Motivating my Learners... A Distance Learning Challenge

Yesterday morning, five learning days since Auckland moved back into to Level 3, I opened up our 'Finished Work sheet' to find a lot of blank cells staring back at me. I am aware there are many external factors that challenge our tamariki with distance learning which is why our program runs the way it does. However for some reason this time around I found myself, unlike last time, in the unfamiliar territory of limited buy-in from my learners, despite having approximately 70% attendance at our Google Meets. 

The work set is not 'busy' work. It is an adaptation of the learning I had already planned for the classroom. Which means we are using this time to build onto the foundations of knowledge already in place. My learner's feedback in Term 2 about our distance learning program post lockdown, was listened to and has been implemented, however the work output disparity between times is very noticeable. I realised my motivating strategies just weren't working so I decided to get creative and painted a picture with the numbers. 

Often a challenge we face is that if we can't see something, we don't really connect to it. Many times in situations where a big message is being shared orally, heads nod but the message isn't always internalised and acted upon. This is why I painted a clear picture using the data I had. At no point was this a negative message but rather an honest one shared as 'What I See..'. I knew by looking at Teacher Dashboard a lot more work had been completed but this hadn't been shared or filed correctly so it wasn't counted in this data. 

After sharing the slide above I simply said 'Have you made time to keep your learning going?'. I didn't want anyone to answer this, just to think about it. I then shared two further slides to remind my learners what distance learning is and what they need to do to become a successful distance learner. The point of this message wasn't to focus on the amount of DLOs created or blog posts published (as not all work is published), but rather on the fact the work needed to be done so that we can continue to move forward in our learning.

                                   

This morning I shared this picture and as a class we celebrated our ongoing success as a class who know how to 'keep their learning going'!  

 

When I swapped from presenting to being on camera I noticed lots of smiles in each grid on my screen. This strategy worked because I know my learners and I have an established rapport with these students both in the classroom and in our online environment. In return my learners know me, and know my expectations for their learning regardless of the physical place we are learning in. 

Learning from Home with LS2

Over the last few days, like everyone else in NZ, my class and I have been teaching and learning from home. My aim for this week has been to get my class engaged and comfortable with their new 'normal'. 

In place of formal teaching, I challenged my class to collaborate online and create their own version of the Summer Learning Journey which we call our LS2 Blogging Challenges. A few years ago our student leaders created and ran their own 'Winter Learning Journey' so rather than reinventing the wheel we added to these slides. Having exemplars from students that my current class knew has helped this activity become a success as the connections to the tasks were in place. So, rather than focusing on what is all around us, we have instead been focusing on the awesomeness of Aotearoa through our virtual tour. 

75% of my learners were actively learning at home on Day 1. To keep the motivation going I added a new challenge for Day 2. Grant Ogilvie updated our school sports site with fitness challenges that can be done at home so I picked the one that encouraged my learners to complete the name challenge. A lot of us took part in this challenge (including me), with many people turning it into a whanau challenge to make it more fun. Fau and her sisters made this clip to show how they took on our LS2 fitness challenge. 

           

 Fau's blog

The emails I received on Day 2 showed me that my class enjoyed the idea of a daily challenge so I set another one for Day 3. This time I used an idea from I saw shared online from NZ Geographic to create a picture of an animal using leaves. I tweaked this by asking my students to list three facts about the animal they created. Again this was really well received.

     

                                     Sakina's blogpost                     Victoria's blogpost

These challenges have not only kept my learners engaged, but have also kept me extremely busy answering emails, giving feedback and commenting on blogs. In addition to this we have a wide variety of learning opportunities that can be accessed on our class site.

Chris and Victoria have some great examples on their blog to show how this is working.

If you would like to use any of the blogging challenges created by my awesome students, click here and make a copy.