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My school has been hybrid since September, but here are many schools that have been virtual since last year. With many starting to return to in-person hybrid learning I want to share some of my advice, tips and resources for teaching in the hybrid classroom! My school is a Google for Education school so those platforms will be mentioned, but the ideas I will share are still applicable to non-Google instructional platforms as well.
I teach high school (9th grade) Algebra 1. My students are mostly general education and I only have a co-teacher for one class. When we returned in September I felt like the task of joining my virtual students with my in-person students seemed to take hundreds of clicks and an excessive number of minutes of wasted time at the start of class. I was not confident with the quality of our Wi-Fi, or the quality of my students Wi-Fi. Now know this - I am NO expert, but I’ve gathered some really great systems, strategies, Chrome extensions and protocols that have made the chaos of hybrid learning more organized. In today's post I'll be focusing on my systems. They're really applicable for any content area too!
My command center for hybrid teaching consists of two devices: I use my traditional desktop to present my screen. I join the Meet with my mic on mute and the desktop volume off. I then join again on my laptop with my mic and sound on. My laptop serves as my view of the virtual students and my audio and video connection to them. I keep my laptop near me so that the virtual students do not need to struggle to hear me and so that I can easily see if they raise their hand or offer something in the chat. If I were to be moving around the classroom more I would also suggest using Bluetooth headphones such as Airpods, or a microphone headset. I have colleagues that use both and it has helped the quality of audio for virtual students.
My materials are all digital. To be honest, I let students choose to take physical notes if they’d like, but the way that I teach and the materials that I push out to them are all digital. Even things like task cards have been made digital. If you want to check this out, you can see what I've made here. In two drastically different environments [at home and in school] I feel that having something be presented in the same point of view builds a connection that remains constant for both.
My posts and materials are scheduled. I do my best to schedule all the things that I push out to my students so I don’t have to manually post them when I am setting up or closing out. I have found that this saves me time and allows me to focus on greeting my students whether they are in-person or virtual.
My in-person students don’t usually join the Meet. Most times my students don’t log into the meet when they’re in-person mostly because they have to keep their battery alive for the full day. I have found other ways for those students to connect with the virtual students and I will share that later in this post.
I pre-record screencasts of all of my notes and hyperlink these videos to the notes. I have a screencast on each slide of notes (see photo above) to be proactive about Wi-Fi glitches, to support students who need material resaid and they come in handy as emergency sub plans! When we first went hybrid I started class all together then split up and leaned on this as my instruction for my virtual students until I felt comfortable enough to teach at the board to both of them. I also needed to gain the confidence that the WiFi connection would sustain the lesson, so once I saw that the Wi-Fi could handle me livestreaming my instruction, I used the screencasts as secondary resources and they were helpful for students who missed class.
I have an interactive agenda. My “daily slides” are my interactive agenda for each class. The appearance allows me to give my virtual students the feel of my classroom and the resources such as anchor charts and posters. I post the learning objective and I have the agenda listed. A moveable PNG pin allows me to mark where we are at in the lesson, which is great for virtual students who enter class late.
My set-up is more efficient thanks to some Chrome extensions. I started the year using TabCloud to mark the tabs I needed for each class. This was helpful as I was traveling to different rooms and opening up different desktops all day long. I have since started to use folders on the Bookmark Bar above and if you right-click the folder of tabs you can choose to open all tabs. It’s saved me so much time! I also love Mute Tab which allows me to...mute any tab! I have found this to be helpful when I open breakout rooms (through nicknames, not the ones embedded in Google Meet) for students and don’t want to hear all of them at once.
The next post of this series will be How I Engage ALL Learners in the Hybrid Algebra 1 Classroom. Sign up on my email list to get notified when the post goes up!
Share your questions, comments and experiences in the comments below!
Share you wins and challenges of hybrid teaching!
What is your go-to tool?
What questions do you have about hybrid teaching?
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