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There are pros and cons to both traditional classrooms and online environments. Data collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that in-person learning, on the whole, leads to better academic outcomes, greater levels of student engagement, higher rates of attendance, and better social and emotional well-being, and ensures access to critical school services and extracurricular activities when compared to remote learning (US Department of Education, n.d.). Pros to online learning very from flexibility, balance, no commute and more options for every learning style.

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As the new school year begins, we must provide every student-from every community and background-the opportunity to safely learn in-person full-time. Abrupt shifts to remote learning over the past two school years have affected students, negatively impacting their social, emotional, and mental well-being and academic achievement. They have also exacerbated racial, socioeconomic, and other educational inequities.

Data collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that in-person learning, on the whole, leads to better academic outcomes, greater levels of student engagement, higher rates of attendance, and better social and emotional well-being, and ensures access to critical school services and extracurricular activities when compared to remote learning. The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to supporting states and school districts in offering in-person learning to all families and doing so safely by adopting science-based strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19 that are aligned with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

CDC guidance makes clear that K-12 schools should prioritize in-person learning, and that schools can safely operate in-person by implementing layered prevention strategies (using multiple strategies together consistently) in alignment with CDC recommendations. Studies show that schools that consistently implemented layered prevention strategies showed lower or similar levels of transmission than the communities in which they are located. This includes helping everyone eligible to get vaccinated, universal and correct indoor masking regardless of vaccination status , using contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine, improving ventilation, and maintaining physical distance to the maximum extent possible. It is important to emphasize that schools should take all deliberate action to prevent transmission and limit exposure within schools by implementing layered prevention strategies; doing so will help to prevent outbreaks and avoid interruptions to in-person learning in the first place. More information on how to protect the health and safety of students, educators, staff, and school communities can be found in the Department's Return to School Roadmap.

Nevertheless, there may be situations when an individual or multiple members of a school community may need to isolate or quarantine due to positive COVID-19 cases. Isolation is a strategy used to separate people who have COVID-19 or symptoms of COVID-19 from those who are not infected or showing symptoms in order to prevent transmission of COVID-19. Quarantine is a strategy used to prevent transmission of COVID-19 by ensuring that unvaccinated people who have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19 stay apart from others. The decisions to isolate or quarantine should be made in coordination with guidance from state and local health officials in order to keep school communities safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools. It is important that students who are temporarily not attending school in-person due to isolation or quarantine (as well as students with other current health needs such as immunocompromised students and families) remain engaged and connected to learning with their peers and teachers in learning from home. Fortunately, there have been some examples over the past year that have shown promise for students and families, which can help inform strategies and best practices for other schools and districts.

This document is intended to support states, school districts, and schools to maximize safe in-person learning opportunities by maintaining safe school operations and to implement effective practices that address students' social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs when students are temporarily not attending school in-person due to COVID-19 cases.

Part 1: Maximizing In-Person Learning for All Students

Schools are an important part of the infrastructure of communities, and safely returning to and remaining in in-person instruction should be a top priority for all communities. Schools provide safe and supportive learning environments for students that support social and emotional development, provide access to critical services, and improve life outcomes. They also employ people, and enable parents, guardians, and caregivers to work. Though COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred in school settings, as noted above, multiple studies have shown that transmission rates within school settings, when multiple prevention strategies are in place, are typically lower than or similar to community transmission levels. As CDC's science brief on  Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs shows, schools can reduce transmission by consistently implementing layered prevention strategies; this in turn will help students stay where they belong: safely learning in-person in the classroom.

Here's What States, School Districts, and Schools Should Do to Maximize In-Person Learning for All Students:
States, school districts, and schools working to safely reopen schools and maintain in-person instruction should include the following strategies in local operations plans consistent with health and safety guidelines. All of these strategies can be supported with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP Act). The ARP Act provided states and school districts with nearly $122 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds 3 - flexible resources that, among other uses, may be used to implement public health protocols and policies in line with guidance from the CDC for the reopening and operation of school facilities to effectively maintain the health and safety of students and staff:

1. Avoid Outbreaks by Using Layered Prevention Strategies: Consistent with CDC guidance, prioritize offering in-person learning to all students by implementing layered prevention strategies from the very start of the school year. This includes helping everyone eligible to get vaccinated, universal and correct indoor masking, improving ventilation, physical distancing to the maximum extent possible (see below), implementing screening testing programs, contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine (see below), and more. Vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Promoting vaccination can help schools safely return to and sustain in-person learning as well as extracurricular activities and sports. CDC guidance includes strategies for promoting vaccination.

