Classroom management can be one of the hardest parts of teaching. It is one of teachers’ top professional development needs, as all the education classes in the world don’t prepare you to quiet down dozens of children who might all have their own ideas of what it means to be quiet. Any veteran teacher can attest to the importance of establishing routines early and following through all year long. But teaching virtually throws all of that for a loop. It’s tough enough getting a whole class to cooperate in person. How are you supposed to do it online?
Online classroom management
Fortunately, all of the best practices you’ve learned about and experienced apply. Norms and routines should still be established early and used consistently throughout the year. Instruction should still be differentiated. In fact, some online classroom management strategies can even present advantages over their in-person counterparts. Holding discussions over a computer, for example, makes it more difficult for a few students to dominate the debate. Technology can help teachers moderate and potentially help all students have a voice.
In addition, findings from our 10th Annual Educator Confidence Report found that teachers continue to see positive impacts of technology over the past decade, such as providing better data to inform instruction and better tools to strengthen their craft. Whether it’s your first or thirty-first year teaching, here are some tips to manage your virtual classroom.
Tip 1: Put distractions away
Sometimes, the virtual classroom needs to look, sound, and feel as much like an in-person classroom as possible. One key tactic to make this happen is to have students put away phones, toys, and other distractions. This may also include staying away from siblings and pets, at least as much as possible! This is of course not always doable, especially when access to technology or physical space is limited. Show grace when dogs, cats, and children make webcam cameos. Your student might not be able to control it! If needed, have conversations with family members to make sure they understand what you require as the teacher.
Tip 2: Treat the webcam like a person
It is so easy to turn off the webcam, mute yourself, and completely disengage. This is a dangerous recipe that can result in students ignoring or even dreading school. Remind students that everyone else is in the same position: sitting in front of a computer trying to be a part of the class. You’re doing it too, as the teacher! Show them what proper eye contact looks like through a webcam, and practice it when you talk to them. Encourage them to smile, respect each other, and talk politely. There is a lesson in digital citizenship here. Even when your only window into a person is through the internet, that person is still very much a person with feelings and experiences, just like you.
Tip 3: Have a dress code
The dress code does not need to be fancy! It can be as simple as “always wear a shirt and pants, and no pajamas.” One key to helping a virtual classroom feel a little more like an in-person classroom is to have students get dressed for it the same way they would get dressed to go to school. What you don’t want is students propping a laptop on their bed, staying in their pajamas with the covers up, and making the virtual classroom feel like another YouTube video. Ask students to get up a little bit earlier, get dressed for school, and prepare for the day ahead.
Tip 4: Address discipline issues fast
Discipline issues take on a new urgency when the class is remote. Your verbal and physical cues are limited. One disruptive student can make teaching the rest of the class impossible, and it is harder to enlist help from other teachers. Deal with discipline issues as soon as they come up without any exceptions. However, extra urgent does not mean extra harsh. No matter the disruption, model a positive attitude and respect for the rest of the class. When a behind-the-scenes intervention is needed—for example, an email to a student or family member—discipline sparingly to maximize impact.
Tip 5: Teach lessons that emphasize writing
In many virtual classrooms, one or more students have limited internet access and cannot reliably participate in synchronous discussions. And in all virtual classrooms, the parts of communication that involve facial expression, body language, and tone of voice are affected, if not squashed. Verbal discourse is still critical to learning, but a lesson that has discussions being written, not spoken, can provide accountability and foster close relationships among students. Students who are eager to have a real dialogue can end up sharpening their writing skills as they argue their points. Practice writing in every subject (including math!) to not only hone students’ ability to write with clear, effective language but also build empathy between readers and writers.
Tip 6: Add visual cues to your lessons
In a virtual classroom, you control what students are looking at in a more direct way than an in-person class, and you can use that to your advantage. As you’re sharing your screen, making slides, or even picking your webcam background, decide on visual cues that can indicate particular actions. For example, a notebook icon can mean “it’s time to write” or a playground slide can mean “you can get up and move around.” As students get increasingly used to these icons, you can proactively manage your classroom as you design your lessons.
Tip 7: Flip the classroom
If you’ve thought about flipping the classroom before, now might be the time to dive in. Use your time together to go through practice problems. You’re more likely to engage students, elicit questions, and encourage debate. Save the dry lectures and rote instruction for when the students are off camera and working on their own time. Those parts of the class can even be recorded and sent to students to watch later—when it doesn’t matter if pets or siblings walk into the room!
Tip 8: Decide on signals
When it comes to virtual classroom management, it’s not as easy for teachers to use physical routines such as singing a song or clapping a rhythm. Work with the class to agree on signals that can work even if students are muted. For example, a thumbs up in the webcam could indicate “I have a question” or students touching their nose with a finger could mean “I need to leave” (for example to go to the bathroom). You can have your own signals, too. For instance, when you need everybody to pay attention, you could stop talking and raise both hands as a signal for the rest of the class to stop talking and raise their hands, too.
Tip 9: Hold class however you can hold students’ attention
This strategy relies on students having the appropriate tech needs, but there is a unique opportunity that comes with a virtual classroom: it can be anywhere! It can be as simple as having everyone set their webcam backgrounds to places in a different country and pretending to have class there. Your creativity need not have boundaries though. Between avatars, virtual reality, and interactive apps (to name a few ideas), look for settings that will engage your students, and try them out. A virtual class can be in outer space or inside an atom, places obviously impossible in person. Some teachers have even held class in video games, where games can be connected to anything from coding to geography.
Tip 10: Create a question parking lot
In a whole-class online setting, only one person can effectively speak at a time. Side conversations, whether productive or not, aren’t possible in the same way. Human conversation naturally includes interruptions—and it’s not always rude! It is a part of how we ask questions and share ideas, and different people will have different expectations regarding what’s polite and appropriate. However, interruptions that would be appropriate in person can wind up disruptive online. Account for this by creating a “parking lot” for questions. It can be any kind of document or spreadsheet that all students can access. When they have a question or thought, they add it to the parking lot until there’s a break for you to go through the list.
The next time you run an online class, try these virtual classroom management strategies out and let us know what works! You can contact us at shaped@hmhco.com.
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