School Closure and Distance Learning

Year of 2020 was something. The school had shut down on 3/13/2020 and didn’t open until 9/28/2020. After all, most of my students were not equipped to the online teaching model- so I was the first teacher in our area back on campus since the school closure, as a public school teacher. I am sure many private school did something different while getting through the tough time. Anyway, it was some experience and I wanted to make a note somewhere deep not to forget what we did in the dark times and remind ourselves how beautiful to have a normal school day.

Week 1: Goal Set up
1. Getting students to be familiar with online format
2. Getting parents to be familiar with the new routine (set up the computer and show up on time)
3. Staff training (using zoom, screen sharing, and remote control feature)
4. Set up a system of lesson planning for each student
5. Lessons are planned around student’s interests/motivation. (Pairing)
6. Each student had at least one 20-30 minutes session per week. For 4 of 10 students, 4x 30 minutes group and 2×30 minutes individual sessions per week were offered. Parents attendance have been great.

Starfall, abcmouse, raz-kids, go noodle, barefoot

Week 2 : Consistent Lesson Plan for each student
1. Each lesson plan gets into a shape which bring structure and routines in the session.
2. Students get to wait til their preferred activities in the sessions. schedule of reinforcement)
3. Social distancing, wearing masks, etc. Topics are introduced and taught.
4. Tried different pair up among students
5. Songs are integrated into the lesson planning.
6. Boomcards are created and tried.
7. Lesson becomes more interactive. Remote Control, drawing, whiteboard, etc.

Week 3: Theme based learning
1. Initiated Theme(Topic) based teaching (e.g., butterfly and its life cycle) in groups.
2. Boom cards were created and shared in the middle of the week to reinforce the skills at home.
3. In 1:1 sessions, the Theme related activities/books/tasks continued to be offered.

Weekly Theme: Butterfly

WEEK 4
Theme: Garden Helpers (lady bugs, earth worms, etc.)
Boom cards (I spy)
Read adaptive books
“Who is it” (Manding with WH questions)
Lesson Plan

WEEK 5
Theme: Plants
Read adaptive books
Label parts of plant (trees & flowers)
“I can eat all parts of plant”

WEEK 6
Theme: Elephant, Tiger

Read Adaptive books
Watch Virtual Zoom videos
Animal figures
“What do you hear?” –> “I hear_____”
Read aloud, “Elephant and Piggie” series. Identify what happens in the beginning/middle/end.

Week 7
Theme: Giraffe & Lion

Week 8
Theme: Zebra, Wild Gras