We are entering our third full week of remote learning, “teaching” from home due to a state wide school closure as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. The first two weeks saw me attempting to get each of my students established with their Chromebooks or alternate technology from home so they are set up to learn from home. I’ve also been monitoring the completion of supplemental work on the student’s part. As of this writing I only have 2 students that I’ve been unable to establish contact with. As of this writing I must say that the level of engagement in the supplemental work has exceeded my expectations giventhe extreme circumstances we find ourselves in!
One of the many highlights of last week was a Zoom Read Aloud I held with my students on Thursday. I read a few chapters from a novel we were reading “in class,” titled: The People of Sparks before the closure. It was so much fun reading to the group. I read the book via my Kindle app, on my Mac Book Pro while hosting the meeting on my iPad Pro. Before the meeting I found a really cool image of a scene in the book so I added it to my photos and used it as my virtual background when I started the meeting. I put the screen in gallery mode so I could see each student. As I was reading, I occasionally looked over at the iPad Pro screen and saw the students either laying down on their beds or couches or sitting in a comfortable chair, wrapped in a blanket…listening intently. It gave me great joy that I was providing a sense of normalcy and peace as I read. I opened the meeting up for conversation twice during the 40 minute meeting. Students weaved in and out…asking questions related to the book and unrelated to the book or just sat silently, content just to be a part of the experience. I answered each question as best I could then continued reading. At the end of the session I thanked them for letting me do something that I LOVE to do “in class” encouraged them to continue the great work they are doing in Google Classroom, told them I missed them, then signed off.
Late last week our district decided to continue with supplemental learning experiences for the week of 04-03-20. I think that this was a very wise decision. There is absolutely no need to push into territory that we are not ready for yet. This gives them time to prepare for what things will look like as we move into the fourth quarter of this historical school year.
When I got the word that we were moving in this direction last Friday I immediately started organizing content (as I’ve been doing since March 16th) that I wanted my students to experience in week 3 above and beyond what the school district has been providing. I started writing announcements to family members and students, scheduling them to post Monday (this) morning. Something new I’m going to try out this week involves the manner in which I am composing and pushing announcements on the Remind app. Last week I realized that I was pushing multiple texts to my families each morning. That didn’t seem right. These families have enough to worry about as they themselves secure what it means to have their children home for this extended period of time. The last thing they need from me is 6 texts staggered over a 6 minute timeframe. That’s one of the limitations of the Remind app...limited space (140 characters) with regards to writing announcements. I decided that I would use Google Docs to compose my announcements, create a link that is shareable to anyone who gets it, make sure the doc is “view only,” then copy/paste the link into the Remind app.
Above and beyond what I have scheduled for this coming week I want to do 2 Zoom Read Aloud meetings. After looking at the weekly calendar my principal posted this morning it looks like I will be able to achieve this. I wiIl be using the desktop version of Zoom app from now on as I read some alarming articles over the weekend about a phenomenon known as Zoombombing. I decided to delete the iPad Pro app after reading more about this potential issue as it appears to be more secure if the app is run from a laptop. The web version has more controls to “lock things down.” Keeping my students and their families safe is a very high priority and I’m glad that I am geeky enough to read a wide variety of “tech blogs” which is where I found the articles about Zoom.
In the meantime I will continue to monitor Google Classroom, reading and responding to student work supporting everyone as best I can!