Paraprofessionals are such an important part of our special education teams. We work as a team, each playing our part, to meet the needs of all of our students. But when we shifted – overnight – to distance learning, we were left wondering how we could use our paraprofessionals during distance learning.
When so much of what our paraprofessionals do requires being physically with students, how does that work when no one is together?
In this post, I’m sharing 5 EASY ways you can get the most from your paraprofessional in order to give the most to your students.
1. Prepare Lessons
Paraprofessionals can plan art and social-emotional lessons and activities. By recording these lessons, they can model the activities and post them in Google classrooms. This allows you to still provide these valuable activities that you may otherwise not have time to work on. For some ideas, check out this blog post about teaching emotion and feelings words.
2. “Attend” Professional Development
Time away from the physical classroom provides an opportunity for professional development for paraprofessionals. You can assign different activities for them to work on with the goal of better understanding the evidence-based practices you are implementing in your classroom. The Iris Center is one of my favorite sources for online professional development.
3. Participate in Virtual Circle Time
Circle time is still an important part of the school day – even during distance learning. And circle time can be the perfect time to use your paraprofessionals during distance learning. If you are continuing to follow a daily circle time schedule, your paraprofessional can take some of the days and use them to review activities that we sent home. They can also take students through technology games or videos that you have chosen.
4. Gather Data
We talked about times and ways paraprofessionals can lead circle time. But they can also attend circle times you are leading. These are perfect times for your paraprofessional to act as an extra pair of eyes and ears – and gather data. They can document whether and how students are participating and answering questions.
5. Reinforce Content
This last way of using a paraprofessional is one that your students and paraprofessional are sure to love. And that is for them to read books aloud to the students. Gathering students together – remotely – and revisiting some favorite books from throughout the school year is a terrific way to reinforce content and concepts you’ve covered.
Distance learning is filled with both challenges and opportunities. Finding new and inventive ways to use the members of your team is certainly one of these opportunities. I hope you’ll try some of these suggestions. When you do, pop over to see me on Instagram and let me know how it went!
You can access my Distance Learning Resources HERE! I also have additional digital products that I bet you’ll find helpful as well.
Grab the {FREE} Distance Learning Guide to help special education teachers and their team. It will help virtual learning and you’ll thank you later.
