Hi Ms. Ferré! I will also be starting school remotely (MS) and I just wanted to say THANK YOU! To you (and all the other teachers watching this), thank you for your commitment and dedication to your students - we really appreciate it. These are challenging times for all of us but we are SO LUCKY to have you as a teacher, mentor, and role model this year ❤️💜
Oh my gosh, Ms. Ferre! You taught my daughter Skylar in the 2nd grade at Pemberton. You were her favorite teacher ever! You were a star, even then. I'm a teacher now and my principal just "assigned" one of your videos. I can't wait to see more!
Good morning! I love 10 Easy Ways to Build Classroom Community Virtually. I'll be starting my school year next week as well. In Massachusetts, the students start 9/14. We're going to have professional development for 9 days. A course that I'm taking right now has us watching your videos! I was telling my fellow teachers that I've been following you since last year and that she's the best RUclipsr for helping out teachers! You truly are the best! I hope that you have a great school year this year. Once again, thank you for all that you do!
I live this and definitely emulate you, building a Class Community. Continue touching lives and inspiring lives. You sure inspired mine. All the very best.🙏
Michelle, Lovely ideas! Fortunately in Australia, we were only required to teach virtually for a few weeks. We are now face-to-face; however, these ideas can still come in handy regardless of which mode of teaching we are doing. Thank you for sharing. Kind Regards, Lisa :-)
I love number 8 and 9!! It’s important for students to feel connected to their peers even during a virtual classroom setting. I plan on making a video about why this is so important. Thank you!
I work at a Norwegian school in the UK and during lockdown here in April, May and June I as a classteacher held a morning meeting at 9 and an afternoon meeting at 3. This was so well received and the parents said it really helped with keeping a routine in their house. It was also so nice for the pupils to be seen and heard everyday. It was such a powerful thing to do :)!
We did a book with the whole school and it was really cool! We've done it for the last two years and it's really amazing to see how and what each grade level adds. We are going back face to face as of right now. That's the plan right now. We are having a hard time getting the community to understand why we have to put certain measures in place, such as masks, kids not changing classes, not sharing supplies, and so on. We have a lot of community members saying that this is all a hoax, it will be over by the election, it's infringing on their rights, and so on. It's very frustrating and we (school staff) are being verbally attacked in public, online, and so on. It's just been a long and dark summer, esp. knowing that we don't have much outside support.
Thank you for another awesome video full of great ideas. I will be going back to the brick and mortar school in a week. Since students cannot share items, or move around...to keep physical distance a lot of these “virtual ideas” can be used for in person. I change the “this or that” to stand up if...games. Teaching will not look the same no matter what method we are assigned. I wish everyone a good luck this year!
i dont mean to be offtopic but does anyone know a tool to get back into an Instagram account? I stupidly forgot the password. I appreciate any tips you can give me
Hello Michelle. Thank you so much for sharing this video.. I've been thinking of creating a classroom community virtually with my students. These ways gave me some interesting ideas on how to come up with one...I hope it would make my students happy!
I’m a senior in high school and my school told us all students will be online for the first two weeks then the students and parents can pick if we want to stay virtualy or go back to campus. And every 9weeks we can change from on campus to online.
Michelle, thank you for all that you do in your videos!! You have truly become a lifesaver for me. This is hard work between creating videos, maintaining your own classroom and your personal relationship...it is so much appreciated!!! Thank you!!!
Hi Michelle! I can't thank you enough for these videos you create. I start teaching next Monday virtually and I have been having major anxiety. However, your videos literally make me feel more confident. You're so helpful. This one in particular have given me so many ideas. So thank you! 💗
Thank you so much for this. I needed these ideas more than I knew. Tomorrow is my first day of first grade remote teaching. Community is everything to me. I’m so grateful for you.
Thank you so very much for all your ideas and suggestions. You have become one of my favorite teachers. I am a fifth grade teacher in California (we are starting virtually on Sept 1) and you have inspired me to become a better "virtual teacher."
Michelle, I am teaching Classroom Management to student teachers, who are beginning this year virtually. These ideas are some of the best I have heard about and will share them with my teachers. Great ideas!
