What counts as “showing up” to class when you’re learning remotely?

Helping our students become the thoughtful, problem-solvers of tomorrow.

“Present!”

“Here!”

As teachers we started every day with attendance: checking off that a student came to school. Back then, this was enough. Getting them through those school doors was all you needed to do to ensure that they would learn something that day.

“Showing up” in remote settings looks entirely different.

Delivering synchronous learning isn’t possible for many schools. We can’t assume all students can transition to online schooling at the drop of hat. Expecting that assumes all students have equal access to devices and quality internet. On top of that, asynchronous learning is a big ask for K-12 students when most are still developing the self-discipline skills necessary for this style of learning to be effective.

We need to rethink what “attendance” means in this environment. A student who “shows up” is one who can provide evidence of their learning for that day. Before they can tackle academics, they need support and structure around those self-discipline skills, specifically executive functioning skills. In the classroom, we teachers create structure and routine for our students to work within. We provide a lot of planning and organization, often determine how time will be managed and allocated, and keep our students regulated and focused. How do we create the same environment remotely?

Maybe we don’t. Maybe we take this opportunity to teach our students how to build these structures themselves.

To support teachers in this endeavour, we’ve created a number of free resources that hold students accountable for their daily and weekly activities and help teachers keep track of student progress remotely. Putting forth a digital/editable calendar, productivity charts or daily schedules may help keep students on track.

project timelines and milestones

shape of the day

ghantt charts

scrum board

Looking for ways to track a student’s daily effort and engagement digitally? A Spinndle student shares their process (ideas, drafts, iterations) to their peers to feedforward in their projects, thereby holding them accountable to “show up” in this self-paced environment.