Siena Blog

Preparing for your student’s first day of school and year looks very different than past years. Instead of looking for a new backpack and lunch box, you are searching for an optimal space for your child to learn at home, in addition to gathering supplies that not only will help them learn but also make their learning environment inviting and fun.

Preparing Home Learning Spaces

As you prepare your student’s more permanent learning space in your home, are you considering what this looks and feels like for them? Have students reflect on what worked well for them this past spring; it will be meaningful to check in with them about possible changes to their learning spaces that can help them both academically and emotionally.

Depending on your child's age, you may use all or some of these questions and conversation starters:

• How do you best learn?
• Where in the house do you want to do school daily?
• What would be most comfortable for you?
• Do you need to have a variety of different positions and locations to learn? How could you help create a flexible learning space? 
• Do you need to move all or part of your body during school?
• Do you want to be by yourself or with another person when in school?
• What will be distracting for you? What will help you focus during school?
• What supplies/materials do you need and want for your learning space?
• How do you want to organize those supplies?
• What rules or boundaries should we have for computer usage, beyond your school’s rules?
• Is your child left-handed? If so, read this Siena School blog post on left-handers learning from home.
• What will remind you daily to smile? 
  • Something from school? 
  • A family picture? 
  • A childhood memento or knickknack? 
  • A stuffed animal?

Distance Learning Ideas

When you have this conversation with your child, enter it with a mindset of collaboration, with each of you a member of a team working towards an outcome of establishing the best learning space for them this year. Most importantly, have fun working on this project together.

For ideas to engage with your child in this conversation, read this New York Times article by Melanie Pinola. She not only gives great ideas for establishing this space and its boundaries but also provides links to possible supplies that may help set up your child's learning environment. For a refresher on distance learning tools and tips, read Ms. Darefsky's March blog post on distance learning ideas and tools.

Stress management and self-care tools are needed for our students in normal times, but it’s especially important to offer these tools now. 

How do we as educators and counselors keep teaching students about self-care and stress reduction when so much has changed—and continues to do so? When possible, practicing the following exercises virtually alongside our students allows them to feel the benefits in the moment and take them outside class time. 

 Mindful breathing: While teaching the biology of deep breathing and its activation of the parasympathetic nervous system can be helpful, practicing the following breathing exercises can allow students to feel a sense of calm immediately after the practice. Some breathing exercises to note are:

• 4-7-8 breathing,
• 5-finger breathing, 
• shape breathing (such as square breathing),
• hand tracing breathing, 
• infinity breathing, 
• extending the exhale by one or two breaths, 
• taking 10 deep breaths. 

Progressive muscle relaxation: You can guide students through a brief relaxation exercise of tensing specific muscle groups and then relaxing that muscle group completely. Continue this from head to toes. This is a great stress reliever that students can easily do on their own.

 Mindfulness: There are numerous ways to practice mindfulness, many of which our students might be doing every day. Grounding exercises help students better understand the concept of paying attention to the present moment without judgment. A simple way to introduce the concept of mindfulness is to have students practice the 5 senses by naming:

• 5 things they can see, 
• 4 things they can hear, 
• 3 things they can feel, 
• 2 things they can smell, and 
• 1 thing they can taste.  

 Positives: Research has shown us that when people list 3 Good Things that happened during their day for a period of at least two weeks, they have lower stress and anxiety. Having students list 3 Good Things, big or small, regularly encourages them to focus on the positives in their lives. For instance, Siena teachers and students shared some early positives from our move to distance learning. 

 Gratitude: Ask students to write a letter of gratitude during a class and what they appreciate about a person, object, topic—or even themselves. 

 Emotion check-in: Create a routine in which students label how they are feeling. This can be done through a Google form or in other creative ways; educators can offer new emotional vocabulary to help students expand their (evolving) feelings. 

Controlling what they can: Ask students to draw a circle on a page and write things they can control inside the circle: e.g., their attitude, their perspective, their hygiene, their next meal or drink, how they spend their time, how they care for themselves, and so on. On the outside of the circle, ask students to write things they cannot control at this time; e.g., how others act, the virus, when things will open, etc. Identifying what they can and can’t control can help assuage students’ anxiety, as well as ground them in the moment.

 Creative projects: Often when students engage in creative endeavors, they are naturally practicing mindfulness. After working on a project, ask students to reflect on how they felt while doing it. 

 Movement: Whenever possible, add movement into your lessons. For example, there are many chair yoga poses or other quick bursts of movement that students can do. See this blog post from Siena for how teachers keep students (and themselves!) moving during online classes.

 Self-care: Ask about your students’ self-care routines. Encourage them to name ways they take care of themselves. Normalize self-care and allow students to share this with one another; hearing from their peers may just encourage them to adopt a new tool. If they’re reticent about sharing, consider giving them some suggestions based on your own self-care techniques. (See below for an example of a weekly wellness challenge.) 

