
Wide Open School: Provides five sets of free, curated on-line lessons and learning tools supported by Common Sense Media. Sets of lessons and materials are presented by grade level. The full collection is accompanied by a 5-minute video overview. The learning content and activities prioritize students’ social, emotional, and psychological well-being in the context of academic instruction in a distance learning context.
Promising Practices Brief: Improving Student Engagement and Attendance During COVID-19 School Closures: Provides an overview of the research on student engagement and attendance in online environments and highlights the efforts of five districts across the country to support student attendance and engagement during emergency school closures during 2020.
Strategies for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning: Offers some general strategies, with specific examples, for how to recognize and respond to students’ social and emotional needs while teaching remotely. The Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety [CISELSS] has organized these strategies according to neuroscientist Bruce Perry’s “3 Rs” approach to intervention: Regulate, Relate, and Reason.
Creating a PBIS Behavior Teaching Matrix for Remote Instruction: Shares tips for maintaining continuity of learning through defining classroom expectations for remote/ distance instruction and online learning environments. This practice brief from the Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports, shows how teachers can adapt a PBIS framework to make remote learning safe, predictable, and positive for students.
Keep Calm and Connect All Students: Incorporates a series of reflection questions, highlights promising solutions geared towards remote learning measures for learners, and describes effective practices for educators and system leaders. ED’s Office of Educational Technology provided this extended blog series with multiple posts geared to a variety of audiences. Information shared intentionally complements other publications from the US Department of Education.
Supporting Middle Level Educator through COVID-19: Promotes learning events and collaborative online spaces to support middle level educators through the COVID-19 pandemic. The Association for Middle Level Education [AMLE] offers tips for selecting remote learning resources and how to effectively use them to keep students engaged outside the classroom.
Best Practices for Creating Take-Home Packets to Support Distance Learning: Documents ways in which take-home packets can be used as a primary mode of instruction during at-home learning and as a supplemental resource when school is back in session. These best practices are compiled and presented by the US Department of Education's Regional Educational Laboratory [REL-Pacific].
Best Practices for Educating Online: Guides educators and clinicians through best practices, teaching strategies, tips and tricks for delivering high-quality instruction and therapy online with a quick turnaround. This guide, developed by the Council for Exceptional Children and eLuma Online Therapy, walks professionals through preparation (technology, software, environment, apparel) and execution of instructional strategies for live, online learning in a clear and succinct 8 pages, including numerous hyperlinks to original primary resources.
Supporting Children's Reading at Home: Family Resources for Kindergarten through 3rd Grade: Features a 46-minute webinar recording. Viewers will gain the knowledge and ability to utilize the REL Southeast’s Supporting Your Child’s Reading at Home family resources for kindergarten through 3rd grade in their home setting.
Wide Open School: Offers families and educators a large collection of free resources to enrich and support distance learning. More than 80 partners and supporters have contributed their preferred resources to meet the change in learning needs of students, teachers, and families due to the coronavirus pandemic. Common Sense Education provides this collection, introduced by a short (5-minute) video t