Let’s face it! The quarantine 15 is a real thing! It’s because we’re sitting on our backsides in front of the computer all day long. Students and teachers are used to getting up and moving around the classroom. We need that oxygen moving through our brains to think clearly and stay engaged. 

 How can we incorporate movement during online learning? 

 It’s going to benefit our waistlines and chins, as well as our brains if we can think of ways to get moving during online instruction. In a GLAD classroom, there are multiple times throughout the day where we move students from their seats.  We move to the carpet.  Students stand when reporting an answer. We all move during chants and other strategies. We encourage you to continue those practices online. 

When students are reporting an answer during synchronous learning, have them stand. Teach them to back up a little bit so they’re still in the camera view. 

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Asset-based instruction and ensuring equal access for all students are cornerstones of the OCDE Project GLAD® model.  

In order to create an inclusive environment with equal access, the teacher has to consider: 

• Logistics - where students are seated and who they're grouped with
• Relationship building - student to student, teacher to student, and with families
• Pedagogical considerations - using best practices to make content accessible for your grade level. 

During online learning, technological access creates an added challenge to equity.  

Districts are already struggling with hardware and internet access for all students and staff. But that's not all. The very practice of a video conference in a synchronous digital classroom is creating issues of inequity. Now that the classroom is being brought into the home, our homes and the homes of our students are front and center and all of the inequalities can be visually witnessed by all.  

The Project GLAD® model embeds classroom, team, and individual management strategies that create interaction in the classroom. Students practice language with teams and partners. They move around the classroom to bring oxygen and glucose to the brain that stimulates thinking. Students are provided daily opportunities for decision making and problem solving. Respectful, interactive, language-rich classrooms are the result.

 How can teachers move interactive management practices to an online setting?

 In our GLAD® classrooms we create heterogenous mixed ability groupings of 3 or 4 students. These teams allow students to put heads together and share their thinking, listen to others’ thinking, reading, and problem solving, as well as come up with team responses for reporting out an answer.

When teaching in an online setting, the teacher would create a list of heterogenous grouped students, but instead of seating students together in a classroom setting, these...

Preparing for the new school year means paying more attention to your physical space and structures for student interaction than ever before. Each school has chosen a plan for physical distancing and now it’s your job to make that happen. All those great cooperative learning strategies you’ve been using will need some rethinking, too.

Can you do GLAD® in a physically distanced classroom?

There are many options for schools to bring students back safely. The CDC’s recommendation is a plan called the Bubble Strategy. This strategy limits exposure to an isolated population reducing the risk of transmission to the rest of the school.

The same group of students would stay together all day in the same classroom with the same teacher(s). They would eat lunch in the classroom and would forgo specials, like library and PE. One iteration of the Bubble Strategy even calls for students to isolate with this group for recess.

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Blurting here, blurting there, blurting, blurting everywhere!

You are not alone. Every classroom is filled with internal and EXTERNAL processors.

How do we meet the needs of both?

How do we encourage a language rich environment where students are talking but not blurting?

First, resign yourself to the fact that a GLAD classroom is a noisy classroom. Scary sentence, we know. But it's language with purpose: guided, rich, surrounded with support and focused on the topic at hand.

GLAD classrooms have parameters in place to structure language and provide the internal processing and wait time other students need.

Ready to tame the blurting beast?!

Consider these 4 TIPS to promote language acquisition while taming the blurting beast:

1. TALK IT OUT

Language acquisition requires talking - LOTS of talking!

Either we provide structured time to talk or our external processors will incorporate it themselves. Consider going through your lesson plans for the...