BVA News
Let's All Stay Safe!
We're shifting from paper health care checks to Pick Up Patrol. If your child will be coming into the building for club meetings, photos, testing, or other reasons, we ask you to use Pick Up Patrol to report that they are healthy before interaction with other students.
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February 1st | 8th | 16th
Corona Care Callers Program - Would your child like a High School Mentor to connect with? Sign them up with Corona Cares Callers.
General Info
Communication is Key:
We appreciate everyone’s patience as we begin our year. A key component to ensure everything runs smoothly in a virtual environment is clear and consistent communication.
Our learning management systems, Google Classroom (K-5) and Canvas (6-12) will be the best place to go for daily and weekly expectations for learners. If you haven’t already, sign up for an observer account so you can see what your children’s teachers are posting. For questions regarding specific class assignments or procedures, contact your child’s teacher(s).
Our newly launched website will also be a place to go for updates and information about Brave Virtual Academy. We’ve recently established a way for students and families to get tech help more directly. You can email ih-technicians@ihsd.us.
If you have questions or feedback for us at this point, feel free to share your and your child’s experience through this online form. You’ll likely have the opportunity to fill out a lot of surveys. Our entire BVA team wants to ensure that we create the best possible experience for you and your child this year. Feel free to weigh in on the surveys that matter to you. Surveys are one of the ways we plan to make sure every family is heard and to identify and prioritize program change and growth.
If you have additional questions or concerns at any point, I welcome you to call (513-272-4674), email (kim.given@ihsd.us), make a Google Meet appointment, or fill out a survey to share your thoughts.
Our Focus
At Indian Hill’s Brave Virtual Academy, we are focusing our work toward three big ideas:
Building Community
How can we ensure every learner feels connected to teachers, peers, home school, and community?
How can we create a culture where all stakeholders contribute to our goals?
Personalized Learning
How can we ensure every learner can access the curriculum, is learning at the appropriate pace and level of challenge, and is actively working towards meeting his or her goals?
How can we move learners from passive to active participants in their learning?
Through our BVA Community Town Hall Meetings and future newsletters, we will be sharing ways of how you can support these goals with your children at home.
As a part of our Brave Virtual Academy, many things will be similar to what our face to face learners experience. Learners will have a mix of live and asynchronous learning incorporating the best of teaching practices:
Personalization: providing unique learning pathways for individual students
Agency: giving learners opportunities to participate in key decisions in their learning experience
Authentic Audience: giving learners the opportunity to create for a real audience both locally and globally
Connectivity: giving learners opportunities to experience learning in collaboration with peers and experts locally and globally
Creativity: providing learners individual and collaborative opportunities to make things that matter while building skills for their future
PACING OF STUDENT WORK
Attendance @BVA
One of the adjustments to be made as students engage in virtual school is how to be more independent in completing their asynchronous work. Here are some tips for you to try in setting your child up for success:
Students benefit from:
A set place to do their school work, as free from distraction as possible.
Setting clear goals - have your child set reasonable goals for how they will stretch themselves in school and in life this year. These goals should be focused on learning/mastering new skills vs. earning specific grades or working for a certain number of minutes.
Regular routines to complete work along with scheduled breaks, time away from the screen, and time outside. Depending on your child’s readiness, create a weekly agenda with your child or ask your child to create a first draft of their weekly agenda, being sure to schedule in open time as well as time for school assignments.
Working their plan - Check in with your child to see how the agenda is working for him or her. Adjust as necessary.
Want more ideas for supporting your learner at home? Check out the Distance Learning Playbook for Parents. Our BVA Community Book Club is reading and discussing it right now! We will start another group second semester.
Students in virtual learning programs are still responsible for attending school. In BVA, attendance might look a little different from face to face school. Here is our current plan for tracking attendance for our learners:
Parents should call your school’s attendance line if your child is sick or will miss school for the day.
PS - 513-272-4757
ES - 513-272-4707
MS - 513-272-4700
HS - 513-272-4705
Parents should also notify their child’s teacher/liaison if they will not be online during live meetings.
Teachers and liaisons will report attendance to the office after the first live session of the day. In subsequent live sessions each day, teachers will make note of attendance and follow up with families exhibiting a pattern of truancy.
Technical difficulties will be taken into account when documenting attendance. Patterns of missed live sessions will need to be reported. Our Indian Hill BVA teachers and liaisons will work with families to ensure we can support learners logging in to live sessions successfully.
recent news
Online Learning & Teaching Practices
Each week, Brave Virtual Academy teachers and I discuss our core principles at the heart of BVA.
- Personalization: providing unique learning pathways for individual students
- Agency: giving learners opportunities to participate in key decisions in their learning experience
- Authentic Audience: giving learners the opportunity to create for a real audience both locally and globally
- Connectivity: giving learners opportunities to experience learning in collaboration with peers and experts locally and globally
- Creativity: providing learners individual and collaborative opportunities to make things that matter while building skills for their future.
Scholarship is a key component that is embedded in all classrooms at Indian Hill. This week, we'll be highlighting the scholarship of our first-grade students. Students in Mrs. Miller's and Mrs. Sweeney's classes have been hard at work learning about countries and continents and the scholarship skills needed to research and present work.
BVA first graders explored the land features, climate, cultural elements, animals, and plants of their selected country or continent. The work embedded learning from geography and writing standards, offered students age-appropriate choice and agency, and helped them to develop presentation skills.
After gathering their facts, students created museum exhibits to highlight the best of what they learned and to share with others. In this way, students are contributing to the greater learning community by sharing their work with an audience outside of themselves and their classrooms. First graders had their second-grade peers and their parents in the palm of their hands this week as they showed off their work and their learning. Thank you to all of you who were able to join us for the event.
Connected learners know how to find experts and trusted resources to deepen their understanding of complex ideas. Engaging with an authentic audience serves to introduce learners to the greater community of scholarship and learning as well as provide meaning to the work they do.
How Can You Support Your Scholars At Home?
Below are some resources that talk about habits and attitudes linked to scholarship. Take time to talk with your child about the strategies they use in working on assignments. When it seems like a good fit, share your pondering of ideas, curiosity, or exploration of multiple perspectives "out loud" with your child. Many of the thoughts patterns we have developed are still new to our children and they can benefit from adults "thinking out loud" with them.
habits-of-a-scholar.pdfQuestionstoPromoteScholarlyDispositions.pdf