Virtual School Dispatches

With SOL, PALS and other tests wrapping up, this often becomes my favorite time of year as I see students imagining, creating, collaborating and exploring in their classes while also reflecting on their growth, learning and relationships.      Some of the great things I’ve seen in the past:  Create a class book. Each student/pair of students creates a chapter reviewing material from the year.  Students create skits, chapter/unit reviews, commercials, movie trailers, news clips. These could be subject matter related or they could be personal reflections (What I learned about myself this year? I’m proud of…Next year, I hope to)  Make use of Zoom to host an expert, go on a virtual field trip, collaborate with another class in virtual school or anywhere in the world. Give the students a FedEx Day (or several shorter FedEx periods). Essentially, a FedEx Day is where you allow the students to take an idea of th...

  Excellence in Education At this week’s PLC/faculty meetings, we are going to be sure to celebrate all the super actions you have taken to make virtual learning awesome for our scholars in 5 domains. This is from Corwin/Visible Learning Group and some of the bullets are from their document and others are ones that I have filled in.   If you'd like to work on yours in advance, here’s the link (forced copy)   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g11Gz0bi1iuRQX9IgB0vm7zvoiJFfhWDfj24LBcdXII/copy   Teacher   Empathy   How do students seek connections with teachers? Begin class with positive affirmations (jokes, quotes, stories, etc) Student emotional or academic check-ins (temperature/pulse takers)     Unconditional   Positive Regard How do students know teachers care about them as people?   Include specific student interests in lessons Use voice feedback (Mote is great for Google) so students can hear your enthusiasm Recognitions and rewards...