Practice is vital to improving your teaching practices. Teaching with Grace is an interactive classroom simulation that provides a safe practice environment for teachers to develop specific research-based teaching practices for inclusive classrooms.
Choose from a variety of common classroom scenarios, observe the situation, learn about your virtual students, and learn new teaching practices.
Verbally communicate with the virtual students and manipulate the classroom to support learning.
Monitor the system’s feedback in real time and adjust your responses. Re-play scenarios and try new approaches as many times as you wish.
The simulated scenarios in Teaching with Grace provide space to practice two kinds of teaching practices –
Discover sessions allow you to get comfortable with the virtual classroom and practice listening to learn more about students from their responses. Avatar students will orient you to the tools in the virtual classroom and introduce themselves. In these session you will be expected to complete the following sequence of steps:
- Ask clarifying questions
- Reflect back to students your understanding of their responses.
Deepen sessions allow you to try out all four steps of the Deeper Learning Teaching Routine with an individual student. In a Deepen session, you will call a student over for a short coaching session and complete the following sequence of steps:
- Ask clarifying questions
- Reflect back your understanding
- Teach the student a way to strengthen their response based on the Must Have and Amazing Criteria
- Extend student thinking to ensure they take away from your coaching a strategy and an understanding of why their thinking changed.
The scenario library is organized by content of focus. Click on any of the scenarios below to prepare yourself for the session and start exploring Teaching with Grace.
Reach Every Reader: Exploring Non-Fiction Reading about Space Exploration
Discover Student Reading Strengths
Explore the virtual classroom and ask students what they like to read outside of school.
Check & Circle Routine with Oliver
Guide Oliver to focus his attention and identify key words in a reading comprehension question.
Project Freedom: Teaching Language and Literacy through Primary Sources
Discover Student Thinking about a Photograph
Guide students through thinking with primary sources and the Zoom-In learning routine.
Deepen Learning with Chris – Building Vocabulary & Connections
Help Chris communicate his thinking through complex sentences.
Q: I don’t know how to interact with the simulation. Where can I find a guide?
A: If you are new to Teaching with Grace or need a refresher on how to navigate the environment, you can always return to our Guided Tour of the Virtual Classroom.
Q: What will you do with my personal information and session results?
A: Your session will be deleted when you close your browser. Your data will never be shared with anyone beyond the project team.