SPED in the Time of Coronavirus - Part 3

Part 3. Instruct to Clarify

A main role of special education teachers is to reteach content to help students process and master new concepts. In these times of remote learning, technology offers teachers several ways to directly and implicitly instruct students explaining material clearly so they can grasp and process it. The hope is that these ideas will allow teachers to recreate the best parts of teaching in the classroom: helping students acquire a sense of mastery and growth in their skills.

One way I did this was by using a website called Screencastify.com that has a free Chrome extension that allows you to narrate your Google Slides presentation. The free version only allows five minutes of recorded video but I have found the shorter and quicker the video the better to keep my students’ attention. I have used it to explain Google Slide presentations explaining content and concepts and to review the steps to follow to create projects, activities and assignments. It is also easy to upload these onto your Google Classroom site. It allows you to guide your students through the material in a way where they can both hear you and see the information.

Another way is to make videos on your phone of you, the teacher, demonstrating concepts and reteaching content, showing how to solve math problems or modeling how to do an assignment by taping yourself following each step of the directions.  In these videos, you can focus on the paper and your audio explanation is off screen or you can show yourself on screen talking directly to your students. Save these videos and share with students through your district’s LMS (learning management system) such as Google Classroom or directly to a student through their email. 

A third idea is to host a Zoom audio meeting using the white board feature. This way you can narrate what you are doing or explain a concept as you write notes on the white board. It allows you to deliver instruction in both audio and visual modalities. It mimics the way Khan academy videos deliver instruction where your voice is off screen and you can use the whiteboard to demonstrate the concept visually. This video describes how to use the whiteboard feature on Zoom: How to use the Whiteboard in Zoom

Lastly, teachers can use YouTube videos that are already made to explain concepts.The only thing I have found is that you have to choose them carefully and preview them. I call it the Goldilocks approach. Some have content that is too easy, some that is too detailed and some that does not align with the district’s curriculum. You have to find the video that is just right. That can take lots of time. Here is where it helps to share resources with your colleagues so not everyone has to spend hours hunting through YouTube. I have found that some videos have narrators who speak too fast for my students. I use the settings function in YouTube to reduce the speed and also add closed captioning so students can read and follow along with the video.

Together, all these posts have focused on the key aspects of what it means to explicitly teach and instruct students in these times. The goal is to incorporate the best parts of teaching special education students - supporting, motivating and clarifying- in an on-line setting. By using available technology and sharing resources, teachers can focus on the heart of what it means to truly teach in this time of the coronavirus. Hopefully, these ideas can allow us to stay passionate about our job even if we cannot be face-to-face with our students.