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Classroom Management Strategies for Distance Learning Success

September 20, 2020 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

While a lot of the plans for this school year are changing from day to day, one certainty is that many students will be distance learning or experiencing a hybrid model of education. Naturally, families are concerned about how to support their learners. While parents often feel grounded in subject areas like math, reading, or history, or at least have good enough research skills to find helpful instructional videos online, many families feel out of their league when it comes to helping children strengthen their executive function skills, particularly in subjects that posed a challenge during in-person school terms. Quite simply, executive function skills are the skills we use to plan, organize, start, stay focused on, and complete a task. They are essential in every educational subject. The good news is that executive function skills are the same skills that adults employ to be successful in their lives and careers — which means that most parents have the aptitude to support their children as they develop these skills. And in fact, every student benefits from support with executive function skills during distance learning. One of the best ways of helping students strengthen executive function skills at home is by employing successful classroom management strategies.

Classroom management strategies are the procedures and guidelines that skillful teachers put in place in order to make instruction run smoothly; they are quite similar to executive function skills, but for a group of people instead of with one student in mind. Good classroom management systems take into account students’ needs in terms of learning space, resources, visual stimulation, bodily movement, time management, and self-monitoring. Because your child’s home learning space functions as a classroom space, classroom management considerations can help you and your child establish an optimal home learning setup.

The best way to identify which classroom management strategies your student needs help with is to have a conversation with them. Approach the initial discussion as a brainstorming session where all suggestions will be considered. Be open to listening to your student, and be willing to consider ideas they generate. If you are not sure whether an idea is feasible, agree to try it out for a trial period. It is essential for students to be deeply involved in this process, as it helps them build their executive function skills and increases their sense of agency and their investment in their learning.

Before School: Classroom Management Strategies

A good way to start the conversation is with the “Before.” These are the things that need to happen before the student starts school each morning. List the routines you can establish as a family to start the day successfully. What time must they be up to allow enough time for breakfast, getting dressed, getting ready? How can you build in some physical movement to help your child wake up and to give a sense of transition — is it possible to take a short, brisk walk together before class? If a walk is not possible, can you turn on some music and dance together before the school day begins? Then, make plans for what happens during learning breaks. If possible, try to eat lunch together; if not, let them know what the plan will be for lunch. Make sure your student knows how to get your attention if they need you during class. To the greatest extent possible, keep these routines and guidelines consistent from day to day.

During School: Classroom Management Strategies

Next, begin to talk about the “During.” Ask your child: What worked best for distance learning in the spring? What was really hard or could be improved upon? Are there things they wish would have happened differently?

As you plan for this year’s learning, one thing to discuss with your child is their spatial needs. If they often felt distracted with previous distance learning, take a good look at their workspace. Some older students might prefer working solo in their bedrooms, while some younger students might find it lonely. Also, some families have limited space, and having a quiet, private room with a door might not be possible. As a family, discuss what the options could be. Talk about the places where your student might learn best: At a desk? On the floor? In a comfortable chair? With younger children, setting up a yoga mat or beach towel allows them to move around during class within a defined boundary and camera range. Once you have established a learning setup, figure out how to optimize that setup for learning. If a student will be using their bedroom, discuss why it is important to make the bed each morning and to turn off and put away distractions like toys, TVs, and phones. Make sure the space is comfortable and sends a message that learning is happening there. Once you settle on a workspace, create guidelines for how other family members should use or avoid that room when the student is working.

Next, brainstorm the resources and supplies your student will need to have close by. If possible, consider a hard wired setup for your student’s computer in case the household WiFi lags, and get your student a headset with a microphone. Additionally, although your student is attending classes online, do not overlook the importance of physical supplies. Educational research demonstrates that most students learn better when they take notes by hand rather than when they type them. Maintaining a binder or notebook for each class, as they would during “regular” school times, helps many students stay grounded in the physical world and makes distance learning feel more “real.” Have your student help you choose supplies — pencils, pens, highlighters, crayons or colored pencils, maybe some stickers, the fun things they would buy in a normal year. We also recommend a small whiteboard with dry-erase markers, print copies of their books, and a water bottle to stay hydrated. A fancy custom storage system is not needed; a shoebox can hold the supplies, and your student can decorate it themselves if they’d like.