2. Effectively Perform Contact Tracing, in Combination with Isolation and Quarantine, in Alignment with CDC Guidance: Decisions about when and which students should quarantine or isolate should be consistent with CDC guidance. The CDC guidance on contact tracing reinforces how universal masking policies benefit students, and that use of layered mitigation strategies helps prevent transmission in the first place to keep school communities safe and keep students learning in-person. It is also important to note that funds under the ARP Act may be used to support contact tracing efforts. CDC's latest toolkit will help schools effectively implement contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine.

3. Use Cohorting, Seating Charts, and Other Strategies to Maintain Distancing and Minimize Spread Within School Buildings: Based on studies from the 2020-2021 school year, the CDC recommends schools maintain at least 3 feet of physical distance between students within classrooms, combined with indoor mask wearing to reduce transmission risk. When it is not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least 3 feet, such as when schools cannot fully reopen while maintaining these distances, it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies, such as universal masking, screening testing, cohorting, improved ventilation, handwashing and covering coughs and sneezes, staying home when sick with symptoms of infectious illness including COVID-19, and regular cleaning to help reduce transmission risk. To the maximum extent possible, schools should cohort their students-meaning that they should keep people together in a small group and have each group stay together throughout an entire day to the extent possible. Cohorting can be used to limit the number of students, teachers, and staff who come in contact with each other, especially when it is challenging to maintain physical distancing, such as among young children, and particularly in areas of moderate-to-high transmission levels. Cohorts should not group students by perceived ability or in ways that perpetuate tracking. The use of cohorting can limit the spread of COVID-19 between cohorts but should not replace other prevention measures within each group. Seating charts can also help to effectively contact trace and understand which students were situated next to whom, especially in grades or circumstances where cohorts are not able to be maintained throughout the day (including in the cafeteria). Also, using additional spaces outside of the cafeteria for mealtime seating, such as the gymnasium or outdoor seating, can help facilitate distancing and reduce transmission during eating.

Part 2: Strategies for Effective Learning When Students Are Temporarily Unable to Attend In-Person

When students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person because of COVID-19 cases and remote learning is therefore temporarily implemented, it is essential that states, school districts, and schools put in place policies to ensure that students continue to access high-quality and rigorous learning, that students' basic needs are addressed, and that their social, emotional, and mental health needs are met. These policies should specifically address the specific needs of students most impacted by the pandemic-who are often the same students who have been underserved prior to COVID-19-and ensure that delivery of instruction and other critical services are as high-quality as they would be when delivered in person.

States, school districts, and schools should pay particular attention to the many students-including English learners, students with disabilities, students of color, students in rural or tribal communities, students experiencing homelessness, and students from low-income backgrounds-who disproportionately lack access to the internet and digital devices. These students-and all students-should receive high-quality, technology-enabled learning experiences focused on inquiry, collaboration, and content creation. Funding under the ARP Act and prior Federal pandemic recovery funds may be used right now to address technology needs, including for devices, access to high-speed internet, high-quality remote learning platforms, and more.

School districts must ensure that multilingual learners and students with disabilities have equitable access to content provided via the school's technology or as part of the school's educational program. Federal disability laws require that students with disabilities be afforded an opportunity to participate in, and benefit from, educational technology aids, benefits, and services that is equal to the opportunity afforded to others. Given the possibility of isolation or quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students with disabilities eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) should have individualized education programs (IEPs) that include contingent learning plans for those circumstances. In addition, in all contexts, IEP Teams must also consider whether children need assistive technology devices and services.