These are amazing ideas! Thank you for all of these ideas I can implement! I bought mailable treats like slap bracelets, bookmarks, homework passes and squishies to mail to my students as prizes. Once a week I will pull tickets. Students get tickets by participating on zoom. I gave them each a number and when they participate, they get a ticket. They seem excited.
i echo all that was said below by everyone. as a PE teacher, i feel most challenged by these times so your videos have given me hope and ideas to hopefully make this fall's remote learning better than the spring. thanks a bunch
I have LOVED watching your videos during this time of getting back to school! You have great ideas explained well, and I love your uplifting joyful personality. Thank you!!
On Google meets you can create your own. They are going to be adding them soon. You need the mute extension so you can mute all the groups but the one you’re listening too (the students can still talk so it’s not the mic button on the normal meet page). You will give them each links and have them all open on your screen. You can watch them all but hear the one you want to.
Zoom and WebEx have breakout rooms. They should be in Teams Meetings (Microsoft) by Sept 1. They have a workaround for now. We use breakout rooms extensively. When all our teachers had to quickly jump online last spring, it was the kids who taught them how to use a lot of these tools. It was pretty cute and the students loved being the teachers.
This is a great video, especially because in my board online learning is optional. So the students who will be in online classes will be from schools across the board and won't know each other. If I teach online then this will be a great tool to use to help bring together the class full of strangers!
Wow, you give the best tips! I'm teaching assisting this year and a class requirement is that I come up with an activity to build classroom community and this is perfect! Thank you!!
Hello Michelle! I love your videos. You invited us to add to your 10 ways to build community, I would like to recommend using FlipGrid in some way. For example, after you read aloud, the students create a Flipgrid and give them a topic to speak selecting from the elements of the story like character, setting, plot, moral of the story, etc....you can review them and the class can review each FlipGrid. It's fun!
You have got such great ideas and content! I’m definitely sharing this video with my teacher friends! I love your “classroom community agreement”. It gives everyone a say in the development of it, and it makes everyone accountable for it. I’m so glad you mentioned the class check in. I think it is so vital to make sure our students are not only physically healthy, but also emotionally and socially healthy. I wish I had an employee check in at my job right now! The get to know you games are a must now that most districts are virtual! I’m getting ready to offer my services as a free tutor in math during my off time, and your ideas will help me out also!
As always, Michelle, thank you for all of your fantastic ideas of how we can build our classroom virtually!!! I will use these ideas and tweak them to suit my students need in our hybrid classroom environment. Wish me luck!
Great ideas here! I’m doing some of these already but I need to figure out how to use and incorporate Google Breakouts and get kids collaborating. I also love the lunch bunch idea as perhaps a monthly event.
LOVE! Thank you for this! One of the things I loved most about your vids back in the day is the way you prepared for students' birthdays! All the materials you would gather and really make a big deal of a child's birthday in the classroom. What are you thinking about doing for students' birthdays during remote teaching and learning? I would love to know your ideas.
I really enjoy watching all your videos, you inspire me very much. I am staying for a transitional year and I begin September 8th and I am doing virtual learning for my fall semester, we will see about the spring semester.
Lots of great practical tips to help us get thought these very challenging times in education. This crisis has shown the very best that the sector has to offer. Reliance, determination and passion. Great video. Thank you for all the wonderful tips☺️x
Thank you Michelle, even though I teach 8th grade you have been so helpful with ideas that I can modify and in reality 8th graders need and love to have fun too!
An idea to piggyback on your idea of students creating posters of class agreement. The teacher can use a different student poster each week as an image header for the weekly schedule or each days lessons.
Thank you so much for this. I am already thinking of ways on how to be engaged with my students in spite of the new set-up this year. Thanks for the inspiration Ms. Ferre.😊 God bless you always.💖
Even though I am in high school our reading teacher still reads out loud and do some of these activites with us.we also do theme days and we do tons of flip grids. We do mood meters often with our thumbs and things like Google forms .
Thank you for your videos. I wish the platform we used was even close to as clear as your video. I'm in Fairfax County just across the border into Virginia from you.