Visual needs are an especially important consideration with distance learning. While physical classrooms are often full of colorful, helpful and inspirational posters, learning online means that your student’s eyes are already absorbing a lot of stimulation. Eye strain is not just a problem for adults when staring at a screen for a long period of time — and anything over 20 minutes is a long time! Encourage your child to purposefully blink their eyes while online. Make sure their physical workspace is well lit. Together, decide whether posting a picture on a far wall or having a window view would give them something to look at to take a moment from focusing on their screen. If a student will be sitting at a table or desk, consider setting up a white trifold board in front of their workspace to help them stay focused. Some students benefit from posters on their board, such as printouts of their daily schedule and of the alphabet or the periodic table of elements. Some students thrive on personalizing the board, as they would a locker door. Others benefit simply from having a clean sea of white as a respite from the lights and noise online.

Physical needs during lessons are another topic to discuss with your student. If it is hard for them to sit still during synchronistic teaching, consider what you do to stay focused when you are at work. Can you teach them how to stretch in their chair? Can they drum their fingers on a pillow? Can they keep a fidget toy nearby that is soothing, but not distracting? Could you place a piece of stick-on velcro on the bottom of their desk or chair to run their fingers back and forth on? Can they rub their feet on a small textured mat? Would sitting on an exercise ball be better than sitting in a chair? Would a standing desk option by helpful?

Physical needs during breaks go hand in hand with physical needs during lessons. Make a list of physical activities and the places in your home where the activities can happen during scheduled breaks. Practice a few yoga poses until the student can do them independently; a few minutes in child’s pose helps most students quickly recenter. If one of your student’s scheduled breaks aligns with a time when you also can take a break, do a mini workout together. For some students, a few minutes alone listening to music may help them unwind. These activities are helpful not just during instructional breaks but during students’ independent work time, as they help the student break big blocks of time into manageable segments. Because students already are spending so much time online, encourage them to avoid break time activities that require a screen.

Just as physical note taking can help students stay focused and rooted in the moment, so can self-monitoring their learning. If they are listening to prerecorded lessons, encourage them to develop a habit of stopping the video occasionally, thinking about what they just heard, and stating it out loud and/or summarizing it in their notes. Younger children can teach what they are learning to a favorite stuffed toy sitting nearby. If a student struggles to recall important information or summarize the lesson effectively, they might need more support learning that particular concept.

After School: Classroom Management Strategies

After discussing the “Before” and the “During,” it is time to discuss the “After.” No matter where the workspace is, decide how your child will “close shop” at the end of the day. Where will materials be stored? Where will their device be charged? What transitional routines will help them to change the space from a learning space back to a home space?

Once you have used classroom management strategies to establish a workspace and some routines and guidelines, set a schedule for checking in with your student. Some students need a daily debriefing, while for others, every few days will work. Ask them open-ended questions and give them time to form their thoughts. Some questions might be:

What is working well in your workspace?
What changes do you think you need to make?
Are you able to manage the LMS (Learning Management System, i.e. Google Classroom, Canvas) the teacher is using?
Is there anything you want to ask your teacher or share with your teacher? Do you know how to reach the teacher? Have you reached out to the teacher? Have they responded?
Are you able to pay attention during instruction? What might make it easier to pay attention?
Do you need any new supplies?
What did you learn in reading? In math? In science?

