Teaching kids online comes with its own set of challenges. You can ask us because we do a lot it. Kids look forward to high-quality, engaging and interactive lessons with a teacher who really cares about them. Children are not as likely to listen if the teacher simply drones on or reads from a slideshow presentation without consistent interaction.
Literacy development is one of the most cognitively demanding challenges children take on. For successfully teaching children online, a two-pronged approach is required. The first approach mandates that an element of creativity and ingenuity come alive on the part of the teaching instruction, to compel students to remain engaged. We all know that children need a lot of movement and exploration. The common misperception is that since these are things that children can’t really do remotely, especially having to sit and look at a screen, the teaching instruction would inevitably fail as well. At EZY Phonics, we understand these concerns from parents. That's the reason why we take plenty of time to explicitly plan and design our online classes to keep children engaged and immersed, through curious visual themes and specially curated lesson content. No two lessons are the same for us, both visually and in terms of delivery. Another vital attribute for online learning to be interactive is to ensure that class sizes remain small—which allows the ideal level of attention to be prescribed to each child in the group (nothing beyond five students at a time).
The second key approach for successful online learning is: we often encourage parents or caregivers to help their children assimilate with the online facilitation, at least in the beginning—by simply being there and helping them participate. Children with this type of support are more likely to do well with remote instruction, while those without it are more likely to struggle. This makes a profound difference and most children become visibly more independent from the third to fourth lesson onward in our experience. Thereafter, parents or caregivers can allow their children to participate by themselves with decreased oversight.
Many kids are visual learners. They can't just listen to or read something and remember it. Bringing in props and visual aids can help them see the content in multiple ways and provides more clues to retain the information in their memory. Even having a puppet sing a song or define key vocabulary words can help make the content more memorable for students. Bringing in different audio and video components allows information to be presented in new and interesting ways. We spend plenty of time to do this; from regularly redesigning our teaching environment backgrounds to preparing a multitude of different learning props to reciting words and phrases to a beat—all while delivering the required educational value.
In summary, online learning can be achieved through a combination of creative teaching instruction and the initial coordination with parents to provide the opportunity for children to learn online. The best way to teach kids is to bring in fresh material that captivates them and this requires significant effort on the part of the educator.
Learn more of what our programmes offer at: www.ezyphonics.com/programmes
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