“I taught the lesson. It was a good lesson. I trust that my students learned from it.” This is a teacher’s common refrain at the end of a school day. Sometimes, the word “hope” substitutes for “trust”. Most lessons are moments in time and reteaching a lesson does not quite approximate its originality. But, what if students did not learn from the lesson? Or, what if some students did learn and others did not? What if it was a well constructed lesson, but some students were distracted or others were absent due to illness?
Take Away
There will be a few good take aways from the Time of COVID. One of these will be the opportunity to record in-school lessons for at-home learners became the necessity to record all lessons and these records are forming a library of a teacher’s continuous instruction. A lesson no longer is a moment that is gone but is a moment that can be viewed and reviewed by students. And, by the teacher.
What do we know?
Practice does not make learning perfect. It does not make anything perfect. Practice, or the act of repeating a statement of knowledge or a skill or of repeating a string of ideas, only makes learning persistent. The more we practice something, the more likely we are to repeat its demonstration in the same way over time. In fact, what we practice may not be correct and it may not mirror the instruction we are trying to learn
A question. What if a child was absent, physically or mentally, when the lesson was taught? Will the child ever be taught the same lesson as children who were present?
Another question. What if the initial learning was not quite correct? What if the facts do not align into a true statement? What if the skill to draw a straight line constantly creates a curved line? Practice will only make our repeating of an untruth and our drawing of a curved line more likely.
Examining or re-examining the initial lesson in which the facts or skills were taught can fill in missing instruction. It also can correct our imperfection learning.
There always are two personas in every lesson – the teacher and the student. Each persona has an essential role in every successful instructional lesson. We often think of the student, the recipient of the lesson, first. However, recorded lessons have an equal value for the teacher. How many times has a teacher wondered at the end of a lesson or school day, “Did I say or do or answer that correctly?”. Or, “Could I have said, done or answered that better than I did?”. Normally there is no way to know. We do not get do overs. However, a recorded lesson allows a teacher to take a “mulligan” and make another effort at something that could be improved.
Why is this thus?
Prior to COVID, zooming is what Mazda said happens when we drive a Mazda Miata. “Zoom! Zoom!” Or, zooming is what a young child says when rolling a car across the kitchen floor.
In the Time of COVID, teachers are zoomers. (Another trademarked label that has become a common language verb and noun.) With the help of district tech specialists, classrooms in schools and kitchen tables in teachers’ homes have become broadcast studios. The ubiquitous built-in camera on a laptop or Chromebook or IPad portrays the teacher in real time and children in their homes see and communicate with their teacher in real time. Synchronous zooming is next best to being in the classroom.
As important as zooming is for synchronous teaching, it is even more important for asynchronous learning. A child can view the teacher teaching, hear the initial explanations, see the initial modeling, mimic the initial practicing, and chime in on the initial checking for understanding when viewing a recorded zoom lesson. This is not reteaching or teaching again. It is the real thing.
More importantly, a child can see and hear a lesson repeatedly. Consider a math lesson demonstrating how to divide fractions. How many children fumble with the idea of inverting the second fraction and multiplying? “I don’t get it!” However, if the lesson is viewable again and again by the child, the mechanics of inverting and multiplying can become standard practice for a child.
Consider technical vocabulary. “How do I pronounce that word?” A child can hear the teacher say the word again and again. She can see how the teacher forms the word with her mouth.
Consider how to shape a mound of clay on a potter’s wheel. “How do I move my hands to raise the clay vertically?” A child can simulate that action even though the child is not sitting at a wheel.
Consider a science lab. “What step did I miss?” A child can check their lab work and verify that all steps were properly executed and recorded. Or not.
Consider the dissection of an argument or discussion of an essay. “That is logical!” A child can cut and past a better and more logical argument.
The Khan Academy understands the value of repeated video lessons. We can learn from Khan.
To do
In our local school and as instructional modifications due to the pandemic, the equipment for zooming is installed in every classroom. A camera on a moveable stand. A large, portable screen for seeing the zoomed students at-home while seeing children in the classroom, if health data allows. Connections are in place between the teacher’s graphic display board and the zoom screen. Every child sees the same display. And, connections between the student’s devices at-home and the teacher’s laptop or display board so that the teacher and student are in real time communcation. These are now standard teaching technology in every classroom in our schools.
Now what?
- Make every lesson a recorded lesson. And, keep all recorded lessons in the school’s cloud for future viewing.
- Make every recorded lesson available to all students, not just those who were absent. Every child in the class must have access to the cloud to see any recorded lesson.
- Encourage students to look at a succession of lessons to review prior knowledge and post-lesson applications. It is one thing to maintain a cloud library; it is another to assist children to access those lessons. Persistent encouragement will create a new student habit.
- Make every lesson available to all students for review prior to tests and assessments. Traditionally, children have their personal notes or those of collaborating students to review for tests. Encourage children to also review the original lessons as they review. There should be no mystery in what children should know on a test – it was all in the lessons they were taught.
- Use recorded lessons in teacher lesson studies. A lesson study can be made by an individual teacher of her own lessons or it can be a collaborative and collegial activity for groups of teachers. Lesson studies open the discussion of improvement of individual lessons and enter units of lessons the more teachers practice a non-evaluative of their teaching.
There always is the wondering if a recorded library of lessons can replace a teacher in the classroom. It cannot. Good teaching is essential for good learning.
The big duh!
The COVID pandemic is causing schools, teachers and students to struggle in untold ways. For every struggle there will be a resolution and many resolutions create new and innovative practices that improve teaching and learning. Recording all lessons, making the library of recorded lessons available to all children, purposefully using the library to make complete learning for all children, and using the library for a professional review of teaching will be one of the good Take Aways from the Time of COVID.