We will spend the entire month of April at home. There is a chance that we will go back to school in May--time will tell.
In the meantime, and similar to real time school days, I have to bring some shape to this at-home, virtual teaching and learning. What does that mean?
Monitoring Students' At-Home Practice
Students are working at home on three main online venues including Symphony Math, IXL, and Khan Academy. The job is to complete Symphony Math first - about 2/3 of the students have done this and 1/3 are close. The next job is to choose to master either IXL or Khan Academy. After that, students may choose to master the platform they did not master or go on to sixth grade Khan Academy. In the days ahead, I will carefully review students' efforts in this realm and then use that information to alert their families of students' progress, and encourage students with messages about specific next steps. Overall students are doing a great job at this.
Monitoring Deeper Learning Tasks
Students also have a menu of deeper learning tasks including online Google Form practice tests and tests as well as a number of hands-on projects that have a range of completion choices. I will create a grid to check off who has done what with regard to these tasks. Then I will use that information to decide how to move forward with the deeper learning task menu. The goal is to continue to support students' deeper learning in engaging, meaningful, student-centered ways.
Math Assessment
I am going to ask students to take a formative assessment at home if possible. I would like to see what the results of that assessment show me, and will use that information to inform future virtual math meetings and math support.
Virtual Math Meetings
Overall the initial virtual math meetings have been successful. I will analyze who attended, who did not attend, and then use the information from the at-home practice, deeper learning task, and student assessment to decide how to move forward with these groups with the focus on engagement, meaning, and joy--I want these math meetings to foster math talk to inspire students to continue their math study in ways that creatively relate to the real world.
May Math
No matter whether we go back to school or not, I will use the collection of April efforts, connections, and observations to inform May math study with the goal of helping every student reach mastery with fifth grade standards in engaging, meaningful ways. This is a positive framework to follow in the days ahead.
