One of my goals this summer was to make my own digital unit from start to finish. I wanted to really dig in without the pressure of school to let my brain digest what I had learned from the spring and explore what I might want distance learning to look like in the fall. I found out some time last year that I would be taking on a section of 11th grade ELA this fall, so I decided to use the opportunity to create my first unit around “The Crucible.” (The unit is available on TPT, so feel free to check it out!) I wanted to share some things I learned from creating this first unit in hopes that it might give someone else inspiration or direction. Here we go!
#1: Establish a routine. In the spring, we were all scrapping for resources and I know that my lessons felt incredibly disjointed. When I created this unit, I made sure that each set of assignments followed a similar trajectory. There is a welcome slide, an instructions slide, and then a set of activities that follow for each act of the play. I made sure the slide designs were uniform and I was careful to repeat activities intentionally to encourage deeper thinking without confusing kids with new tasks. In virtual learning, sometimes the hardest task is learning how to use the technology, so repeating tasks occasionally (without overusing them) can help students bypass the need to learn the activity and use that energy to get to the upper level thinking.
#2: Build Confidence First. I don’t think this is what people want to hear right now, but rigor is not the priority right now. We’re all struggling. Teachers are trying to come up with engaging lessons and students (and parents!) are trying to figure out how in the world to complete them. Absolutely find places in your lessons to help your students reach that deep thinking, but don’t include it so much that students can’t be successful. Find ways to balance rigor with routine so that students can feel confident in what they’re doing. Once they establish confidence, you are much more likely to get them to engage with harder material.
#3: Work with Fewer Standards. I’m well aware that everyone has curriculum to follow and standards to address, but in my experience, less is more. If you can take time to focus on just a few standards and really dig in to the meat of the learning, students will be more successful. In my unit, I focused on four standards and really took the time to build multiple opportunities to demonstrate skills.
#4: Know Your LMS. Even if you’ve been using your learning management system for quite some time, chances are, it does so much more than you know. Find ways to utilize your LMS to your benefit to streamline processes and make your material more accessible. Organization is key to a successful unit.
#5: Minimize Outside Clicks. This one always feels like a bummer because I am the first to want to try all of the new ed tech tools! Find areas in your unit to try new platforms, but minimize outside clicks overall. Students are easily confused when there is a separate website involved, so try to keep them inside of your LMS and embed separate activities inside of it when you can.
**BONUS: An educator friend of mine, Kat Carroll, curated an excellent list of takeaways from a Global Online Academy session on designing for online teaching. Check out her list of very helpful takeaways here to dive a bit further into designing for online learning.
If you check out the bundle for “The Crucible” in my TPT store, you can get a feel for the unit through the previews I included. I really loved the outcome of the unit and plan to add more as I work through them this year. If that’s something that interests you, I hope you’re following along on Facebook or Instagram to get the latest updates.
Happy teaching!
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