I like to incorporate some fun at the end of the Online meetings. I do virtual I Spy games, Guess the Zoom picture games, and Would You Rather. This often leads to discussion among the students and myself.
One way I build a relationship with my students is to post daily check-ins in which they have a chance to tell me how they are feeling and answer a question. I also try to ask questions during our online meetings to get to know them better.
We use Buzz (Accelerate Education) for our LMS. My contact information is at the top of every course landing page and I have our offline work tracker in the announcements, as well as our schedule for the week, and daily reminders.
Student attendance in virtual synchronous lessons and student engagement are my biggest challenges. One thing that seems to help is to identify each student by name when inviting them to join these lessons. For instance, instead of sending a mass generic email or post, I personalize each one with their name and say something along the lines of, “I hope to see you there!”
Because my school uses Google products, I created a Google Sheet that has all of my student’s names, emails, parent’s names and contact info. I also have tabs at the bottom for various checklists for keeping track of which students have completed tasks or to keep notes on a student’s progress. I open this Google Sheet at least once a day to quickly view needed information. This helps student outcomes because I am able to spend more time helping them instead of trying to find information in several different places.
