When remote learning first started, I’m sure I was not alone in feeling like a grandparent using technology. The early days were spent trying to get my head around screen sharing, uploading documents, accepting students through the “lobby” and, most importantly, unmuting myself.

I tried desperately to accept the new normal and power through it. But lessons felt like neverending black holes of trying to teach meaningful subject content while, essentially, speaking to myself. Add to that the fact that, as head of Year 11, I was constantly having to try to reassure parents and students that everything was going to be OK and it was, to put it mildly, challenging.

But as I sat at my dining room table, enduring yet another lesson where I praised the same seven students for engaging (and saving my sanity), I tried to find ways of enjoying remote learning.

I started to realise that the work being produced was good and, for once, the timed tasks I was setting were being followed with rigour and efficiency.

I noticed that my high-flying yet shy students were flourishing online. Being able to type responses boosted their confidence and they were engaged throughout, supplying brilliant answers and building on ideas in the conversation.

As the weeks flew by and I adapted, I realised I was beginning to cut the waffle from my lessons. Group work was gone, replaced with lengthier writing tasks, more contextual information being shared and more time to unpick language and analyse texts.

With Year 11, I spent three double lessons looking at how to write summaries. This was considerably longer than I’d ever spent in class looking at the same question, as I would normally be worried about pace or moving on before students got bored.

But they weren’t bored and I could see the genuine progress they were making as they submitted answers on Microsoft Teams.

Another bonus: I could mark these pieces quicker than in books and, despite doing two practices already that week, I had almost 90 per cent of students hand in a third attempt. Marking is my least favourite thing in the classroom but the ease of it online was, in my eyes, a huge triumph.

I discovered a way of uploading a working document to Teams, where students typed on to it live, meaning I could remotely watch a whole class answering the question at once. I verbally corrected spelling, punctuation and grammar errors and watched them being changed instantly, while praising individuals.

It was a Big Brother style of marking that simply couldn’t be replicated without tech, and it was definitely one of the biggest successes I had online.

Remote learning still wouldn’t be my preference but it has certainly made me reconsider the content of my lessons, cutting the unnecessary elements and finding a quicker method of marking.

Back in school, I’m already enjoying reinventing my face-to-face teaching to encompass these changes and, while I hope there’s no return to lockdown any time soon, I’m grateful for the opportunity it has given me to refresh my practice.

Victoria Mercer is a teacher of English and head of Year 11 at Brighton Hill Community School

This article originally appeared in the 21 May 2021 issue under the headline “Lockdown helped me trim the fat from my lessons”