One thing I learned from teaching both remotely and in-person at the same time was the power of video lessons. Although I have used video lessons frequently over the years in social studies, my use of them in ELAR was pretty slim. That all changed last year. Honestly, it happened on accident.
One day early on in the year, I was frankly just feeling exhausted during the last rotation of the day. I just didn’t have it in me to teach the writing mini-lesson again. So, I asked the class to watch the lesson I had recorded for my remote students and then tell me what they learned. I didn’t ask them to take notes or write anything down because we had other things to do that day. I expected it to go pretty quickly because the lesson was over something relatively easy. I am not 100 percent sure of the topic that day, but it was perhaps common and proper nouns.
The quick lesson turned into the majority of my writing time that afternoon, but it was well worth it. We all know that students zone out and get distracted. Holy Wow. I did not know how much. The lesson video was perhaps 3 minutes long over a concept that wasn’t new to fourth grade. Many of the students couldn’t tell me one single thing from the video. So, I told them to watch it again and raise their hand when they could tell me about it.
Some students took notes. Some students watched the video five or six times. In the end, everyone really, knew what the lesson was about. Everyone.
I used this strategy for the rest of the year on almost every new grammar/punctuation/capitalization concept. I don’t feel this would be useful in most other forms of writing mini-lesson because it is so important to model the thinking-writing process when teaching the writing genres or writing traits. However, I am telling you, it worked miracles with the more rule-based concepts.
Not only did it help them truly learn so many editing-based rules, it also improved their listening skills by leaps and bounds. By mid-year, most students could watch the lesson video just once.
If you have the technology available, I highly recommend giving this method a chance.
Teaching Without Twitching 