Continue to observe what classroom management strategies are working for your student and which ones are not. Be sure to give them specific feedback when you see them using a strategy that is successful. Reach out to their teacher, or help them reach out to the teacher themselves, if you see them struggling. Be as specific as possible when describing your concern. Be open to the teacher’s suggestions and bring them to your next family brainstorming session. Post the day/time for that session on a family calendar where the student can find it easily. The important message your child needs to hear is that they can grow their executive function skills by trying new strategies and by reflecting on what works for them as a learner. With these improved skills, they will find more success in school not just this year but in the challenges that await them farther into the future.

Written by Maggie Sisti, M.Ed. and National Board Certified Teacher, who is a classroom teacher in a large, high performing school district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. She has been supporting her own four kids and 30+ years of students with developing and enhancing executive function skills inside and outside of the classroom.

ACT Essay Section: It’s Manageable!

June 1, 2020 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

In 2015, the ACT essay section was revised to include more challenging writing prompts. And yet, as a tutor for the ACT, I find the revised format provides more ways to simplify the writing process. Every essay that a student writes for the ACT requires taking a position on a topic, providing examples, and coming to a clear conclusion.

The most important strategy to impart is teaching students a format to write the argumentative essay in 5 paragraphs:

Introductory paragraph with a clear thesis
Example in support of one’s thesis
Example in support of one’s thesis
Example anticipating the opposition to one’s thesis
Clear and decisive conclusion.

The challenging part is getting students to invent excellent examples.

As a tutor, I ask my students to brainstorm examples from their own personal lives, and connect the point they argue to History, Philosophy, Politics, and Current Events. Some of these examples are great, others don’t make the connections necessary to support the thesis. Ah, but there’s hope!

The NEW ACT essay prompt provides the thesis and examples for the students. What’s great about this new format is that the guesswork of how to structure the essay and what kind of examples to give are now EMBEDDED INTO THE PROMPT. In other words, there is one less step for students to take.

Instead of inventing perspectives, students are given them and asked to respond to differing viewpoints.

Albeit while this may make the task of writing an ACT essay less organic and creative, the new essay format provides a framework simplifying the task of writing the argumentative essay considerably.

Just ask yourself, which task you’d rather respond to:

To argue both sides of a point and produce 3+ excellent examples including ones with which you do not agree.

To be given three opinions (perspectives), rewrite and examine these opinions, and choose one you support the most using the ideas for examples given by the prompt?

Prepping for this essay will be less arduous. With a strong outline and applied practice there’s no reason not to earn a strong score.

While there is more writing on the page, which perhaps makes the ACT essay task appear overwhelming, it’s really quite manageable. All of this information helps by laying the groundwork for the essay and outlining what is to come.

Want to practice?

By Grant Bergland, MFA and Private Tutor

Common Application Essay Coaching

April 8, 2020 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

“When I was still small enough to fit in the sun-drenched space between the armoire and the couch, I sat cross-legged and spun the world.”

“There I was, hanging from the precipice, muscles trembling, fingers aching, sweat dripping onto my spotter twenty feet below.”

“On one hot night in a dark room at the heart of Boston, I became friends with 19,580 people in one single moment.”

What things do these sentences have in common? They all feel like the beginning of a story. They all are specific enough that readers start picturing a scene. They all make us want to keep reading.

And they could all serve as the opening line of a Common Application essay.

As with other parts of the college application process, the prospect of writing the Common Application essay can be fraught with misconceptions: applicants worry that they will need to compose a formulaic piece under enormous pressure. It’s true that it is a high-stakes essay, with a hard and fast deadline, that tends to ascribe to a few broad conventions. But writing it doesn’t have to be so stressful. And as demonstrated by the lines above — from essays published by Hamilton, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts, respectively, as exemplars from admitted students — Common Application writers can produce essays that are vivid, memorable, and a pleasure to read.

We find that the factor that determines whether writers have a positive experience in creating their Common Application essays—and whether writers ultimately are happy with the piece they submit—is time. Applicants need time to get to know the genre, whose pieces tend to mix narrative and reflection. Applicants need time to try out a few different ideas and to compose several drafts, understanding that repeatedly revisiting the piece is a part of the writing process. In a departure from the text-based and research-based essays that dominate high school writing, the Common App essay asks students to draw upon their own lives for material. Applicants need time to generate ideas and to consider how their experiences and passions can help them share a bit of themselves with readers.

