislike online teaching. I get it. I’ve been through it too. I couldn’t believe I was thrown into a position last year where I was teaching French Immersion to three grades (2 of them being completely new to me). I thought it was hard enough while teaching in-person and then, when we switched to online, I felt screwed.
I had hardly any resources for in-person, let alone online. I had to manage to teach curriculum for three different grades while only having a half-day with each group. I quickly learned that the one thing that was working in my favour, was that my students were ENGAGED. If they weren’t, I feel like my entire routine would have fallen apart.
So let’s get into it. I could share many more ideas (and perhaps I will, in a future blog post), but in order to get this out to you and help teachers right away, I want to focus on my top 3 ways to keep students engaged while virtual teaching.
3 Ways to Keep Students Engaged Online
1. Voice and Choice
We hear this term being thrown around a lot. At least in my board, it is a big area of focus and often times, something that the admin strongly encourages during PD and staff meetings. So what does it really mean?
The term “voice and choice” simply means to allow students more opportunities throughout the teaching day to choose their preferred method of learning and how they’d like to do things. Most of us are already doing this while teaching in person. We make sure to differentiate our assignments, we give students options for how they’d like to present a project or we give our students different formats for a paper, for example.
Online learning should be no different. We want our students to feel more invested in their learning while they are online so that they are not tempted to turn off their cameras or simply stop participating.
Voice and choice allow them to feel seen, to feel heard and to feel appreciated. So how can we provide this voice and choice while online?
For starters, if we’re being really simple, give your students choice boards for different parts of the day. A choice board is usually a 3x3 (or larger) template with multiple options that students can do during a given block of time. See below for an example of what a choice board looks like.
Image source: aloveofteaching.com
You can use choice boards in so many ways! It’s such an easy (and free) way to give students more flexibility and allow them to choose what they truly prefer doing. Here are some examples:
Early-Finishers: Create a choice board for early finishers to do after completing a task. It can contain various websites, apps, writing prompts or movement exercises that students can do while they wait for the rest of the class to finish a task or during asynchronous learning time. If you just want your students to keep themselves busy and engaged, it doesn’t really matter if they’re not ALL doing the same thing at the same time. Allow them to choose how they want to spend that extra time.
Art periods: Many times when we have a moment for a break or art activity, we will do an online directed-drawing together. I am sure many of you have done this as well. There are some great YouTube channels for directed drawings in both English and French. While it is so fun to all do the same drawing, why not try out a choice board for an art period. I did this last year and it was far more engaging.
Rather than all of us drawing a ladybug, I created a simple choice board with links to various insects that students could draw. I told students that we will all be drawing for this period but we do not have to all draw the same thing. They could choose from the choice board and pick what interested them. It was way more exciting to see what everyone drew at the end because there was that element of surprise! Students wanted to share their drawings and were all shoving their papers right up to the screen! So fun.
This is a fantastic French YouTube channel for directed drawings! I usually include one of these videos in my weekly choice boards.
Movement Activities: Are you scheduling movement and physical activities throughout your day? If not, you definitely should. You need it and so do your students. It’s not natural for us to be sitting in a chair for the entire day. Try making a choice board with multiple YouTube videos to movement games, dances, challenges or exercises. You can tell your students that they have the next 10 minutes to complete some of the videos, for example.
Projects and tasks: Finally, a great way to give your students more voice and choice, is to make a choice board for whatever project or task you are assigning. Give students some flexibility in how they can present, what they have to present and even when they have to present. I try and do this as much as possible, although it is not always realistic.
See if whatever project you are thinking of doing can be presented in some different ways. We never truly realize how much some students thrive when given the proper tools to succeed. That student who is terrified of online oral presentations? They may just end up making an amazing Google Slides research project instead. Try it out!
2. Be a little EXTRA
Okay, this one makes me laugh but it’s sooo game-changing. We hear all the time that teachers would make amazing actors. Why? Because oftentimes, we have to react as surprised when hearing the same story we’ve heard a million times. We have to act like we know what we’re doing when we are maybe teaching a lesson on the fly., We have to pretend not to laugh when that one student falls off their chair after being warned so many times of what could happen.
