Microsoft Teams has become an essential tool for teachers using remote, hybrid, or in-person learning models. Teams allows educators to create digital classrooms, collaborate with colleagues, assign and grade work, communicate with students and parents, and more.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the top ways teachers can utilise Microsoft Teams to enhance instruction, connectivity, and classroom management.
Create virtual classrooms - With Teams, teachers can set up distinct digital classrooms for each subject or class period. These virtual classrooms can include private chat channels, folders for file sharing, class notebooks for collaboration, calendars to post assignments and events, and more. This provides an organized digital hub for each learning community.
Make announcements - The Posts section of a Team classroom allows teachers to make announcements to the whole class easily. Teachers can use this feature to broadcast reminders about upcoming tests, announce changed due dates, share links and resources, celebrate student achievements, and more. It's a simple way to regularly communicate key information.
Share lesson resources - Teachers can upload lesson plans, slide decks, activity sheets, reading materials, instructional videos, graphical organizers, and any other resources to Teams files and folders. This keeps all learning materials organized in one place for students to access asynchronously. Teachers can also share screenshots, links, documents, or videos live during video lessons.
Give and grade assignments - The Assignments tab in Teams allows teachers to distribute quizzes, essays, projects, and other assignments digitally. Students can complete and submit their work entirely through Teams. Teachers can provide grades, comments, and feedback to each student within the platform. This allows paperless assessment.
Host online meetings - For virtual or hybrid schedules, the Meetings function in Teams allows teachers to conduct full video conferences with students. Teachers can share screens, deliver lessons, put students in virtual breakout rooms, provide polls and chat features, record the sessions, and more. This brings the classroom experience online.
Collaborate with colleagues - Teachers can create dedicated Teams spaces for faculty only. Here they can message each other, share lesson resources, make decisions as a department or grade level, get help troubleshooting, and collaborate on special projects. This facilitates efficient planning and teamwork.
Communicate with parents - Within Teams, teachers can interact directly with parents through private chat, group messages, video meetings, announcements, and the class newsletter feature. This improves school-home connection and transparency.
Encourage student collaboration - Students can work together using Teams chat, co-authoring Word or PowerPoint documents in real-time, sharing notes in class notebooks, providing peer feedback on assignments, and group projects. This promotes essential student communication and teamwork skills.
With its variety of functions, Microsoft Teams enables educators to manage complex teaching and communication needs for in-person, hybrid, or remote learning. Both students and teachers benefit from Teams’ ability to streamline organization, assignments, resource sharing, and collaboration. Teams is an invaluable platform that allows classroom learning to continue regardless of physical location.