Tips for Teachers, Schools and Community Organizations working with UMN students as Virtual Learner Support
Build Your Classroom, School, or Organization’s Profile!
- Give us a glimmer of what makes your school, classroom, organization unique and special.
- Include a photo!
- Indicate your classroom, school, or organization’s needs!
- What days/ times do your learners need support?
- What kinds of support is needed?
- What platforms should tutors and mentors be familiar with?
- What do you need in terms of a commitment?
- The more specific, the better!
Think Outside the Box in How to Work with Your UMN Student
Depending on the level of learner support you request, some of the ways in which local teachers are utilizing UMN students to bolster their K12 students’ distance learning include:
- Co-teaching virtually: The teacher works with a UMN student who is in the licensure program. They split each class in half, assigning the teacher candidate with the responsibility for checking in, providing students with social emotional learning, and minilessons designed by the host teacher.
- Virtual Learning Pods: the school or a team of teachers divides a grade of students up into learning pods of 8-10 students. Each learning pod is assigned a UMN student to serve as learner support. The UMN student has a set time when they connect with students virtually, with a link provided by the school or host teacher. The UMN student might also become another touch point for parents, to help with reminders or homework. This would require the management from the host teacher, but if you've got a solid group of UMN students, you potentially have an extra set of adults to facilitate student learning.
- Stations: UMN students are assigned to a certain distance learning synchronous class, and request that they take on part of a lesson or a unit to plan and implement. Learners move between the stations, again reducing student/ teacher ratios, and potentially improving learning.
- Set up a Virtual Tutoring Table: Schools can tap your UMN students to serve as subject area mentors. Assign students to subject area tutorials to meet with UMN students for feedback on projects, written assignments, homework help.
- Language Support: Request UMN students to serve as language support for your emerging bilingual students whose first language is not English.
- Asynchronous support: Teachers can tap UMN students to design screencasts, videos, voice threads, podcasts, and digital presentations on particular content. Similar to a flipped classroom, students view this content rich material asynchronously, and then synchronous time can focus on conversation, connection, and interaction.
If you are interested in partnering with us at the UMN to support your K12 learners, you can get started by creating an account!
For additional help, contact [email protected].