Improving Quality in Virtual Teaching Across a Network: Part 1 — Planning
Network Superintendent, St. Louis Public Schools
How do we get high quality content in front of every child in every classroom, everyday. This is what keeps me up at night.
The Pointed Problem: Increasing Rigor Amid Remote Learning
When her district transitioned to virtual instruction, Jeanine Zitta was concerned by what she saw. Weak classroom material, mixed technology skills, and an unclear vision for what exceptional remote instruction should look like led many teachers to fill learning time with whatever they could find. In most of the nine elementary schools she oversees, that meant students losing ground on the academic progress they had made.
Looking ahead to the fall, where remote instruction would likely continue, she knew she had to do something to ensure all students received rigorous instruction. She was adamant that every student engage in rigorous lessons using quality materials, and with ample opportunities to practice and get feedback — every school day.
The Innovation: Building Digital Lesson Materials
To give teachers the support they needed, Zitta formed a “Curriculum Cohort” — a group of expert teachers assigned the task of translating curriculum-based lessons for the virtual environment. In one month, the group produced six-weeks’ worth of digital content, virtual instruction tools, and support materials that would be shared across her network of schools.
Her thinking: When teachers had rigorous, digital content they could turnkey into their own virtual instruction, they could then focus on teaching instead of lesson design — and students would be ensured strong instruction with strong materials, on a daily basis.
The Story: Activating a Development Team
Appealing to a Sense of Mission
To build content that supported quality instruction, Zitta sought out teachers who had already excelled in teaching the district’s standards-aligned math and ELA curricula. Having already built a deep understanding of the curricula and made classroom visits central to her work, she knew who these teachers were.
“I knew that I had teachers that I could trust to adapt great content to an online environment, because I knew that they had taught it well in their classrooms the prior year. They knew the texts, they knew the materials, and they knew the standards.”
With only a modest stipend to offer, Zitta stressed this was a chance to benefit not just their own students, but students across the district. She also pointed out this was work they were likely to do themselves anyways as they prepared their own lessons — why not share their great work with others?
Rather than try to manage 28 teachers herself (2 or more each in most subjects and grades), she also recruited three teachers to serve as content leads to coordinate the work of the grade level teachers in math, ELA grades K-2, and ELA grades 3–6.
Building around Teacher Needs
Zitta put on her teacher hat to clarify their task. She asked herself: what would be most helpful for teachers struggling to teach the curriculum virtually. With that in mind, she spelled out for the Curriculum Cohort what was she needed for each lesson:
- Decide what would be synchronous vs. asynchronous. In math, live instruction would focus on modeling and guided practice, with asynchronous for independent practice. In ELA, synchronous focused on discussion and comprehension; asynchronous on reading/listening to recordings and responding in writing.
- Determine pacing and flow. Some existing lesson plans ran 14 pages long. Zitta says they needed to be realistic about what teachers could get through in the virtual environment, where everything from giving directions to making lesson transitions takes longer. What she wasn’t willing to compromise on was the level of rigor and student engagement. Especially online, they had to keep students motivated.
- For synchronous learning, create a class presentation with collaborative activities and checks for understanding. For this they used the platform Nearpod, which allows for advancing images, issuing polls, playing recordings, and working problems on shared screens.
- For asynchronous learning, create notebooks for student work. For this, they created Classroom Notebooks with Microsoft Teams and OneNote. This would allow students to work math problems or respond to readings online while teachers monitored the work in real-time.
She asked for daily pacing guides within a week, and all digital content in less than a month.
The Result: Grateful Teachers, Better Teaching
The resulting materials included virtual lesson plan guidance with suggested language for launching each activity, look -fors for monitoring student work, and suggestions for differentiation. Zitta’s message to teachers: “use this as a starting point; make it better.”
Teachers were overwhelmingly appreciative when presented with the materials. As one teacher wrote, in response to being asked what was most helpful: “All the content that was already created so that we could focus on how to present instead of trying to make it.”
This teacher feedback was precisely aligned to Zitta’s goal: “I want them to spend time on high quality execution — practicing what this looks like in a virtual environment.”
Read how the Curriculum Cohort trained teachers in using the content in Part 2.
Taking it Back to Your School
Supporting Consistency in Virtual Teaching
- To what extent do all students have the opportunity to engage in standards aligned, grade level tasks every day?
- What gaps exist, that if closed, would lead to stronger lesson planning across classrooms?
- Putting on your ‘teacher hat,’ why do these inconsistencies exist? Why are teachers struggling?
- Who in your school(s) can help refine and operationalize this vision? Who excels in teaching your curriculum? Who do you trust to carry out such a project?
- How will you clarify to your team what needs to be developed? What are the minimum specifications? What’s the timeline?
- How will you know if you are successful?
- Curriculum Cohort Kick-Off Presentation
Slide-deck from presentation Zitta used to recruit teachers to develop digital content to support virtual instructions. - Virtual 2nd Grade Math Lesson Planning Template
Example of support material the team created to support consistency and rigor in remote teaching.
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