Thank you for this! My class is meeting but I can’t have any adults in the building so I don’t get to have a way to bond with parents. Can you do a video on how to form that connection with parents as well.
Thank you so much for sharing these ideas! I recently found your channel and I really appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication to teaching. I am starting my 23rd year teaching third grade in Harford Co., MD. I am certainly nervous about virtual teaching, but I am open to new ideas and anything that will help my students (and me) feel comfortable. Thanks again for all that you share!
Michelle! Thanks for this video! Tomorrow I start my very first day of teaching ever and I will be starting virtually with my second graders! I will for sure be using some of these ideas this week! I love your videos, and sometimes I feel like you're my big sister or something lol. Have a great school year!
Good morning/ evening/ night Miss. Michelle . I’ve just finished taking notes of these fabulous 10 tips. These Ideas are amazing already and you’ve just demonstrated how to be creative and modify the already existed teaching strategies to fit an online class. I feel confident enough to begin this school year with such activities knowing that I’m not the only one. Great job as always. Miss, I’m teaching 2nd graders and I was wondering if they’d get used to technology easily. Like filling in forums or engage in google shared docs .... Shall I train them? Or would it be better to ask parents to present with their kids during class to follow up with me? God only knows how delighted I am. Stay well, Always.
I sometimes start our mornings with a game similar to a scavenger hunt. I ask my students to grab something which represents how they feel on that day.
Another amazing video!! Took ALL the notes and cannot wait to implement this coming week! thanks so much for the recommendations! They are awesome!! I love the Google Jamboard idea because I was looking for a way to have my students participate more in a virtual way so thats PERFECT! Thanks Michelle!! :)
My 5th graders loved playing 20 questions this spring! I let the winning student be the next person to pick an item for others to guess and they were AMPED about it! 😂
Thank you so much for the ideas! Helpful reminders. Can you send a link or tell us where you got that virtual background with the white brick wall and desk with writing utensils as seen in your previous video that you referenced. Thanks. Have a great year
Hi Ms. Ferré!
I will also be starting school remotely (MS) and I just wanted to say THANK YOU! To you (and all the other teachers watching this), thank you for your commitment and dedication to your students - we really appreciate it. These are challenging times for all of us but we are SO LUCKY to have you as a teacher, mentor, and role model this year ❤️💜
Oh my gosh, Ms. Ferre! You taught my daughter Skylar in the 2nd grade at Pemberton. You were her favorite teacher ever! You were a star, even then. I'm a teacher now and my principal just "assigned" one of your videos. I can't wait to see more!
Good morning!
I love 10 Easy Ways to Build Classroom Community Virtually. I'll be starting my school year next week as well. In Massachusetts, the students start 9/14. We're going to have professional development for 9 days. A course that I'm taking right now has us watching your videos! I was telling my fellow teachers that I've been following you since last year and that she's the best RUclipsr for helping out teachers! You truly are the best! I hope that you have a great school year this year. Once again, thank you for all that you do!
I live this and definitely emulate you, building a Class Community. Continue touching lives and inspiring lives. You sure inspired mine. All the very best.🙏
Michelle,
Lovely ideas!
Fortunately in Australia, we were only required to teach virtually for a few weeks.
We are now face-to-face; however, these ideas can still come in handy regardless of which mode of teaching we are doing.
Thank you for sharing.
Kind Regards,
Lisa :-)
I love number 8 and 9!! It’s important for students to feel connected to their peers even during a virtual classroom setting. I plan on making a video about why this is so important. Thank you!
I work at a Norwegian school in the UK and during lockdown here in April, May and June I as a classteacher held a morning meeting at 9 and an afternoon meeting at 3. This was so well received and the parents said it really helped with keeping a routine in their house. It was also so nice for the pupils to be seen and heard everyday. It was such a powerful thing to do :)!
We did a book with the whole school and it was really cool! We've done it for the last two years and it's really amazing to see how and what each grade level adds.