Each year, the Common Application itself “resets” in early August, so we advise rising seniors to wait until then to fill out its typable forms; similarly, colleges tend to post their individual supplemental essay prompts in August or early September. But the Common Application has already released its essay prompts for the upcoming application cycle, making spring an ideal time to begin the writing process—particularly this year. In a season when everyone’s plans have been upended, starting the Common Application essay injects a bit of normalcy. It allows students some control while challenging themselves creatively, with no pressing deadlines. It is one of the concrete steps that they can take in shaping their future, an opportunity to reflect on where they’ve been—such as a nook on a living-room floor, a treacherous rock wall, or a thumping concert arena—where they are, and where they will go.

If you’re ready to get started with your common application essay work, we can help to support your process with writing coaching and supplemental college counseling. Please contact us to further discuss your planning.

By Elizabeth Walters, MFA and Private Tutor, and Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and CEP

Online Learning: Anxiety Management

April 8, 2020 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

As the coronavirus pandemic continues and we all settle into new routines, chances are that you and your family are experiencing some stress and anxiety around the state of the world and the uncertainty that comes with it. This situation can be especially challenging if your child is already dealing with high levels of anxiety and/or a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Plus, it can be tough to help kids stay calm when you’re not feeling so calm yourself!

But while online learning and guiding children’s education at home are certainly unfamiliar hurdles for many families, the good news is that they can also be great vehicles for practicing anxiety management. There are lots of helpful tools out there for helping manage children’s anxiety, but it can be hard to find ways to actually practice them in day-to-day life. By making the most of your child’s new at-home school day, you can build anxiety management into daily routines and help your child develop healthy habits that will be help them keep their cool for years to come.

Set Daily Intentions

Studies show that children tend to benefit when they have clear—and high!—expectations to live up to. That doesn’t mean that you need to hold your child to an unrealistically high standard, but it does mean that they should know what’s expected of them each and every day. This is especially true now, when the lack of commitments outside the home can make kids feel like the days are all the same and the stakes are low. In turn, that sense of not knowing what to expect can exacerbate kids’ anxiety.

Accordingly, one helpful anxiety management technique is to start each school day with a predictable ritual that makes it clear what the rest of the day will hold. This should include a few key components:

A quick review of what the day’s schedule will look like. What will your child do first? When will they take a break? What time is lunch?
A rundown of the tasks that will be completed. This might be a concrete goal (finish chapter 3, for instance) or a set amount of time devoted to a topic (read for 30 minutes).
An assessment of what supplies will be needed, and where your child can find them. Will they need a calculator, markers, or a timer? Work together to gather those supplies now so that your child doesn’t have to waste worry looking for them later.

Then, it’s also helpful to include a “bonus” in your child’s morning ritual, so that they—and you!—remember that the day can be as much about fun as anything else. Be creative here—what does your child enjoy and find exciting? This could be reading a bit of a favorite book, spending time playing with a pet, or checking on the plants growing on your terrace. Any quick activity that brings calm and focus to your child’s morning is a great way to start off the school day on the right foot.

Make the Most of Breaks

Having enough time to just breathe is a huge part of effective anxiety management. If your child feels pressured to focus and achieve every minute of the day, they’re likely to have higher levels of anxiety—especially now, when they might be scared about the pandemic and having difficulty processing their feelings.

