Just recently, my principal reminded the staff that although we are green, we need to plan lessons should we suddenly have to switch back to hybrid or remote due to cases. I don't think we'll have a problem due to the restrictions the village has in place but it could happen.
Last spring, when school suddenly went distance, we relied on packets that didn't have to be returned so most students didn't bother doing anything. A few did some things and send in photos or texts to show their work but no-one chose the real world math assignments I provided. The principal stated if we go red, packets won't cut it.
Although I've been researching the topic of teaching remotely, I do not feel I know enough so I went to the state website to see what professional development classes they off. It turns out they are offering two classes that I think will be worth my while.
The first class is based on the newly published Distance Learning Playbook. It is taught by the authors of the book over a four webinar series. The first week looks at considerations for creating both units and modules that are engaging.
Then the webinar goes on to explore synchronous vs asynchronous, learning goals and success criteria, aligning tasks appropriately, with another webinar on the health and well being of both student and teacher, and ways to improve student - teacher relationships. The final meeting covers ways to carry out assessment both formative and summative, and feedback effectively in a distance situation. One of the other teachers suggested it because our school, like so many others, is open mostly but could easily switch to being totally online and I need to know more on how to do it. So I'm taking the course.
The other one I'm taking is on teaching math remotely or in a hybrid model. It covers building student math identity in individual and group settings, learning to identify areas where students need additional support and prioritizing methods of instruction to increase student learning as much as possible. It explores creating situations for mathematical discourse in both hybrid and remote classes, selecting tasks that emphasize both problem solving and reasoning for these two situations, when and how to use multiple representations to help students connect ideas.
The first one is a general course while the second is math specific and I think the two combined will provide me with a better foundational knowledge should we move to online. These two classes will give me that bit I need to improve my lessons for both in class or remote. In fact, the middle school math teacher is currently taking three classes towards her masters degree and she asked me to share what I learn with her because she wants to know more about creating lessons for the uncertainty of the times.
As I go through the classes, I'll share the points which I think are great for use during lesson planning. I know I'll be connecting pieces from each class into things I can use. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear. Have a great day.
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