We are going back face to face as of right now. That's the plan right now. We are having a hard time getting the community to understand why we have to put certain measures in place, such as masks, kids not changing classes, not sharing supplies, and so on. We have a lot of community members saying that this is all a hoax, it will be over by the election, it's infringing on their rights, and so on. It's very frustrating and we (school staff) are being verbally attacked in public, online, and so on. It's just been a long and dark summer, esp. knowing that we don't have much outside support.
Thank you for another awesome video full of great ideas. I will be going back to the brick and mortar school in a week. Since students cannot share items, or move around...to keep physical distance a lot of these “virtual ideas” can be used for in person. I change the “this or that” to stand up if...games. Teaching will not look the same no matter what method we are assigned. I wish everyone a good luck this year!
Thank you so much for this. I've been trying to figure out how to make a classroom community virtually and this video is so helpful! : )
i dont mean to be offtopic but does anyone know a tool to get back into an Instagram account?
I stupidly forgot the password. I appreciate any tips you can give me
Hello Michelle. Thank you so much for sharing this video.. I've been thinking of creating a classroom community virtually with my students. These ways gave me some interesting ideas on how to come up with one...I hope it would make my students happy!
I’m a senior in high school and my school told us all students will be online for the first two weeks then the students and parents can pick if we want to stay virtualy or go back to campus. And every 9weeks we can change from on campus to online.
Michelle, thank you for all that you do in your videos!! You have truly become a lifesaver for me. This is hard work between creating videos, maintaining your own classroom and your personal relationship...it is so much appreciated!!! Thank you!!!
Hi Michelle! I can't thank you enough for these videos you create. I start teaching next Monday virtually and I have been having major anxiety. However, your videos literally make me feel more confident. You're so helpful. This one in particular have given me so many ideas. So thank you! 💗
You are full of SO MANY good ideas. Thank you thank you!!
You're a ROCK STAR! Your students are very, very blessed.
Love your ideas AND I love that you "show us" exactly what to do to make these ideas virtual!!
Thank you so much for this. I needed these ideas more than I knew. Tomorrow is my first day of first grade remote teaching. Community is everything to me. I’m so grateful for you.
Thank you so very much for all your ideas and suggestions. You have become one of my favorite teachers. I am a fifth grade teacher in California (we are starting virtually on Sept 1) and you have inspired me to become a better "virtual teacher."
Michelle, I am teaching Classroom Management to student teachers, who are beginning this year virtually. These ideas are some of the best I have heard about and will share them with my teachers. Great ideas!
These are amazing ideas! Thank you for all of these ideas I can implement! I bought mailable treats like slap bracelets, bookmarks, homework passes and squishies to mail to my students as prizes. Once a week I will pull tickets. Students get tickets by participating on zoom. I gave them each a number and when they participate, they get a ticket. They seem excited.
Really great ideas! I teach high school and am planning on implementing some into my classroom! Thanks for the tips.
i echo all that was said below by everyone. as a PE teacher, i feel most challenged by these times so your videos have given me hope and ideas to hopefully make this fall's remote learning better than the spring. thanks a bunch
I have LOVED watching your videos during this time of getting back to school! You have great ideas explained well, and I love your uplifting joyful personality. Thank you!!
Could you possibly demonstrate breakout rooms? Love your channel.
On Google meets you can create your own. They are going to be adding them soon. You need the mute extension so you can mute all the groups but the one you’re listening too (the students can still talk so it’s not the mic button on the normal meet page). You will give them each links and have them all open on your screen. You can watch them all but hear the one you want to.
I didn’t know GM has break out rooms.
Zoom and WebEx have breakout rooms. They should be in Teams Meetings (Microsoft) by Sept 1. They have a workaround for now. We use breakout rooms extensively. When all our teachers had to quickly jump online last spring, it was the kids who taught them how to use a lot of these tools. It was pretty cute and the students loved being the teachers.
Michelle is going to lead this nation through the global pandemic. She is our only hope.
I'm not even a teacher but I work remote. Some of these can be used for team building activities for fully remote teams. They're great!
I've shared her videos with so many of my teachers.
Thank you!!! Virtual hugs from Brazil💚
These are such amazing ideas! Thank you so much for sharing!
You are wonderful! I love all you ideas and you inspire me!