That’s why it’s essential to take plenty of breaks during the remote school day. Depending on your child’s age and personality, you might schedule short breaks in between subjects, have one longer break in the middle of the day, or try a 50/50 model—for instance, 30 minutes of work followed by 30 minutes of play. Experiment with different break structures and see which one works best for your child. You can even use different structures on different days to break up the week; maybe one structure is for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while another is for Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Beyond just taking breaks, it’s also important to build anxiety management tools into your child’s breaks as much as you can. They might just want to reach for an iPad game—and sometimes, that’s completely okay! But you’ll also want to encourage them to use more focused stress-busting activities when you can. For example, this might include:

Having a quick dance party to a favorite song—music and physical activity can both help relieve anxiety!
Taking a walk outside or even just sitting by a window for some fresh air and sunshine.
Spending a bit of time on a creative project, whether that’s playing with clay for a few minutes or coloring in a drawing page.
“Meeting up” with a friend for a FaceTime snack break. Kids need to keep in touch with their loved ones just as much as you do!

By being purposeful about breaks and what your child does with them, you’ll make anxiety management a regular touchpoint throughout the day.

Celebrate Small Wins

During these unprecedented days of remote learning, it can be hard to know whether you and your family are “doing it right.” But rest assured—there’s no one right way to handle this situation! It’s important to emphasize this point to your children, whether they’re used to getting straight As or struggling with the new requirements of online learning. Just by getting through the days during this uncertain time, kids and families alike are reaching a meaningful goal that deserves to be celebrated, and marking achievements (even ones that might seem small) is another great way to practice anxiety management.

To do this, try closing out your child’s school day with a rundown of what went well that day. These might be academic milestones, like a good grade on an online quiz, but it’s also helpful to guide your child in celebrating other kinds of success. For instance, did your child demonstrate any of these positive behaviors today?

Sticking with a challenging task
Helping out around the house
Caring for a pet or sibling
Coming up with a creative idea
Being quiet or focused when asked

Any chance you have to compliment your child and focus on how they’re succeeding is a chance to support anxiety management, so make this a daily habit to round out the school day on a positive note.

It’s an overwhelming time for most of us, and anxiety management is really critical. If there are any ways our team can help to support your family with online learning, school planning, or parent coaching, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

By Hannah Sheldon-Dean, MSW and Private Tutor, Brad Hoffman, MS.Ed. and CEP, and Faya Hoffman, M.A. and CEP

Online Learning: Supporting Elementary Students

March 21, 2020 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

The COVID-19 pandemic took us all by surprise. As we collectively braced ourselves for a different reality and adjusted to our new normal, our students’ school experience changed dramatically and shifted to online learning. Educators around the country took to the internet and quickly engineered a classroom experience without the classroom.

As we all swiftly settle into the world of online learning, it becomes increasingly essential that we equip elementary students with the tools and know-how to be capable, independent remote learners. Furthermore, it is pivotal that families have the tools and skill set to help support elementary students in that transition. For those only familiar with the traditional classroom experience, remote learning can be a daunting new world.

What is online learning?

Online learning takes on many forms and is largely responsive to the needs of the learning community–what works for teaching a group of fifth graders may be entirely useless during a private tutoring session with a first grader. The utility of each platform and set-up for remote learning is as unique as the students and teachers themselves.

Although new to many outside the educational field, the world of online learning was thriving well before we sat quarantined in our homes. Educators, school based and at-home, have utilized online platforms as a practical medium for teaching for years, often as a supplement to classroom instruction or a bridge between in-person tutoring sessions. So, while for many families, this may feel like uncharted terrain, most teachers and tutors have an expansive understanding of remote learning and have used it regularly to build their students’ skills and complement their curriculum.

We can classify nearly all digital learning as being either synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous learning allows educators and students to come together in real time to deliver instruction, discuss understanding, and provide feedback. Asynchronous learning enables educators and students to work on tasks at different times. Most traditional schools use a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning to replicate the classroom experience and move through curriculum. You might find your student’s online learning experience to reflect this combination, with a menu of self-guided tasks alongside a daily or weekly expectation to log on for live instructional streams from their teacher or tutor.

