Abstract:

Working with reading comprehension is a time consuming task for the teacher and time is limited during the school day. Teachers use several strategies in order to manage the time limitations regarding checking for understanding. The most common way of doing this is testing the students by giving them written assignments. Another common strategy is doing conversations in class, but it can be challenging involve all students if the class size is large.

Online classrooms in learning platforms offers new opportunities to the teachers. If online classrooms are utilised together with physical classrooms we can refer to the combination of the two as a blended classrooms and the teaching that then takes place as blended teaching. The physical classroom appears- and is experienced as a space where most of the information flow exists in the present. This can stand in contrast to the online classroom that can be more stable, easier to verify and, in addition, provide an overview and structure for the participants. The online classroom is primarily asynchronous and provides both teachers and students with the opportunity to stretch out time. Several education researchers point out that there is great potential for using time more productively in the classroom. The welsh researcher Dylan Wiliam points out that teachers often expect answers just seconds after they have posed a question (Wiliam & Black 2001). Teaching and learning in the blended classroom can help teachers and students to stretch out time, visualise what students find difficult and give students feedback that they are not the only ones wondering about a specific issue or are uncertain of the meaning of taught concepts.

The participants in this session will be introduced to a couple of scenarios that demonstrate what can happen if teachers plan reading and literacy activities for a blended classroom in such way that the best characteristics from both online- and physical classrooms are utilised.

The focus in this session is to demonstrate how teaching in a blended classroom can look like when it help teachers to better find out where students are in their understanding

You will:
• get practical tips on how to work with student reading comprehension in a blended learning context
• see practical examples of how teachers with a single computer in the classroom still can utilise the strength of blended learning
* see practical examples of how online learning platform can help teachers and students to get more out of the classroom time, strengthen student confidence and support building communities for learning among the students.
* Get practical tips about how teachers can utilise the opportunities the blended classroom offers.