The list goes on.
Teachers are great actors, so why not use that to our advantage? While online learning, I make sure to be the most EXTRA version of myself. It can be hard some days, especially when we’re exhausted, having spent the night before finalizing our lesson plans, but it pays off.
We only really have from the shoulder-up to express ourselves while online. We can’t use all of the body languages we are used to. Our voice is a big tool. When you sound excited about something, students can feel it and will reciprocate that excitement. Why not sing out the instructions randomly? Or try to use a funny voice. Depending on the grades you teach, this simple method can make you and your students feel a whole lot better about the current situation of being online.
Besides using our voices and facial expressions (thank goodness they can finally see our mouths without masks), here are some ways to be just a little more extra while online teaching:
Wheel of Names: Oh my gosh, how I love this little website so much!! I seriously would pay a subscription for it, although I’m so grateful that it’s free. We used wheel of names ALL THE TIME last year. Whether to pick a student to read a paragraph, to decide which students will be working in which groups or to choose someone to help me with a task.
Website: https://wheelofnames.com/
Wheel of names allows you to input any names into a wheel and spin it. It’s pretty straightforward to use, except you can customize the sounds that are played while you spin and how long the wheel will spin for. You can also save a wheel, so I created one for each of my classes. The sounds are TOO GOOD and my students would crack up every time. Some of their favourite sounds last year were: “BehBuBah”, “Crazy Clown” and “In love with the good life”. There are so many more that we’ve tried out!
Please just try it out and see how it works with your class! Yes, it’s an extra step rather than just picking a student, but engagement will be through the roof! They love it and they will definitely all have their eyes on the screen while that wheel is spinning!
Fun Timers: I ALWAYS have a fun and engaging timer video playing while my class is waiting for me to join the meet. I start my Google Meet 5-10 mins before class starts so that my students have time to chat with each other, watch the video and get situated for the day. I also do this when we are returning back from lunch, I’ll play a timer to allow students to trickle back in and chat.
There are sooo many cool timers you can incorporate into your morning meeting slides. The game “Among us” was very popular last year, so I would sometimes put an among us themed-timer. Try and be somewhat familiar with whatever trends are going on with the children. It’s easy to stay on trend by just listening to them and allowing them to share more about themselves. I’ve never played half the games my students mention but know them all by heart since I hear them talk about these games enough! When you show your students that you are listening to them and you know their interests, they know you care and are even more engaged.
Satisfying timers like the one inserted below are usually a big hit as well!
There’s some really neat “spot the difference” style timers to put on as well. This gives students a challenge or something to do while they are waiting. Finally, some good old-fashioned music timers are fun too, since students can sing or hum along to the rhythm while waiting! It really starts the day (or period) off on a positive note!
Digital Games: Thankfully, there are so many great digital games we can use to review concepts taught. In fact, this is probably one of the few things that is easier to do online than in-person.
All the review-style games such as Kahoot, Gimkit, Blooket, etc are a huge hit with students, and for good reason! They are interactive, light-hearted and fun. The beauty of teaching online is that we CAN use all the interactive apps at your disposal.
It’s helpful to familiarize yourself with 3-4 educational game websites or apps so that when you are lesson planning, you know RIGHT away which game can be played during which part of a lesson, whether for an intro to a concept or as a review. Try and incorporate more fun interactive elements into your lessons while online. Students appreciate it and look forward to online learning that much more because of them.
You may also want to try out escape rooms! They’re tons of fun and a great way to review or introduce curriculum concepts. There are some available on TPT or you can create your own using an online template. I have yet to try these templates but have heard good things from them!
3. Have an online reward system
Just as you likely have a reward system while teaching in-person, it’s important to make sure you have one set up while teaching online as well!
Now I’m not talking about candy treats (although I’m guilty of giving those too), but rather, experience rewards. While we’re online, we can’t really give our class physical rewards but we sure can have some great experiences together. We can still host virtual pyjama days, movie days, extra free time periods, show & tells, etc.