Anxiety management and attention to mental health will continue to be important in the coming weeks and months. Getting students to think now about self-care and anxiety management not only helps them finish the school year; it also sets them up for similar practices in the summer when they might miss the structure of school. 

As teachers, counselors, parents, and others in students’ support networks are caring for our whole selves, we can keep ensuring that students know how to care for themselves and others. 

I know my students are engaged when their eyes light up and they can’t sit still while waiting their turn to contribute ideas! — Siena teacher

A key tactic for me is to try to get my students to laugh. If they laugh at my jokes, it means they are really with me. — Siena teacher

In the classroom and online, ensuring that students are engaged is always important for teachers. Using multisensory teaching methods and getting students (and themselves) moving helps teachers maintain engagement, especially during distance learning. 

Student Engagement in Online Learning

But what does an engaged student look and sound like remotely? Siena's teachers shared their top suggestions. Here are some ways that teachers could be looking and listening for engagement to assess whether students are taking initiative and feeling invested in the material:

 Verbal Cues

• Asking engaging or clarifying questions 
• Excitedly sharing their work 
• Participating in discussions
• Quickly responding to questions and/or providing thoughtful answers
• Eagerly volunteering to read out loud, share what they’ve written, and/or respond to a question
• Giving good verbal feedback to classmates, as well as personalizing responses
• Directly asking for individual assistance via breakout rooms, chat, or after class

 Visual Cues and Body Language

• Looking (and smiling) at the computer screen
• Raising hands to speak, waving, or giving a thumbs up
• Laughing and/or moving at appropriate times
• Leaning forward when they’re excited to talk
• Nodding or shaking their heads when agreeing or disagreeing with classmates
• Holding up or showing work they want to discuss
• Standing up to signal they’re done with something a teacher has asked them to do 
• Smiling at a joke (even if it’s terrible)
• Signing “I agree” (ASL with thumb and pinky extended)
• Signing “I have something to add” (ASL with fists on top of each other, used when a student wants to add on to a discussion)
• Raising their index (“pointer”) finger to show they have a point to add
• Not having the telltale bluish glow from another device on their faces 

Actions Showing Initiative 

• Keeping up with the notes or shared Google Doc and helping their peers
• Having productive conversations in Zoom breakout rooms
• Eagerly showing that they’ve met a class goal
• Wanting to share anecdotes about their distance learning experiences 
• Sharing clear, thoughtful responses in learning platforms like Kahoot or Pear Deck
• Utilizing the reaction emoji through Zoom 
• Requesting individual teacher feedback in person and then scheduling a meeting time
• Enthusiastically reading aloud and then saying “Pass” (the next person must pick up where they left off)
• In general, teachers agree that students’ expressions go with the lesson: if there’s sudden laughter or their eyes are regularly off screen, they’re probably not as engaged as they should be. 

Strategies for Increasing Student Engagement

Here are some engagement checks and strategies that teachers can do when they’re not in the same physical space as their students. These can be adapted for various class topics and sizes: 

• Regularly polling students informally, such as by asking for a fist-to-five rating of how well they understand the material
• Asking students to respond to a check for understanding with a thumbs up (“I get it!”), thumbs down (“I don’t get it”), or thumbs sideways (“I sort of get it”)
• Stopping the lesson a little early to parse out students who need additional clarity or instruction; offering an individual or small breakout session for those needing help
• Giving immediate feedback on assignments or other student-created material (which helps with retention)
• Adding voice comments to provide further feedback to a Google Doc; having the students respond in kind 
• Asking students to participate in a content-based scavenger hunt (which also gets them moving)
• Having foreign-language students (1) conduct interviews in whatever language they’re studying and (2) develop vocabulary list based on items in their home (optional: sharing pictures of the items)
• Arranging student-led discussions for a given week
• Letting some students do independent work, while others have a discussion in a breakout room (teachers can then flip the groupings after 10–15 minutes)
• Asking students to share their screens for everyone to see a project they’re working on
• Creating a master reference document for students to collaborate on
• Encouraging book club sharing to get students both reading and talking enthusiastically about what they’ve read. (Optional: the host can spotlight the video of whichever student is reading or presenting.) This helps students know they’re being seen and heard in a virtual classroom. 
• Developing assignments that ask for creativity and engagement with the text in a book or other reading; creating buzzwords that require inflection or particular phrasing
• Deciding on actions for certain words—in particular for read-aloud activities—and then having the students perform the action whenever they hear the word
• Employing grammar lessons to create movements associated with punctuation—e.g., clapping at periods, snapping fingers at commas

On Zoom, teachers can create multiple breakout rooms to provide more individualized instruction and offer clarification to small groups. Teachers can also use learning sites such as Kahoot and Extempore to maintain (or increase) student engagement. 

Visit our website for more of Siena’s distance learning resources, including blog posts about teaching math and art remotely and using technology effectively in science classes.