Abstract:

Amid the first stage of the pandemic crisis (February-May 2020) and the first lockdown, Greek schools had suddenly closed and teachers faced the challenge of providing emergent remote teaching. The study describes the efforts of one kindergarten school when shifting from a face to face to distant learning, how they managed to provide educational activities that can easy be implemented at home while presenting them in an engaging way. Therefore, the study investigates how emergent remote teaching was implemented, what type of activities were designed and how children responded to them.

Teachers worked collaboratively to provide asynchronous and synchronous teaching. For the asynchronous teaching, a padlet was used both for uploading activities that parents could do with their kids and for children’s work outcome to be shared. Synchronous teaching was provided when Webex accounts were provided by the Ministry of Education. Parents’ collaboration was a key component for its successful provision.

Teachers designed a variety of activities and the majority of children participated with the assistance of their parents. Teachers created activities such as listening to stories/songs, sharing personal experiences, drawing and making crafts, doing experiments and play digital educational games which covered a variety of educational objectives. Children were very responsive to video lessons where their teachers enacted each stage of an experiment, game or craft, reading a book, highlighting the impact of teacher’s child relationship on children’s behavior. The analysis points out that the activities were developmentally appropriate through the use of materials available at home and ensured children’s active engagement through hands on and playful activities. During synchronous teaching, connecting children through breakout rooms and sharing personal experiences in couples were of great success. The majority of children participated during both synchronous and asynchronous teaching. The few children who did not participate were from families that did not have digital resources and whose parents had limited digital skills.

Keywords:

Emergent remote teaching, preschool education.