A few days ago, I did what I never, ever do as a teacher. I asked for information that I hadn’t previously given my students. Along the lines of “guess what’s in my head?” teaching.

I recognise that it’s no use asking a class something they are unlikely to know. However, now that all my students have the power of the internet at their very fingertips during all of my online lessons, I reasoned that asking them “What can you tell me about Ozymandias?” would be a low-risk opener for our poetry lesson.

Did you know there is a Scottish professional wrestler called Ozymandias? I didn’t. After around 12 children recited the various facts they’d gleaned from armbar.fandom.com, I do now.

So, it turns out that what doesn’t work in the classroom also might not be a great idea in virtual learning.

In fact, as with so many things, the lockdown has helped me to realise what I can do without and what I really value in my teaching. It has forced me to go about the very complex process of simplifying things.

Stripping things back

I started with my instructions.

In the “before times” (as my pupils have taken to calling it), I of course used lots of explanation in lessons.

If a pupil didn’t follow them, I assumed issues ranging from language ability to just not paying attention. 

Writing my instructions down, however, has eliminated those excuses.

Initially, I was gleeful at my ability to prove pupils weren’t listening/reading properly (no more “You never said that, Miss!”), but then I realised the fault must lie with me.

I tried breaking all my instructions into just one step at a time. Even with my top-set Year 11 class, the impact was huge.

I then broke my explanations down into minute detail and paused after each new detail to check they had grasped it. I would revisit these explanations repeatedly, recapping over and over.

I honestly thought this was something that already featured in my normal teaching. It took seeing it in black and white to realise how wrong I had been, and just how wordy some of my explanations had become.

Question everything

This led me to my next “revelation” that’s really just something I have always known: questions are really important. They are my go-to tool for recapping, for Assessment for Learning, even to fill the few minutes at the end of a lesson when I accidentally got a class to pack up too early.

Without being able to see my pupils while I introduce concepts online, I’ve found my questioning has almost tripled, to stretch and probe and check that they really do understand, or haven’t just copied and pasted from a Scottish wrestler’s bio page.

I began throwing out questions more and more; some lessons with my lower-ability Year 8s started to consist of nothing but questions. I was worried these were boring, until pupils began saying, “Can we have more lessons like this? They make sense. They’re like a game.”

It was the closest I’ve been to one of those precious “aha” moments I’ve missed so much from the physical classroom.

And on that topic, the “fun” parts of my physical lessons - the little drawing activities and the copying down of key quotes on to outlines of characters - have turned out to not be all that fun.

Or at least, having dispensed with them due to a lack of paper and pens in many homes, they certainly haven’t been missed. And we’ve been getting through so much more.

Be grateful

A pupil asked me recently what I was looking forward to the most about going back.

I miss so many moments from being in school: excited hands flung up so fast you worry about possible dislocation; that hurried scribble and intense look of concentration when I call the last five minutes of a test; the polite smiles at my horrible teacher jokes.

I didn’t think much of the question at the time, but I’m startled by the kindness of it now - thinking to check in on her teacher when her own life has been made so uncertain.

Phrasing it as something to look forward to, rather than something I miss. Recognising that this is hard for us, too.

The pupils I work with, like the majority I’ve met during my teaching career, are supremely grateful individuals, who miss school and are beginning to appreciate now more than ever what their teachers do for them.

That gratitude, from both the pupils and me, is my favourite thing that I will be bringing from the virtual classroom when all this is over.

Sarah Cullen is an English teacher at the British Vietnamese International School in Ho Chi Minh City