I wasn’t too worried about schools closing due to the Coronavirus until this week. The virus outbreak became too real as events were canceled, colleges went to teaching online, and the president finally looked presidential in his address to the nation. It also doesn’t help that our school’s rumor mill is predicting a closure date. UPDATE: We are closing Monday, March 16th. (I started writing this a couple of days ago.) With three weeks until spring break, I came up with a plan to continue teaching from the comfort of my house and hope my students engage in the lessons since this is our new reality.

The Gist

• Sending a work packet and activities home that everyone can do to bridge the equity gap.
• Using SeeSaw to fill in with additional lessons and activities, including videos to make it seem more like real teaching is occurring for my students.
• Using Bloomz to stay connected with parents.

One of the reasons our school district hesitated to officially close schools is because we are the second largest school district in the nation and have many students that live below the poverty level. That means the students at home might be unsupervised (who’s going to watch them if their parents are still working? Grandma and Grandpa are a no-go), may have limited access to nutritious meals, and be more impacted on the loss of education. Since this pandemic isn’t affecting students the way other epidemics have (i.e. they aren’t getting sick), why close schools that would affect our most vulnerable population? It’s a precarious situation, but that’s what our district decided to do.

Thankfully, the rumor mill started on Wednesday and I had time (if you count a day and a half!) to prepare some things for the students. First, to try and close the equity gap, I put together a packet of things students could do from home: book report packet, reading log, math pages, cursive sheets and their grammar book. All of my students can do these things from home whether they have access to a computer or internet or not.

Next, I put together a letter that outlined what they could be doing from home online: SeeSaw, reading quizzes through Readtheory.org and Renaissance, math practice from Freckle.com, and typing.com for typing practice. Of course, this requires that they at least have access to the internet. I’m really hoping my students use SeeSaw frequently from home, the way we do in class. It’s an easy way to share a video or link, and then have them respond using their journal. I’m going to also record myself with the hopes the students will feel a little more connected to our classroom. Many websites are also providing free lessons through PBS Learning Media, Scholastic, and Learning A-Z (RazKids and Headsprout) during this time. For some of my students, they have many options and learning opportunities.

Finally, I use Bloomz to connect with my parents. I’ve been using it a few years now, and I really like it. About 60% of my students’ parents have an account, which makes it easy for me to send messages and make announcements. This will come in handy during this break. Unfortunately for the parents who aren’t connected, I can only hope they think about connecting (I sent another letter home about the app this past week.)

These next few weeks will definitely be different. I’m realistic that some of my students may not do any of the activities I’ve prepared, and yet others will go above and beyond. I also had students absent today which means they didn’t get the packet or letter (and a few of the absent students’ parents are connected to Bloomz) and that’s unfortunate.