5 Tips for Distance Learning

Distance learning is hard! What is working? 

Tip 1: Mathematize Kids’ World

“We cannot bring ‘our school’ into a student’s home. Rather, we have to bring their home into our school,” says Liz Romero, who invites students to send her pictures for math routines such as Notice/Wonder or How Many.

This allows students to get to know one another while engaging in mathematics. Ideas about categorization, what is measurable, and how to count come up naturally, along with community-building connections (“I have toy cars too!”).

“I love the low-floor high-ceiling aspect of number talk images, particularly for parents with multiple children learning at home,” says 2nd grade teacher Stefanie Mathewson. “Making space to see the nuances in the pictures cracks certain images wide open as fertile soil for early counting and sophisticated groupings at the same time.”

Tip 2: Less is More

Did you notice how Liz’s request (“Send me some mathy pictures from your home”) increases student ownership while decreasing her workload? Now she’s got a month’s worth of pictures to discuss with her students. Also, those pictures easily become the context to story problems: Aisha has 24 toy cars, each with 4 wheels. How many wheels are there?

Open Questions are another “less is more” favorite. Instead of giving students a worksheet to complete (something you have to find/recreate each time), try giving students an open question like “___ groups of 8 is ____” and having them fill in both blanks. Students will be riffing off of patterns they notice while differentiating for themselves. One type of open question is Ways to Make (also called Number of the Day), where you give students a number and they can use any operation to play with algebraic relationships. Here are two examples from Alejandra Biolatto’s 5th grade class (don’t let this example stop you from trying it in Kindergarten, though):

Another routine with built-in differentiation is Counting Collections. There are some advantages to doing this routine remotely, since students get to choose:

  • what to count (sharpening their eye for quantities at home) 
  • how to organize/group their collection (an important mathematical choice) 
  • how to communicate (drawing, equations, photograph with annotation, video, etc).
  • the pace 

Here’s a brief video describing Counting Collections at home:

Tip 3: Use Tasks That Reveal Student Thinking

Tasks can reveal or conceal student thinking. Let’s examine a task from Kristin Welch’s 3rd grade class. The number options, like (2, 13), indicate which numbers students can put on the first and second blank (“2 children want to share 13 bite-sized pies…”).

Kristin started with a full-screen pie photo and asked “what do you notice?” Then, she read the story and sent students off to work independently. As they solved she conferred with students and carefully selected student work to discuss with the whole group. Here is some student thinking revealed through this task:

Do you notice what is missing when Kristin sent her students off to work? Directions about how to model, how to solve, and how to think. When we (or worksheets) require specific models, strategies, and ways of thinking we inadvertently limit what the task can reveal. 

Imagine if Kristin had stipulated a particular model. Not only would that undercut students’ ownership of modeling mathematics (SMP #4), we would likely miss out on the beautiful ideas represented in the pictures above: deep understandings about the two units (pies and people are clearly visible and distinct from one another), their relationship (the arrows show who gets what), and the connection between fractions and whole-number division (often lost with tools such as fraction bars). 

Sometimes I worry that without directions (“solve in 2 ways, write an equation,” etc.) students will share less thinking. It might feel counter-intuitive, then, that a blank page – an open canvas – will reveal more student thinking, not less.

For more, Arantzxa Barrios and Lauren Carr regularly reflect on tasks from their remote math instruction.

Tip 4: Pencil and Paper are Still Supreme

“I treat distance learning like a supply chain problem, not a teaching problem,” says Alejandra. “I knew they could do math in a notebook and I just needed to figure out the tech for us to share our thinking.”

I love taking digital notes, and there is a lot of promise to collaborative digital whiteboards, but I have yet to see anything come close to good-old pencil and paper (or whiteboard and marker). 

The pencil and paper is familiar to students. Plus, we’re likely to see more of their thinking. Students in Kristin’s class were allowed to write on a digital whiteboard or take a picture of their written work. The students who used pencil/paper showed about twice as much work as students who represented on the digital whiteboard.

As we explored in Tip 3, a blank page invites students to choose how to model, how to solve, and how to communicate their thinking. For more, check out Jenna Laib’s post about the value of blank space.

Tip 5: Use Pictures and Videos to Engage Students in Each Other’s Ideas

It is easier than ever to use pictures of student work to engage the class in discussion. Have a student who is feeling shy today? Cover the name and have the class notice and wonder. Want students to focus on a particular aspect of a detailed piece of work? Cover everything but that part and notice and wonder.

Want to keep everyone engaged while one student’s work is shared? Have the class make predictions about what that student did, then have the student share their thinking. I’ve heard gasps and cheers from classes engaged in this type of discussion. Who doesn’t like the suspense of trying to mind-read? 

During in-person instruction you might only hear from a portion of your class during turn-and-talks or conferencing. Video submissions allow you to hear from every student and strategically pick ideas to discuss. We can pause a video and have the class notice and wonder about one part of an explanation or predict what will happen next. 

Also, depending on your platform, students can see and comment on each other’s work more easily than they can in person.

Conclusion

Last word goes to Stefanie: “I am dedicated to teaching with the same philosophies and principles that guided my practice in the face to face classroom. I still listen emphatically to my kids, encourage them to make sense, revise, connect, delight, and wonder. Above all, learning needs to be fun. Keeping the authentic math conversations going during this isolated time keeps engagement, community, and enjoyment high.”

Thank you to these inspiring educators for their contribution to this post:

If you’d like to continue the conversation, here are links on Twitter and Facebook. What would you add to the list of tips?