Great suggestions. We are all feeling so overwhelmed and need to remember to slow down and create a community with our students.
Awesome 10 Ways!! I will be trying to use them. I am Excited.
This is a great video, especially because in my board online learning is optional. So the students who will be in online classes will be from schools across the board and won't know each other. If I teach online then this will be a great tool to use to help bring together the class full of strangers!
Wow, you give the best tips! I'm teaching assisting this year and a class requirement is that I come up with an activity to build classroom community and this is perfect! Thank you!!
Hello Michelle! I love your videos. You invited us to add to your 10 ways to build community, I would like to recommend using FlipGrid in some way. For example, after you read aloud, the students create a Flipgrid and give them a topic to speak selecting from the elements of the story like character, setting, plot, moral of the story, etc....you can review them and the class can review each FlipGrid. It's fun!
You are AMAZING, Michelle! Not only do you bring me knowledge every day you post, but sunshine and smiles,❤ Thank you!
Oh my God
Michelle you are ny inspiration
No doubt
Like if yiu agree
Your energy, positivity and creativity are worth catching
You have got such great ideas and content! I’m definitely sharing this video with my teacher friends! I love your “classroom community agreement”. It gives everyone a say in the development of it, and it makes everyone accountable for it. I’m so glad you mentioned the class check in. I think it is so vital to make sure our students are not only physically healthy, but also emotionally and socially healthy. I wish I had an employee check in at my job right now! The get to know you games are a must now that most districts are virtual! I’m getting ready to offer my services as a free tutor in math during my off time, and your ideas will help me out also!
As always, Michelle, thank you for all of your fantastic ideas of how we can build our classroom virtually!!! I will use these ideas and tweak them to suit my students need in our hybrid classroom environment. Wish me luck!
Great ideas here! I’m doing some of these already but I need to figure out how to use and incorporate Google Breakouts and get kids collaborating. I also love the lunch bunch idea as perhaps a monthly event.
I love your videos so much thanks for putting a smile on my face in lockdown love from Australia 🇦🇺
LOVE! Thank you for this! One of the things I loved most about your vids back in the day is the way you prepared for students' birthdays! All the materials you would gather and really make a big deal of a child's birthday in the classroom. What are you thinking about doing for students' birthdays during remote teaching and learning? I would love to know your ideas.
Saving teacher's sanity one video at a time...you have been so helpful.
I really enjoy watching all your videos, you inspire me very much. I am staying for a transitional year and I begin September 8th and I am doing virtual learning for my fall semester, we will see about the spring semester.
Thank you for being such a positive bright shining light 👍👍
The background, audio, and lighting for your videos is ON POINT with this new setup!!
Hello Michelle! I was wondering if you could talk about managing class meetings? Things like controlling talking and keeping them engaged?
That's such a great question Delaney 💕
Such great ideas! Thank you for sharing!
Lots of great practical tips to help us get thought these very challenging times in education. This crisis has shown the very best that the sector has to offer. Reliance, determination and passion. Great video. Thank you for all the wonderful tips☺️x
Thank you Michelle, even though I teach 8th grade you have been so helpful with ideas that I can modify and in reality 8th graders need and love to have fun too!
Thank you so much for the help and ideas! :)
An idea to piggyback on your idea of students creating posters of class agreement. The teacher can use a different student poster each week as an image header for the weekly schedule or each days lessons.
You are a rock star, your students are lucky to have you, so are us!!
Thank you so much for this. I am already thinking of ways on how to be engaged with my students in spite of the new set-up this year. Thanks for the inspiration Ms. Ferre.😊 God bless you always.💖
Love the ideas, but my favorites are Lunch Bunch, Student Shout Outs, and Class Check-ins! Thank you for these fantastic ideas!
This video is my new spirit animal!!!!! Love all of your ideas!!!
Even though I am in high school our reading teacher still reads out loud and do some of these activites with us.we also do theme days and we do tons of flip grids. We do mood meters often with our thumbs and things like Google forms .
I know this is so helpful to teachers. You are an inspiration.
Thank you!