Here's What States, School Districts, and Schools Should Do to Provide Effective Learning to Students Who Are Temporarily Unable to Attend In-Person:

States, school districts, and schools working to reopen schools and maintain in-person instruction should consider the following strategies and best practices to ensure all students remain engaged and connected to learning if they are temporarily unable to attend in-person due to COVID-19 cases. These strategies apply regardless of the length of time that a student is unable to attend in-person, including students who may be learning remotely for longer periods of time due to their health status or those of their family members (e.g., immunocompromised students and families). It is important that school districts plan ahead to avoid disruptions in learning and make the student learning experience as seamless as possible, using the preparation measures and strategies outlined below. All of these strategies may be supported with funding from the ARP Act through the ESSER funds described above and many are outlined in greater detail, with examples and resources, in Volume 2 of the Department's COVID-19 Handbook.

1. Have a Plan in Advance and Communicate It with Students, Families, and Staff: Before any changes to instructional modality take place, school districts and schools should engage educators, staff, and families in a proactive, accessible, and ongoing planning, implementation, and continuous improvement process that includes frequent communications about what roles and responsibilities everyone will play in preventing transmission and-if necessary-how students will learn if they are temporarily unable to attend school in-person. School districts and schools should communicate their plans regularly and adjust as needed. Planning should include ensuring adequate staffing to meet the social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs of all students regardless of where they are learning. Schools can increase their staff capacity using funds from the ARP Act, including by hiring additional teachers, engaging parent coordinators and community liaisons to communicate with families before and during any periods when students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person due to COVID-19 cases, and implementing the strategies listed throughout this document and the Department's other resources (linked below).

2. Ensure Rigorous and Rich Content for All Students: Provide rigorous instructional materials, including online content, that appropriately meet students where they are (whether ahead or behind) in order to meaningfully engage, enrich, challenge, and support them in effectively continuing their academic progress toward proficiency and beyond. These materials must provide appropriate language services and supports to multilingual learners, including ensuring that the rigorous online curricular content provided to other students is likewise available, on devices in multiple languages, to multilingual learners. To support students with disabilities, schools should ensure all material is accessible and must facilitate access to instruction and content, such as by ensuring websites and materials are compatible with screen reader software and providing accurate captioning and sign language interpreting for video content and video instruction. In addition, the professional development strategies described below can help schools use technology in ways that support students who are performing at different levels, such as by leveraging technology to support one-on-one or small group work with students and by using student-centered learning models.

3. Address Technology Access: Be prepared in advance to ensure technology access so that instruction can begin immediately if a student is temporarily unable to attend school in-person due to COVID-19 cases, including ensuring access to individual devices for each student in the household, assistive technology (as needed), high-speed internet access, and technical support (including technical support for educators and staff). The ARP Act's ESSER funds may support all of these efforts. Laptops, tablets, and home internet access for students can also be purchased using funds received from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Emergency Connectivity Fund. Conduct ongoing needs assessments, including through the use of student surveys, to determine the extent to which students have access to high-speed internet and devices and the quality of access. Additional resources are available from the Department's Office of Educational Technology. Schools can also support families in accessing discounted broadband and devices through the FCC's Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. All families with a child who is currently receiving or has received free or reduced-price school meal program benefits in the last two years qualify.

4. Meet Basic Needs and Provide Intensive Virtual Support: Provide access to food and nutritional support, including through school meal programs and the Pandemic EBT program, during periods when students are unable to access school buildings to ensure that families' basic needs are met. Supported by flexibility from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, important food distribution models include curbside distribution, home delivery, school bus route delivery, and delivery to accessible community locations (such as library parking lots) that parents can access during periods when students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person due to COVID-19 cases. Funds under the ARP Act may be used, among other purposes, to increase staff capacity and cover additional labor costs associated with school meal service equipment and supplies, meal packaging, and transportation services in order to ensure meal access and enhance distribution. In addition, states, school districts, and schools should ensure that school counselors, nurses, and other school personnel provide intensive virtual support to students and families to meet their heightened needs.

