How do you create online lessons that K-12 students love?

Make them interactive in any way you can. H5P activities, games, fun platforms like Kahoot or Quizzes, let them enjoy competing with each other. I create badges and award them achievement badges when they successfully cover modules and pass the competency assessment.

To help young students excel in online learning, they need access to student-friendly platforms. I love using Seesaw with my students. It is very easy to adapt lessons so all students can be successful.

The best example I’ve seen of online learning is when gaming is involved. Anything that creates a small competition, breaking a record, or a challenge creates engagement. I once had Spanish students use a video game to learn Spanish and they were extremely engaged. Many educators look down on video games, but when it comes to online learning, there is no better source of engagement.

Our district uses an online platform and while it offers key content that aligns with all state standards it does have its limitations. Online lessons need to be adaptable and be able to meet the needs of all students. When a platform is not adaptable or doesn’t allow for differentiation it’s not going to meet the unique needs of the entire student population.

Using constant informal, assessments and check-ins with students throughout instruction will keep the teacher informed of engagement level. Also, frequent and fun brain breaks interspersed with short periods of work and instruction are important for student motivation and confidence levels.

Create lessons that engage students in creative ways. For music instruction, I created a lesson which included recording sounds around you. Getting out in nature and using listening skills. To record simple sounds, students can use Flip Grid.

Common tools: MS Whiteboard tool Office 365/G Docs Zoom/Teams/Skype/G Meets Learning management tool: Moodle for higher education or any other assigned by your school Subject-specific tools: There are plenty of subject-specific tools for Arts, Maths, Social studies or science. A few useful tools for the tech teacher could be: replit GitHub codepen code.org

One of my favorite tools to use is the quizizz.com platform. It’s a great low pressure way to assess student comprehension on a variety of subjects, and it makes the quizzes feel more like a game. I have used this daily for reading comprehension quizzes in a special day class and seen significant improvement of scores over time.

One of my favorite platforms to use as a high school health teacher is Nearpod. There are many features you can use to engage learners of all levels. You can use it as an independent paced or instructor paced lesson and have access to a report of student response/engagement.

Choosing the right tools is really important. For example first graders O365 environment will be too difficult. So you have to use something more intuative like Seesaw that was mentioned before. I have also noticed that against general thoughts, every child is not tech savy. So be prepare to first teach how to use device and platform.

I always try to add something that the child is interested in to their problems. If the student loves soccer, I will incorporate that somehow into the problem. It peaks the students interests and sometimes I even learn something new about a subject.

I agree with Michaela, Making your topic/lesson relevant, will increase their engagement. This is a great way to get to know your students and build relationships. Building an open platform allows students to express their thoughts and not feel apprehensive about contributing their thoughts or ideas.

Imagine watching a YouTube video with one person sitting still and talking about a topic for 30 minutes and another person talking about the same topic with some additional visual aspects in their video such as GIFS, Animations or interactive graphics. Which one do you think will be more interesting? I would go for the second one. I always incorporate some collaboration tools where students can work together with their peers, I try to use interactive graphics rather than PPT which increases engagement, and I frequently use multimedia resources such as audio and video.

I agree with other writers. Lesson has to be relevant to students. Internet is full of material, so when you know your students, you have endless library of meaningfull content online.

I try to connect my lessons to what is physically in the child's current environment. Maybe you send them on a scavenger hunt to find objects in their home/surroundings that connect to your lesson's content. I try to find an opportunity in every lesson to get students up and on their feet, even if it's as simple as a quick game of charades based on the subject matter.

In my findings, it's often seen that pupils easily get demotivated during remote instructions due to the lack of constructive feedback or by getting delayed feedback from teachers. I used verbal/audio feedback for formative assessments and exam style formal feedback format or scoring guide for the senior school students which helps me to track their learning and keep them motivated as well. Also, I make sure the feedback is given to the pupils within the mentioned time frame to keep them active,

Incorporating tech to reward the students/group on the basis of the peer feedback in one of the best options to keep the class engaged. Furthermore, the specific groups should also be analyzed with the sort of quality questions they ask during the presentations of other groups. The class remain engaged and the collective learnings help the students in the best possible ways.

I also have used games, like Kahoot!, to assure that my students have learnt the topic. In that way they can get also feedback with fun way. But you also need to give instant verbal feedback when needed. Feedback should be supportive.

I try to incorporate peer feedback into my lessons as soon as possible. I challenge the kids to give each other specific compliments using buzzwords from the lessons. I used to give prizes/rewards for completing these challenges, but often find that building a culture of positive peer reinforcement (without prizes) bolsters the the intrinsic motivation to support each other which results in more authentic feedback.

I usually take students with me to plan the lessons and working methods. In nthat way they can commit better. Also I will give space for students thought and interaction. In online learninig you have to make the extra effort to create warm environment that really nuture also the connection between the students. That is one major thing I am planning at my current job.

In my experience, the application of the theoretical concepts teaches the students to the best possible extent. Forming groups to find a definite solution to a real life problem, post understanding the pros and cons and the feasibility of the applications of the solutions create a sense of connectedness amongst the students. The feedback of the end-user or subject for whom the solutions have designed, gives a sense of satisfaction to the students and that is like a real reward for them.

I have seen experienced teachers hating online teaching or feeling rusty. It can be overwhelming sometimes but, we all took it as a challenge during the Covid and adapted it as a skill. Just doing the things that you ask pupils to do which is being flexible, taking feedback, adaptive and resilient can help you excel and improve your online teaching and lesson planning game.

Response/interaction with students that engage in online learning activities will set a tone and encourage students to engage. There is a good feeling in someone else reading your thoughts/ideas. Have students respond (positively) to someone else's response. Let them learn how to "feed" off one another's knowledge and insight to add to the discussion. Much can be learned or at least pondered in this way.

I love this idea because there’s been so many lessons that flop, but with the reflection from the students I was able to reframe them in a new way with their perspective! This works in any classroom, as I teach dance.

Like most folks, I have had online lessons go terribly, but I try to keep a notebook of all the tiny things that have gone well (even if it's just "kids all responded to the check in Q"). Keeping a running tab of things that worked not only kept me in a growth/positive mindset, but gave me small kernels to expand upon.

This plan is a good overall plan. It’s the general plan that overall is successful, whether it’s for education, business, or any other type of organization. However, with my 30 years of experience in working with students, I have recognized that students are not successful because of lack of motivation. The lack of motivation is spearheaded with the feeling of confusion and ultimate failure. This is founded on their inability to successfully maneuver in one or more of 3 areas: mastering the work, elimination of mindless mistakes, and fear of the previous two.