So happy to have you to guide us through the new normal ❤️
Thank you for your videos. I wish the platform we used was even close to as clear as your video. I'm in Fairfax County just across the border into Virginia from you.
Awesome ideas!!! Thank you!!!
Thank you for this! My class is meeting but I can’t have any adults in the building so I don’t get to have a way to bond with parents. Can you do a video on how to form that connection with parents as well.
great reminders to keep the connection to our students as a priority amidst all the other demands pulling on us :)
Thank you so much for sharing these ideas! I recently found your channel and I really appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication to teaching. I am starting my 23rd year teaching third grade in Harford Co., MD. I am certainly nervous about virtual teaching, but I am open to new ideas and anything that will help my students (and me) feel comfortable. Thanks again for all that you share!
Michelle! Thanks for this video! Tomorrow I start my very first day of teaching ever and I will be starting virtually with my second graders! I will for sure be using some of these ideas this week! I love your videos, and sometimes I feel like you're my big sister or something lol. Have a great school year!
Here is a class shout out to you, thank you for generously sharing your ideas.
Wonderful ideas! Thank you, Michelle!
Good morning/ evening/ night Miss. Michelle . I’ve just finished taking notes of these fabulous 10 tips. These Ideas are amazing already and you’ve just demonstrated how to be creative and modify the already existed teaching strategies to fit an online class. I feel confident enough to begin this school year with such activities knowing that I’m not the only one. Great job as always. Miss, I’m teaching 2nd graders and I was wondering if they’d get used to technology easily. Like filling in forums or engage in google shared docs .... Shall I train them? Or would it be better to ask parents to present with their kids during class to follow up with me? God only knows how delighted I am. Stay well, Always.
I love ideas number 7 and 8! Thank you! :)
You're pocketful of Sparkle!
Your videos help me a lot. Thanks from Puerto Rico.
Thank you so much for these wonderful ideas! You rock.
I love all your videos, but this is the most helpful video you’ve EVER made........Thank you!
Thanks for the ideas. I like making Google Forms for check-ins idea.
I sometimes start our mornings with a game similar to a scavenger hunt. I ask my students to grab something which represents how they feel on that day.
Thankyou for all the insightful ideas to help teachers understand their students better especially during this pandemic. Greetings from UAE!
Ty so much
Thanks so much! I needed this so bad! Think about all the children’s lives you are touching!
You are amazing! I love all your ideas, and all of your videos. Thanks so much for sharing.
You give me hope for this year! Thank you for this video!!
Thank you so much for sharing these ideas.
Excellent ideas, clearly explained. Thank you!
love this! xx
Could you please share your ideas/tips on assessing your students with 100% distance learning. Thank you.
Another amazing video!! Took ALL the notes and cannot wait to implement this coming week! thanks so much for the recommendations! They are awesome!! I love the Google Jamboard idea because I was looking for a way to have my students participate more in a virtual way so thats PERFECT! Thanks Michelle!! :)
I really LOVE your videos! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas! Have a wonderful year!
Love this! Thanks so much
omg the first 2 books are our books of the month. they are really great books.
Great ideas. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing your ideas! I love them. I will surely use a lot of the ones from this video.💟
Great video keep it up!
My 5th graders loved playing 20 questions this spring! I let the winning student be the next person to pick an item for others to guess and they were AMPED about it! 😂
Awesome ideas! Thank you so much!!! Big fan here!
Thank you so much for the ideas! Helpful reminders. Can you send a link or tell us where you got that virtual background with the white brick wall and desk with writing utensils as seen in your previous video that you referenced. Thanks. Have a great year
Zizzy Zoot awww. That’s disappointing. I’ve spent hours going down a rabbit hole looking for that background. Lol guess it’s time to give it up. :-)
She mentioned the wall in a previous video. I think she ordered it on amazon(backdrop). Search on amazon and you should find it!!
Thank you and I love this video about classroom community. You're rockin' it!
Thank you so much for this!
Hi! This was awesome go watch and gave me so many great ideas for virtual teaching! Thanks so much!
This is so helpful!!! Thanks!
What a great set of tips. Thanks!
Great ideas! Thank you so much!