Asynchronous virtual learning is an expansive domain, covering everything from self-guided video lessons to skill-based learning games. Your student’s teacher or tutor is likely pulling from a number of resources to create a full and rich online curriculum to meet their learning goals. Just like in a classroom, some skills, such as building multiplication fact fluency, might be best practiced independently in game play with digital feedback, while others, such as multiplying fractions, are best left to a guided, video-based tutorial.

What does online private tutoring, or e-tutoring, look like?

Similar to the classroom experience, online tutoring is responsive to students and their individual learning needs. Tutors still work to provide individualized, dynamic support to students, often using synchronous, video-based instruction as the platform for learning. Video conferencing platforms allow screenshares and digital whiteboarding, so tutors are able to provide a full range of interactive and visual support during their session. By integrating digital slides and whiteboards into instruction, tutors are able to recreate the physical session experience, providing immediate feedback on students’ work and interacting instantaneously in response to their questions, comments, and concerns. Online tutoring can also add value to tutoring in ways that are hard to replicate when working on paper and pen. For example, tutors can support students’ writing process in real time as they work through an essay, providing organizational support and feedback nearly immediately on a digital document. A session spent working on the organization of online documents and folders through screen sharing can help students maintain order and build independence as they transition to becoming full-time remote learner.

How can I support my elementary student’s transition to online learning?

The unexpected move to fully remote learning is a big transition for everyone. Students, educators, and families all play a role in making sure that virtual learning is successful and impactful. Families can support their young students by building technological independence and keeping structured routines in the days ahead.

Most elementary school students are still growing comfortable on laptops and tablets. Giving your student practice in the basics of navigating the internet will prove exponentially useful in the coming days. Parents can host their own child in an online conference call using Zoom, Hangout, or Facetime. During this time, help familiarize them with the basic features of the platform–how to join, hang up, make the screen bigger or smaller, and react to items. Your child’s tutor or teacher might provide a similar tutorial, but it doesn’t hurt to get a head start. Especially with younger students, you may need to work alongside them in the beginning stages of online learning. But, fade that support quickly. Just because you can be there to help does not mean you should be there to help. Just like any other skill, gaining competence as a remote learner comes through exploration and making mistakes.

Routinizing the online learning experience will prove invaluable in the long run. While online classrooms and tutoring sessions might feel novel now, it is likely that students will be learning remotely for at least the next several weeks. Set a routine that works for your household schedule and stick to it. Allowing students to build their own schedule from a menu of necessities and options will not only provide them with agency during a stressful time but also build their capacity to manage their own time and tasks.

What do I need to make online learning successful in my home?

First and foremost, set up a permanent, designated learning station in your home. This should be outfitted with a Desktop, laptop and/or tablet, paper and writing tools, and any school books your student might need while working. If they already have a desk in their bedroom, make sure to clean off unnecessary materials or distractions before launching online learning. You may also want to consider having the workspace face a wall or set up a small privacy divider (easily made out of file folders) around the area–distractions are plentiful in a home environment and you want to minimize them.

It is also an ideal time to place an online supply order. Elementary school classrooms are well stocked with supplementary supplies and tools, ones that are often not present in the home. You will also want to invest in a headset with built-in microphone, if you don’t already have one. In addition to helping your student focus on the content, it will also optimize their participation in live sessions. A small white board and dry erase markers are also vital tools. They allow your student to show their thinking to teachers and tutors in an efficient way during live stream sessions. Writing paper, either with raised lines or traditional, is also essential. As students adjust to online math instruction, having manipulatives at home will also be crucial. Start with Base 10 Blocks, a Ruler, Fraction Circles, Fraction Towers, Wooden Geometric Solids, and Attribute Blocks.

And finally, the most important tool in this transition is your approach. Encouraging students to be flexible and adaptive learners on this new, unscheduled adventure is important. They will take their approach and outlook on remote learning from you. So, gear up, and lean in!

By Marisa Krohn, Ed.M. and Learning Specialist, and Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and Learning Specialist