5. Engage Families: Prioritize ongoing student and family engagement throughout any periods when students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person due to COVID-19 cases to ensure a personal touch point between the school and families each day. By involving a range of school professionals in this outreach (so that teachers alone do not bear the responsibility), students can more seamlessly return to in-person instruction and families will have resources to support their children's learning. Provide support, such as tutorials, on the use of devices, tools, and platforms made available by the school. Information must be communicated to limited English proficient parents in a language they can understand, and schools should effectively and accessibly communicate all information to parents with disabilities. Robust family engagement should also include preparing high school seniors to successfully transition to college and the workforce, including through support for FAFSA completion.

6. Prioritize Live Teacher and Peer Interaction: High-quality learning while students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person includes both daily live interaction between students and their teachers and daily and frequent live interaction between students and their peers in order to support student well-being and maintain strong school communities and relationships. Schools should maximize the amount of live instruction offered to their students and should develop plans to ensure daily touch points with their students in live sessions, one-on-one, or in small groups, and in other ways where students are receiving education and direct outreach from a caring adult daily. Schools should adopt consistent teaching strategies that maximize student participation and collaboration and support social-emotional learning across learning modalities. Whenever possible, plans should avoid situations where teachers are expected to address both students in-person and those who are temporarily unable to attend school in-person due to COVID-19 cases simultaneously, and ARP Act funds can be used to expand staff to support students in all learning modalities.

7. Support Educators: Provide extensive ongoing professional development, starting in advance, including opportunities for collaboration-such as through common planning time, instructional coaching, and professional learning communities-and supports for all relevant staff to ensure ongoing readiness and effectiveness. Professional learning opportunities can empower educators to effectively use technology to support student learning. Recent studies have found that teacher professional learning in technology is the most significant predictor of the type and quality of classroom technology use by students. In addition, professional development should prioritize trauma-informed care and teaching practices and help educators build more equitable and inclusive approaches to school climate, especially as they work to reengage students in the safe return to school. Teachers should also be supported to provide instruction that is flexible in case one or more students are temporarily unable to attend school in-person.

8. Support Social, Emotional, and Mental Health: Implement strategies that explicitly address students' social, emotional, and mental health needs and encourage common planning time among educators and staff. Schools should explicitly teach critical social, emotional, and academic skills and promote safe and supportive learning environments through intentionally inclusive practices, among other evidence-based strategies. In addition, while a schoolwide approach benefits all students, school-based mental health professionals such as counselors, social workers, and psychologists might need to provide additional and more intensive support to students with the most urgent needs that have been caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. This could include addressing the disproportionate impact of social isolation on communities including LGBTQ+ students and students experiencing homelessness. A multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) framework, like positive behavioral interventions and supports, relies on a continuum of evidence-based practices matched to student needs. School districts and schools should also support the social, emotional, and mental health needs of all staff.

Links to Resources

Department resources to support implementation of these strategies can be found here:

¹ Other than statutory and regulatory requirements included in the document, the contents of this guidance do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public. This document is intended only to provide clarity to the public regarding existing requirements under the law or agency policies.

³ Districts and schools may use funding under the ARP Act to prevent, prepare for, or respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with ARP Act requirements and the Uniform Guidance in 2 CFR Part 200. For more information on allowable uses of funds under ESSER, see FAQs.

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Supporting Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Maximizing In-Person Learning and Implementing Effective Practices for Students in Quarantine and Isolation

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As the new school year begins, we must provide every student-from every community and background-the opportunity to safely learn in-person full-time. Abrupt shifts to remote learning over the past two school years have affected students, negatively impacting their social, emotional, and mental well-being and academic achievement.

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1. Online Engagement Strategy: Choosing your main learning management system

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1. Online Engagement Strategy: Choosing your main learning management system

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Choosing your main learning management system (Google Classroom, Canvas, Microsoft Teams, etc.) is essential. It is important to have a routine place for students to go to for lessons, information, assignments, and assessments. Within that learning management system, it is ok and highly encouraged to use multiple formats within your main learning management system. One of the excellent ways to ensure student engagement in online learning is using multiple formats to make virtual classes more interesting for learners (Sharma, 2023).

