Over the last two weeks, teachers and administrators have faced an unexpected and unprecedented challenge: continue to provide our nation’s fifty million K-12 students with a high quality education—remotely. As a nonprofit committed to providing teachers with high-quality K-12 educational resources, we are here to help in any way we can.
In this blog post, we will focus on how teachers can use and modify Fishtank’s English units for grades 6–12 to support students as they transition to remote learning.
Decide which units and lessons to teach.
We realize that it may not be feasible to teach all aspects of our units via remote learning, or that pacing may need to be significantly modified. We recommend that you review unit overviews and all lessons in order to:
- Determine which texts students can access remotely. A large number of texts in our 6–12 English curriculum can be found for free in electronic format on the internet through a Google search. If you can’t find a specific text, let us know and we may be able to help direct you to a link.
- Determine which lessons can work within your remote learning resources and structures. Lessons in a unit may need to be skipped or modified depending on demands of the task or available resources.
- Create your own pacing plan. Map out which lessons you want students to do, and when. If needed, some lessons can be spread across multiple days.
Decide which questions students will respond to.
Many of the questions in our lessons require that students apply a specific Common Core standard to a short section of text. Review all questions included in a lesson and:
- Select questions based on student familiarity with that standard and question type, and whether you have the ability to provide direct instruction. Note that Target Task questions are considered the most important questions in a lesson to assess student learning.
- Decide how to use discussion questions. These are designed to build engagement with the text and are generally not standard-dependent. They might be useful as journal prompts.
Provide students access to the text.
Communicate with students about how you are going to be sharing the unit core text. Establish expectations around how much reading students should be doing every day and potentially provide a student-friendly pacing plan.
You can also use this as an opportunity to build excitement about the upcoming unit. You may want to:
- Film a short video of yourself introducing the text to students. The Teach Like a Champion blog has excellent suggestions for how to do this.
- Provide students with links to videos and texts that help build necessary background information or build engagement.
Establish a routine for how students will respond to the text.
We recommend students respond to at least one question after reading the text every day. Depending on the remote learning format you are using and the online resources your students have access to, to share daily questions you may choose to one or more of the following:
- Use Google Classroom, text, or email to pose questions and collect student responses.
- Ask students to keep a hard-copy journal of their written responses.
- Hold individual phone conferences with students where they can share their written response with you.
Provide students with opportunities to respond to each other.
We know that students do some of their most important learning through conversations with one another. We realize that this may be the most logistically tricky aspect of remote learning, but some ways to do this remotely include:
- Hold class video conversations about texts on Zoom, Google Hangout, or other video conferencing platforms.
- Ask students to respond to each others’ thinking on online forums like Google Classroom, Padlet, etc.
- Pair students up to have phone or text conversations.
Create a routine for providing students with feedback.
Assessing student work and providing feedback is essential for student growth. How you give feedback will vary depending on how students are responding to the text.
- If students are submitting work via Google Classroom, aim to provide students feedback on their work at least once or twice a week. This will help with engagement, and will allow you to track student understanding. Use our recommended Target Task rubric to provide quick, targeted feedback.
- Set up check-ins with individual students. If possible, try to check in with each student every week. In these conversations, you can clarify any misconceptions students may have.
Caroline Gambell is the middle school Curriculum Director for English Language Arts. Ms. Gambell holds a Bachelor’s degree in gender and women’s studies from Pomona College and a Master’s degree in English literature from Middlebury College. Ms. Gambell began her career at Achievement First's Amistad Academy teaching 7th grade English, and later taught 8th grade English at KIPP New Jersey’s Rise Academy. Most recently she was the Middle School Literacy Curriculum Director for KIPP New Jersey.