38 Remote learning and teaching has its own needs when planning a lesson. The teacher has to take into account that pupils have limited access to material, that their help and engagement cannot be as present as in live sessions, that pupils' motivation has to be addressed in larger amount, especially when planning a task for pupils’ independent engagement. OTA methodology follows the experiences of teachers who were planning online learning lessons and is also forward-looking in a way, the proposed activities can be implemented as online or face-to-face lessons. One of the main issues reported during the pandemic was social isolation, when all classes have to be done in an online form. There are several ways to prevent social isolation and feelings of loneliness in general. Social communication via social media and networks, for example. Being connected with others, even if not face-to-face, but the acknowledgement that there are instant responses and that there is a person on “the other site” can have several benefits, including lower depression and anxiety and relationship maintenance (Moore & March, 2022). Therefore, when planning an online lesson, teachers shouldn’t avoid such communication between peers, but rather to encourage them. Planning teamwork or working in pairs, for example, encouraging them to use chats, video-calls etc. when giving feedback and to seek help from one another via online social engagement. SMALL-GROUPS SETTING IN SPECIAL ENVIRONMENTS By now, small group settings are well established among formal as well as non-formal or informal educational environments. Teachers are encouraged to set small groups within their classes and thus integrate peer learning. Small groups can be very efficient and perform results on high levels. They are enhancing team-working skills, peer communication, inclusion and creative thinking (creative problem solving). In classic “live” lessons, setting small groups has become rather common and has different number of participants: from 2 (also referred as pair) and up to unidentified number, which depends on the needs of whole group or the nature of the given task. When changing to an on-line environment, setting small groups seemed hardly possible. But several different conference platforms did take care of that. With special option for setting groups via conference platforms, setting small groups was able to continue almost as the lessons were taken in live classrooms. One very important benefit when setting tasks to be taken in small groups when teaching on-line is, beside all above mentioned, is also one step toward preventing the feeling of social isolation. When large groups are led by teachers, social connection is limited even in live lessons. Having those type of lessons in remote classes, the connection falls to a minimum. In teacher-led large groups pupils were asked to turn off their microphones, so the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzYwNDE=