Like a lot of other districts, we needed to set up our students for distance learning. We had some pretty serious discussions and we had to really understand the reality of this for our students. First, students are not all going to have access to the internet. Those that may have internet, may only have phones to work from. Second, students are not going to be able to spend the same amount of time working as we do in class. There are many reasons for this. For example, my own kids are spending 2-3 hrs working because I’m also working. Third, some students may not get very much done because they lack the support at home that would keep them working. There are many other problems, but that is what we addressed directly.
For Biology, we agreed one some key points: we made everything so it could actually be completed on a phone, students should plan to work about 20 minutes a day, nothing should have to be printed from home, and we would reach out to all of our students to support them as we could. The school did a “packet pickup” for students that needed paper copies of their work. We submitted work and the rest was taken care of.
We decided to go ahead and cover the spread of pathogens and viruses because it seemed pretty fitting. For the students that needed a paper copy, we submitted a guided reading with questions embedded. Parents could pick up a paper copy from the school for the student to work on from home. Both packets make up a week’s worth of work, if they work a little every day. Some did everything at once, which is also fine, just time consuming for them.
For the students that were working online, I created the each lesson to include a video and a video notes guide. The video notes are really close to the script; I did that for some of my students that don’t like to listen to videos or for the ones that need to hear it and read it. The video notes are set up for Cornell note taking while they read or watch the video. This to also gives students a chance to read/ listen to the information and process it before answering questions. I have follow up questions on Schoology; the questions are very similar to those in the guided reading. This way, I can asses the same information, no matter how they did the work.
It seems to have worked out pretty well. Our biggest struggle has been getting students to realize they did not have to do everything the first day, this was the work for the entire week. I have instructions posted on Schoology with the work and it was something I shared through Remind, but it’s been a struggle anyway. I know nobody is surprised by the fact that instructions were ignored.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have!
