Remote learning poses an additional challenge for students who need additional support.  Fear not, there are engaging ways to help our students access the curriculum and maintain active participation.  Here are some of the tried and true ways I’ve succeeded with remote learning in a self-contained population.

REMOTE LEARNING IDEAS

VIDEO CONFERENCE SCREEN SHARE

First things first, whether you’re using Zoom, Google Meets, or some other video conferencing platform for remote learning, you’re going to want to utilize sharing your screen.  Read lectures, watch a video together, or do an interactive activity together.  It is is also a great way to do recorded lessons that you can post for students to access at a later time.

BOOM CARDS, INTERACTIVE PDFS & GOOGLE SLIDES

Digital activities are one of my favorite remote learning activities to use over video conferencing when sharing the screen with students.  You can click or drag the answers after students respond, or you can give control of your screen to students so they can click the answers themselves.  Students can take turns answering each question, and students are still learning and getting to take a break while they watch their classmates answer a question.

Why I love digital activities for remote learning:

• Immediate positive reinforcement for correct answers, redirection for incorrect answers with the option of “correct” or “incorrect” sound also.
• If you have a touch screen device, this is a great option for students who have fine motor difficulties with using a computer mouse.
• These activities are visual and engaging.  They also provide the needed accommodations of limited answer fields for students.
• Boom Cards have additional options to have student accounts and generate reports.
• Can be posted as an assignment on online platforms like Google Classroom™ or Microsoft Teams™, Seesaw…etc.

Digital Interactive PDFs

Google Slides activities

BOOM CARDS

MORNING ROUTINE & DAILY CHECK-IN

Start your meeting off with going over the date, and weather, and checking in on how your students are feeling…etc. During remote learning, this is a great opportunity for students to share what they ate for breakfast, what they had for dinner, what they did over the weekend, and so on.  

CURRENT EVENTS

Keep students informed on what is happening in the world (especially now more than ever).   Watch a short segment or read a news article together then fill out a current events comprehension worksheet! 

Here are a few great websites to use:

MONEY SKILLS

Have students come prepared with a wallet or different amounts of bills and coins.

Money match: Hold up a bill or coin and have students hold up the same.

Name identification: “Show me the $1.00 bill”

Value identification: “Show me which coin is worth 25 cents”

Pay for an item: Hold up an item or a price tag and have students hold up the amount of money you ask for.

Next Dollar Up: Show students a price on the screen and ask them to use the next dollar up method to hold up the correct number of bills.

Which is more/less: Hold up two bills and ask students to identify which is more or less.

EXPLORE PREFERENCES

Here are interest questions with visuals/real images that get students thinking about their rec & leisure preferences as well as bigger interests like who they want to live with, where they want to live…etc.  These types of activities are also great for informal assessment for transition plans.

HOUSEHOLD CHORES

Many of the chores we have at home are great independent living and job skills, and this is one alternative to work experience that can easily be practiced in the home or classroom setting. Not only are students practicing motor skills, but also following # step directions.  If you are assigning these tasks for students to do at home, make sure to provide parents with the needed visuals and materials to successfully support their child in doing so at home!

Here are some ideas you can implement in a group lesson:

• Go over a task analysis or model how to do a chore, then have students show you that they can practice the chore at home also.
• Focus on a chore and have students find items in their home that they would use to do that chore.
• Have students bring clothes with them to the lesson and everyone can fold clothes or pair socks together at the same time.

Virtual Field Trips

There are TONS of free virtual field trips out there and different ways to go about doing them! Here are a few virtual field trip ideas & links:

Social Narrative and Reading Comprehension Virtual Field Trips

Google Earth is also great for exploring specific places!  Use this opportunity to expand on a lesson you are doing, maybe one of the current events you just read is based in a particular town.  You can use Google Earth to search a specific street or town to explore the streets in 3D and read information about certain areas or attractions.  Here’s a blog on how to use Google Earth with Activity Worksheets.

After doing a virtual field trip, have your students reflect on that trip by filling out the Visual Community Outing Form (below).  It comes with a digital virtual field trip form, as well as CBI forms that will be great when you return to the classroom and do off-campus outings.

Virtual Grocery Shopping

Scavenger Hunts

This is a great idea to get students up and moving and it requires little to no prep.  Pick a subject and share one item at a time and give students a limited amount of time to go find the item in their home.  Some ideas of subjects to focus on include:

Colors

Textures

Cleaning Supplies

Cooking Supplies

Grooming Supplies

Interview clothing

Cooking Lessons

Depending on the level of your students will depend on how you might go about doing this. Here are some ideas for different variations of a cooking lesson:

Send students a list of supplies ahead of time to have on hand for a future lesson

Or, prepare care packages for students and deliver or mail a box of the supplies to them

There are tons of cooking tutorials on YouTube you can search and watch

Do a live cooking lesson for students

Look up a recipe (there are tons you can search on Google), then go to a grocery website that allows online shopping and look for those supplies.

A website I love using that has FREE visual recipes is accessiblechef.com

The worksheet/activity below can either be printed and sent to your students to fill out when you watch a YouTube recipe video, or the worksheets can be filled out digitally using Kami Extension app, and it includes a drag & drop Google Slides version you can do together as a class.

Need ideas for working on job skills? Check out this blog post:

Thanks for reading!