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Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and student learning being largely moved to virtual mode, one of the biggest challenges that most of the higher-end institutions face is getting students to engage and participate during remote learning.

Learning through digital platforms can soon get frustrating for students as it can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, variability in access to technology, and other similar factors.

This blog discusses some of the proven strategies educators can use to engage students in online classrooms.

1. Use multiple formats

One of the excellent ways to ensure student engagement in online learning is using multiple formats to make virtual classes more interesting for learners. Since there are various ways to establish communication with students, these formats, such as discussion forums and course email, can be instrumental in making students interested in the lessons.

Apart from these, there is a range of other formats that you can leverage including embedded video and audio, broadcast text message systems, chat rooms for messaging, and home page announcements. Explanatory screencast videos are another popular format that is not only easy, inexpensive to create and share but also received well by higher ed students.

2. Adopt a flexible approach to student participation in the classroom

Adequately preparing for flexible timing for student assessment and discontinuing traditional long lectures is another way to engage your students in online learning. You can also opt for asynchronous activities, offer additional time for completing evaluations/exams as and when necessary, and give priority to project-based assignments to be able to promote asynchronous participation among students.

Apart from this, to encourage students to participate in class more and stay engaged, it is also important to create online lessons that are interactive as they help increase learners' energy, thus promoting collaboration and improving communication skills. Educators can create such interactive virtual lessons by gamifying course materials (explained later), planning hands-on experiments for them, inviting learners to give their comments on content, or creating immersive videos to explain the concepts.

3. Engaging students with gamification

Gamification or the use of various elements of game design techniques are another excellent way to keep learners engaged and motivated. You can do this by implementing multiple elements such as points, badges, and more in your courses to ensure complete student engagement in online learning.

Gamifying the different course activities in higher Ed also give students a sense of accomplishment and progress when they accumulate points as they go through the course. To make it more engaging, you can even put up a chart or leaderboard to let students see their performance or rank as compared to their peers.

4. Choose appropriate digital technologies

Another way to engage students in online learning is by choosing appropriate digital technologies which are supported by the respective university or institutional department.

Further, it is important to use these digital technologies available for students in varied time zones and international contexts. To make it interesting for students, it is best to choose tools that include various accessibility features such as high-contrast themes, text-to-speech, closed captioning, enlarged cursors, alternative text, and keyboard shortcuts.

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Top 8 Strategies For Student Engagement In Online Learning

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Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and student learning being largely moved to virtual mode, one of the biggest challenges that most of the higher-end institutions face is getting students to engage and participate during remote learning.Learning through digital platforms can soon get frustrating for students as it can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, variability in access to technology, and other similar factors.

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2. Online Engagement Strategy: Expectations and Engaging lessons

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2. Online Engagement Strategy: Expectations and Engaging lessons

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Setting clear expectations and creating short and engaging lessons is also a great strategy. This helps students to stay engaged, it will allow for better structure, less confusion, better focus and deeper understanding. This allows students to know what is expected of them throughout the class. If your main learning management system is Google Classroom, they have great resources available to help you.

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Teachers can immediately set up classes, easily create coursework, distribute it to the whole class, and grade it efficiently and transparently.

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Classroom Management Tools & Resources - Google for Education

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Get started with Google Classroom, a central hub for tools and resources designed to help educators manage classrooms and enrich learning experiences.

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3. Online Engagement Strategy: Set Up Office Hours

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3. Online Engagement Strategy: Set Up Office Hours

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As a technology coach, it is important to remember to find time to set up office hours. Teachers, staff and students need to know that you are there to help them and holding office hours will help them with specific questions they may have that require a real time conversation. You will need to be understanding with your teachers, students and families in knowing that it takes time to learn new things. If you want to be more organized and know who wants to meet with you, you can use Google Sheets to help you set up a weekly schedule where people can sign up for a time to meet with you. Showing that you understand and care shows those that are putting forth the effort to follow your suggestions that you are fully invested.

