This guide is [loosely adapted, modified from] the "Flexible Plan for Instructional Continuity" from Sacred Heart Preparatory, Atherton, CA (tinyurl.com/instructionalcontinuity). The lead writers are Diana Neebe (@dneebe, dneebe@shschools.org) and Joy Lopez (@technomaven, jlopez@shschools.org).
Campus is closed; classes are held online. Faculty and staff may also be working remotely, but could work from school unless there is a campus closure. This determination is made by the administration of the school. If the school is closed, but the campus is open, teachers might be able to collaborate in real-time at school. If there is a quarantine or it isn’t safe to gather, departments and grade level teams can gather virtually using Google Hangouts.
The essential questions here are: How do we support student well-being and academic development in the midst of a major disruption to our daily operations for an extended period of time? How do we continue to foster student learning without being able to meet our students in person? How can we leverage the fact that students will, for the most part, be working at their own pace from home rather than a classroom filled with peers? We hope that the recommendations below help support faculty as we work through this uncharted territory.
Rethink the structure of your course.
Teach in chunks - assign work for a week or a unit at a time, rather than having “class work” and “home work” every day. Don’t expect it to be perfect and don’t expect the amount of learning to be the same as usual. Give yourself a break!
Rely on asynchronous tools to communicate most of the time - email, Google Classroom, MySA, recorded screencasts.
Keep in SIMPLE. Every ed tech company is offering free tools - but stick to what you know and what your students know. Don’t overwhelm them (or yourself!).
Remember that students are not just taking your course, but trying to keep up with all their courses, and assign deadlines accordingly.
Keep communication simple and clear.
You will not be able to “read the room” to gauge understanding, so find ways to check-in with students individually, via formative assessments and also social-emotional touchpoints.
Make sure parents and students know when you will be available - and when you will NOT be available. Self-care is important for you and your students.
Preload & vary your resources. Preload all your resources and point to them in your weekly post. Consider the types of resources you expect students to access. It’s good practice to add PDFs of readings and to vary the type of media (ie: screencasts, TED talks, video tutorials, etc.) to make up for you not being in front of them. Borrow materials - there are lots of good resources out there. We use a wide range of resources in all our classes. Preload handouts, instructional materials, guided notes, links, etc. into Google Classroom or MySA before class begins. If you have a physical copy that doesn’t yet exist in electronic form, you can take a picture of it (using your iPad or phone), create a PDF using an app like Scannable, or scan it into an email to yourself using the copier.
Craft a range of purposeful assessments. Assessments with online students require careful planning. MySA and Google Forms Quizzes both offer timed online testing options, but in general, traditional assessments can put remote students in a tricky position where a quick Google search makes cheating both easy and tempting. It’s our job to create a learning environment that sets students up for success rather than for a moral dilemma. You can create collaborative tests using Google docs, or individually assign assessments in Google Classroom. If you set limited time windows, remember that accommodations still apply. Students with learning plans will need online accommodations just as much as they need on-ground accommodations.This is a good time to consider other types of assessment. If a traditional test is out, how else can you evaluate what students understand? How else can you assess the development of a key skill? Project based learning, with multiple checkpoints along the way, is a great fit for remote learning.
Plan for crucial check in points. Attending virtual classes, posting to discussion boards, attending a one-on-one video chat, email, submitting assignments, etc., all constitute check-ins. The point is that you want to know students are working and not falling behind. If they are not checking in, we want to catch them early. Consider creating a “water cooler” discussion board for students to post questions and write about issues they are having. You can call it “Questions, Concerns, Comments” as an example. The goal with these checkpoints is both to ensure students are following along and to share the responsibility of building and caring for the learning community with the rest of the class. If students are slipping behind, please notify the counselor, who will follow up with the family and loop in the appropriate administrator if necessary.
Prepare to be flexible. This is the time to adjust your curriculum to fit into a virtual school world. What is your comfort level? How will you use the synchronous and asynchronous tools? Make your plans, lay out your course, take a deep breath, and be flexible. If something doesn’t work, just like in your classroom teaching, adjust and go back or move on. Remember to reach out to your colleagues and tech team for support. We can do this...together.