North School Takes on Remote Learning
North School Takes on Remote Learning
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It has been awesome to see members of the PMS clan sharing resources in this crazy time. As I sit here isolated in a small office with the window open, I thought it best to contribute by sharing our current plan of action with the hope it helps others in some way by affirming their work or inspiring an idea of some sort.
Here at the North School, we entered the week confused and uncertain on how best to support our students and community during this pandemic. In our little room of robust discussion, the team developed the idea of using a P.B.L (project based learning) task as the inspiration of our remote learning plan across the school.
The Plan: One key problem that enables students in any age to enter the task –
I’ve played these games a thousand times! I need to make a new game.
Current thinking:
We wanted maximum uptake from students and families. Visually appealing, inspires creativity, something most families can access (play games and make a game), low floor – high ceiling, covers the curriculum, teachers can upload remotely, plus we have a huge amount of students into Pokemon and Magic the Gathering!
Accessible activities that were clear and catered for a range of diverse abilities and situations. Students who had the time could be swept up with artwork and design, while others could do a good job in a short amount of time.
We wanted to accommodate families that had students in multiple age groups and try to alleviate stressful situations of parents thinking they had to be expert teachers overnight.
Overall we wanted an enjoyable task for teachers, students and parents.
Part 2
Create an activity matrix for families to pick and choose tasks that ideally students would want to do because it is relevant to the creation of their game. This will also enable teachers to cover specific curriculum understandings along the way. The current plan is to say to families choose x amount of activities. We thought the element of choice was import for our remote learners.
Eg. Create the package for your game. How much would your game cost? Is your game fun to play (not too easy or hard). Create a set of instructions for someone to use when they play your game.
Below I’ve included a screenshot of the document we were working on together. The highlights are indicating the team member responsible for creating the task card. This has been great because the staff who are away from the school can still develop tasks when they get time.
Part 3: Sharing
At this stage we are using Microsoft Teams and the OneNote format (Sammy has been exceptional with the roll out of this platform) Our senior students are familiar with OneNote and we are hoping that after the break they will be able to upload work to their OneNotes, with students about to access this and give feedback. We are really hoping to inspire students to create advertisements for their games via Podcasting, Shark tanking (video of them pitching their ideas to an audience) videos, brochures etc and hopefully find a way to share the games with each other.
Our community will access the remote learning via a Blog next term.
If you’re interested, Sam has been developing the site https://cnpspbl.global2.vic.edu.au/
Part 4: Conferencing
As things hopefully become clearer, next term we can work out the best way to do conferencing with our class / students and what that might look like.
Reflection
My favourite thing yesterday, was driving home reflecting on how incredible our team is. From the beginning of the day in developing the idea on a whiteboard, to developing the consistent school approach, to our team meetings with people calling in via Microsoft Teams – wanting to know what they could do, to seeing the incredible bank of activities ready for launch. In the midst of a wacky week, the collaboration and positive vibes were amazing!
Hopefully the sharing of this helps, I know I’ll definitely be looking over the games booklets and activities people have shared, so keep them coming.
If you’re interested in P.B.L, I absolutely love content from John Spencer – http://www.spencerauthor.com/
and a huge shout out to the PMSS team, you will no doubt see your influence especially the Maths300 content
-The North School Team
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