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4. Online Engagement Strategy: Developing Relationships

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4. Online Engagement Strategy: Developing Relationships

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This will also help with the strategy of developing relationships. When students feel supported, they’re more likely to engage in learning and have better academic outcomes (Kaufman, n.d.). It is important to make students/families feel actively involved. You could use digital stickers  as fun little way to acknowledge involvement. This is easy to do if your main learning management system is Google Classroom.

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Students' brains are hard at work every moment of the day, learning skills and connecting new information with old. Those same brains are also constantly processing information when it comes to their relationship with you, their teacher.

Positive student relationships are fundamental to success. When students feel supported, they're more likely to engage in learning and have better academic outcomes. Plus, when students have positive interactions with teachers, they have fewer behavioral problems. These relationships are more important - and more challenging - than ever in uncertain times, like during the coronavirus pandemic.

Neuroscience can help us understand what's happening in students' brains when they feel safe and understood. Here are four reasons why positive teacher-student relationships are important - and how you can build those relationships.

1. Positive relationships build motivation.

This creates a cycle. You provide positive feedback. The student's brain releases dopamine. The student feels good and is motivated to feel that way again. With this increased motivation, students spend more time and attention working on a skill. They build those skills. You give more praise - sparking the release of more dopamine. And the cycle starts all over again.

On the flip side, when students don't receive positive feedback, they're less likely to enter the positive cycle of motivation and learning.

How to do it: To build a positive relationship, you need to have more positive interactions than negative ones. More specifically, researchers recommend having five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Positive interactions could include greeting students by name as they arrive, giving praise for working hard, or asking about a student's pet.

Students who learn and think differently often have more negative interactions than positive ones. For example, students with ADHD may receive constant reminders from teachers to be on time and stay on task.

This doesn't mean that you should never provide students with corrective feedback and reminders. But make sure the positive interactions outweigh the negative ones. The more you get to know your students, the more you'll recognize when they need praise or encouragement, and when they're open to constructive feedback. You can keep a tally of how many reminders you give a student to complete an assignment. Try to find five times as many positive things to comment on and tally up as well.

2. Positive relationships create safe spaces for learning.

Think about how this applies to your own life. If you have a supportive principal who has established psychological safety in your school, you might be more likely to challenge yourself and try new ideas in your classroom. But if school leaders consistently give critical feedback, you might not feel psychologically safe enough to try something new. It's the same for students.

Building psychological safety is harder with some students than others. Think of the last time you saw a student seeming to overreact. This behavior may result from trauma or chronic stress in the student's life (such as having a learning or thinking difference or growing up as part of a marginalized group). This can cause them to feel threatened in situations that other students find harmless. The brain learns that the environment is not safe and remains on alert to potential danger.

For these students, when something is perceived as a threat, a region of the brain called the amygdala sets off an alarm. The amygdala is known for its role in detecting threats in the environment. Its job is to keep us safe and alive. Think of an animal that must decide whether to run or freeze when it sees a predator.

The amygdala triggers the release of cortisol (also called the stress hormone) and epinephrine (also called adrenaline). This sends extra energy throughout the body. The muscles tense up and the heartbeat quickens, preparing for fight or flight. When the threat detection system in the brain is highly activated, learning cannot happen. This is the opposite of psychological safety.

In students, this might look like:

Avoiding assignments

Putting their head down

Yelling or making negative comments

Walking out of the classroom or leaving a live video lesson

Acting out physically or aggressively

While building psychological safety may be even more difficult with these students, it is especially important for them. That's because oxytocin also helps keep the amygdala's threat detection system quiet. Over time, when students are surrounded by people they trust, their threat detection system is less likely to activate, and they're better able to learn.

For students who are at risk for a fight-or-flight reaction, your approach will need to differ slightly. Use strategies like when-then sentences so they can know exactly what positive outcome to expect when they complete a task, while giving students the power of choice. Expect that they may overreact sometimes, and provide the space and time needed to calm down. By remaining calm, you're not only reminding yourself to react to their behavior as a form of communication and respond appropriately. You're also building psychological safety and trust.

