What crazy times we are in!
Mandatory school closures for 2 weeks or more!
Are you scrambling to meet your school district’s demand for lesson plans for parents to do at home?
Are you trying to get ahead of the game by preparing learning experiences for your students that can easily be distributed when your school district calls school for 2 weeks or more?
Let’s step back and just be real for a minute...
Here’s how I see it...
Not every child has internet access at home
Every child may not have a parent that can stay home during this pandemic
Older siblings may be the caregivers during the day
Parents should not be expected to deliver lessons as a trained teacher
Parents have “bigger fish to fry” during this time (working, staying healthy, keeping their families healthy including grandma and grandpa)
Kids are sponges and will learn so much during a variety of interactions
Parents will make a schedule for their children based on their daily lifestyles.
It may not be what you would do but we cannot stand here and judge families based on how they are handling this situation of their children being at home all day for 2 or 3 or more weeks.
Yes, teachers have a job to do and must adapt to this new situation.
We need to provide parents with IDEAS and SUGGESTIONS for creating interactive learning experiences at home. How much more authentic can that learning be?
Sure, teachers need to stay in contact with their students. That will help make this crazy time a little more “normal” (using that word loosely) for your students.
Teachers could stay in contact by...
phone calls with families
Facebook live sessions with students (using parents accounts for those young students)
Post YouTube videos reading books, checking in, providing suggestions for authentic learning experiences, etc.
Create a classroom Instagram account for daily interactions
Classroom Dojo
Emails
And so many more...
Now let’s get to creating IDEAS and SUGGESTIONS for authentic learning interactions at home.
Parents know how to reach those free learning sites for children...everyone knows how to “Google it”!
Let‘s provide parents (and those older siblings) with a menu of ideas for authentic learning experiences.
Bake a cake or cookies
Create a meal plan for the week based on what you have in the pantry
Cook dinner for your family using recipes
Read a book of your choice (If your school district hasn't closed the school yet, send your readers home with library books. Books are better in children's hand than collecting dust on the library shelves)
Read to another person (or pet, or stuffed animal, etc) in your home
Write in a daily journal
Keep a writer's notebook
Create and write a comic strip
Create a wonder box of questions you wonder about...then research to answer those questions
Write a learning reflection at the end of the day about any learning experiences the student had that day
Physical activities...take a 20-minute walk, toss the football, play basketball, design a workout (age-appropriate of course), etc
Play Board Games such as Scrabble, Monopoly, Boggle, etc.
Grab these Easy-To-Use Activities for your readers to use at home.
Until next time...
