With the limits on in-person meetings (due to Covid-19 (2020)), Sunday Schools need to adapt to use Virtual Classrooms to meet. Dr. George Aramath led a one hour seminar on how to effectively engage and teach students in this medium.
Below is the recording of that seminar (the actual training starts at 7:32 into the video)
Summary of discussion:
- Best Practice of Teaching apply in a virtual class room setting!
- Build relationships
- Example: Entry question, Share your story/memory
- Change of Pace (different beginning, middle, end activities)
- Independent Reading activity
- Build relationships
- Strategies specific to Virtual Classroom setting
- Take advantage of Share Video / Share Screen
- Limit videos to < 9min
- Use Chat box
- Optional addition: Have all students hit enter together (so everybody shares their idea – rather mimicking other students)
- Use Polling
- Allows to keep track if paying attention or something need to be re-emphasized
- Breakout groups (Zoom specific)
- Take advantage of Share Video / Share Screen
- Summary of Virtual Platforms
- Zoom vs Microsoft Teams vs Google Meets
- Q & A
- How to do assessments?
- What homework to assign?
- How to teach prayer / songs?
- What Bible readings for pre-readers?