3. Positive relationships build new pathways for learning.

As you teach the new information, new neural pathways connect the old information with the new. If students don't understand the context or aren't able to link the new information to anything they currently know, they'll have a hard time understanding the lesson.

Ask students to share what they know about a topic. Every student has a different set of background knowledge. For example, if you know a student is a talented artist, you can leverage their knowledge of different kinds of paintbrushes to explain friction. Or you can make an analogy about the relationship between the characters in a student's favorite book and the domestic strife in the Civil War.

4. Positive relationships improve student behavior.

Neuroscience research has started to uncover why this imitation happens - and how it can be used to encourage positive behaviors. Studies have shown that when people observe an action being performed, it activates some of the same neural pathways that would be active if they actually performed the action. This is called the mirror-neuron system.

Essentially, our brains are practicing the action that we're seeing, even though our bodies don't move. Studies show that when people see an action first, they are able to perform the action more quickly than if they had not seen the action.

How to do it: Start by thinking through what behaviors and social skills you're modeling for your students. For example, you likely already model social skills like turn-taking, cooperation, and empathy on a daily basis. You can take it a step further and explain the behaviors you're modeling. The next time you're feeling frustrated, tell your students how you're feeling. Talk about how you deal with frustration, such as taking a few deep breaths.

For younger students, use pre-correcting and prompting as a classroom management strategy. It allows you to explicitly tell, show, and remind students how to approach tasks or situations.

Young children are even more likely than adults to imitate the behaviors they see. That's because they're still learning social skills and appropriate behavior. Plus, the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that allows us to choose where to direct our attention and to regulate our behaviors and emotions) isn't fully developed until we're in our 20s. Childhood is a prime time to model behavior and social skills for students.

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Building positive relationships with students: What brain science says

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Brain science tells us why positive student relationships can lead to their success.

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5. Online Engagement Strategy: Games, Gamified Activities and Virtual Field Trips

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5. Online Engagement Strategy: Games, Gamified Activities and Virtual Field Trips

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Using games or online resources improves student focus and engagement because students are learning by doing. Interactive Games- promote active learning by requiring students to actively participate, make decisions, solve problems, and apply knowledge within a game-based environment (Massman, 2023). Incorporating gamified activities and virtual field trips also improves engagement. Gamification gives you opportunities for game-based quizzes and activities. The gamification of education can enhance levels of students’ engagement similar to what games can do, to improve their particular skills and optimize their learning (Smiderle et al., 2020). Virtual field trips enhance levels of students’ engagement. They allow students to see places that they would not normally have access and provide many of the same learning benefits that actual trips do.

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The rationale for each strategy is really about making students successful.  These strategies most definitely support the needs of all K-12 students. Implementing these strategies can support the needs of K-12 students in both regular education or special education and even those who require modifications and accommodations, English language learners, gifted students, and early finishers.

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Kaufman, T. (2023). Building positive relationships with students: What brain science says. Understood. https://www.understood.org/en/articles/brain-science-says-4-reasons-to-build-positive-relationships-with-students

Massman , M. (2023). How educational games enhance engagement in K-12 Education. Hurix Digital. https://www.hurix.com/how-educational-games-enhance-engagement-in-k12-education/#:~:text=Educational%20games%20promote%20active%20learning%20by%20requiring%20students%20to%20actively,within%20a%20game%2Dbased%20environment.

Smiderle, R., Rigo, S. J., Marques, L. B., Jorge Arthur Pecanha de Miranda Coelho, & Jaques, P. A. (2020). The impact of gamification on students’ learning, engagement and behavior based on their personality traits - smart learning environments. SpringerOpen. https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-019-0098-x

Sharma , N. (2023). Top 8 strategies for student engagement in online learning. Hurix Digital. https://www.hurix.com/top-strategies-for-student-engagement-in-online-learning/

U.S. Department of Education . (n.d.). Supporting students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Maximizing in-person learning and implementing effective practices for students in quarantine and isolation. Supporting Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/supporting-students-during-covid-19-pandemic#:~:text=Data%20collected%20before%20and%20during,critical%20school%20services%20and%20extracurricular