Some teachers are against class rewards however, when used correctly, I think they’re an awesome classroom management tool. I never give a reward just to bribe or please students. Rather, I intentionally give rewards so that students UNDERSTAND why they are being rewarded and can continue (and encourage others) to behave in the same ways.
Keep it exciting and have a goal to work towards! I don’t recommend reinventing the wheel. Try to keep your behaviour management system as close to whatever you had going on in person. If you used a gumball machine, try and create one on Google Slides. If you were using Class Dojo or an app, stick with that.
I did a couple of things last year. For whole-group rewards, we had “Fun Fridays”. If students were on task and participated well throughout the week, I’d always make sure to have something extra fun planned on Fridays while virtual.
One thing we did was go on virtual field trips every other Friday!! It was so exciting to work towards a new trip and my students would spend all week guessing where our next destination would be!
As we can’t go on field trips together, the virtual field trips brought that sense of wonderment to the classroom and our little community felt even stronger after a virtual field trip together. They were truly the highlight of my online teaching experience!
You can find many free virtual trips on YouTube or on various websites. Sometimes your school board will send some opportunities to sign up for a virtual trip as well. I’ve got a bunch of virtual field trips in my Teachers Pay Teachers store with activities to go along with them if you’d like.
Last year we virtually visited the Toronto Zoo, Paris, Outer Space, Disneyland, Québec, Ottawa, a Farm, a Pirate ship and went camping together! So so much fun.
An example of the many virtual field trips I have in my store.
For individual rewards, I stick with what we have been doing in-person which is Élève de la Semaine (student of the week)!! My students LOVE THIS REWARD so much. The gist of it is that every Friday, I announce who our new student of the week is and why they were chosen. Their week will start on the upcoming Monday however, I like to tell them on Friday because then they can brag about it all weekend to their families and they have the time to get excited for the new week.
What are the perks to being a student of the week? So glad you asked! Our student of the week gets many perks. For starters, they are often my special helper, so whenever I need someone to pick a topic or video while online, I’ll usually make sure my student of the week gets many opportunities throughout their week.
I also present my student of the week on Friday with their own personalized slide that we fill out together. I will post the slide on my Google Classroom and then their classmates can comment on the post saying congratulations or something nice about that student by giving them compliments. It allows the student to feel very loved and they can show the slide to their families as well.
While we are in-person, I have a spot on my chalkboard where I write the student of the week’s name. Having a digital slide allowed me to continue this individual reward while online and my students really appreciated the consistency!
My student of the week slide was very simple and looked something like this:
Click image to download these slides for free.
If you’d like a copy of this slide, CLICK HERE to grab it for FREE! I have the slide in both English and French. This is available for blog readers only, as I haven’t posted it anywhere else. It’s super simple and there are some blank templates available too. You can always create your own, as it’s really just a basic slide!
Lastly, for becoming our student of the week, they get to choose which movie or episode we will watch at lunch on Fridays. Usually, while we were in person, that is what our student of the week was allowed to do and it broke my heart to have to stop that tradition when we went online. So much was already taken away from our students and so yes, I do sacrifice my lunches on Friday to play the movie choice. I shut off my camera and mic and share my screen to play the movie. I tell them that it’s my lunch too so I won’t be there but the movie is on for them to enjoy. They love having that “student time” to chat and hang out without the teacher, even though they know I’m still there and am listening in case any problems arise haha.
We call it “Vidéo Vendredi” and it is something they all look forward to every week!
I had to do this at lunch because I only had my class for half a day and couldn’t use an entire period for a movie but, if you have just 1 class for the entire day, then you could totally do a free movie period on Fridays at the end of the day, and allow your student of the week to choose what you will watch. Of course, we go over the guidelines for choosing an appropriate film, etc.
Ok wow, I feel like I just talked your head off! I HOPE these tips were somewhat helpful and give you an idea of how to make online/virtual learning more engaging for your students!
As you can see from my tips, it really isn’t about doing the most. It’s the little things that make an overall huge difference. At the end of the day, if our students are happy, healthy and learning, that is the most important thing! Hang in there, you’re doing a great job.
