Building Classroom Community Online

All educators can agree on one thing… and that is that they always want the best for their students. In this time of uncertainty where distance learning and digital classrooms have become the norm for now. It is still important now, more than ever to encourage a classroom community. In this blog post, I want to share with you some ideas to help students feel secure and calm and continue to nurture healthy relationships.

Daily Check-ins using Google Forms

A simple and easy way to keep connection going with your students is to use a daily form that students can check in. You can customize it to ask any questions and I even found a great list of questions you can use. Click the form on the left to make a copy in your drive to customize and share with your students! If you want different headers and icons for feelings I have made the following forms available here.

Use Flip Grids to Get all Students Heard

Keeping in touch and having students respond to FLIP GRIDS. If you haven’t signed up for flip grids I am not sure what you are waiting for. What a great way to get kids communicating with each other. Here are some fun ways for you to use flip grids to increase online classroom community.

Be Accessible

It is more important than ever to be accessible to your students. You can use google calendar and have students choose a time slot to work see you one on one. Here is a google calendar 1:1 appointment tutorial for that. You can access your calendar at https://calendar.google.com/

Hold Online Classes

During this time you can easily do front loading using video and posting it online. I still think this is the best way for students to get information because they can stop, rewind, play it slower, etc. But it is still important for 1:1 classes, during this time you can encourage discussion about the topic, answer misconceptions, do demonstrations, etc. There are many services for this, such as ZOOM or GOOGLE MEET.