Remote Teaching
Ms Jess's Virtual Classroom
For the 2020-2021 school year, I pivoted my work and served as one of two entirely remote blended teachers for the E76 Street community. Working (virtually) side-by-side Ms. Michelle, we taught every single student in the school on their remote days. Tasked with creating entirely remote curriculum for the entire year, I worked to develop unique, rigorous, original, and enriching content for a variety of learners across six units of study.
I had three goals as an entirely remote teacher: 1) Understand and address the learning goals both in and outside the classroom environment by working as a team with classroom teachers, administrators and parents, 2) Keep kids coming back day after day for play-based, enriching learning experiences and 3) Guarantee families a sense of normalcy, regularity, and security by showing up for them each day, creating accessible curriculum and lessons, working with their schedules and needs, and meeting them where they were at. The 2020-2021 school year felt almost more emotionally tumultuous than the prior, and it was an honor and a responsibility I did not take lightly to lead them and their children in our learning journey.
I checked in with classroom teachers twice each day to make sure I was meeting the individual needs of each student and positively tracking their growth. Teachers and I took time to compare our datas and highlight areas of growth, as well as discuss behaviors we noticed in the different learning environments. Using this information, I created virtual content that specifically addressed the standards highlighted by the classroom teachers and me. Michelle and I also checked in twice each day to make sure our lessons spoke to the goals of the unit and essential questions as well as troubleshoot and test technology.
I learned that each student had different resources and environments learning from home (ie access to materials, parent/nanny assistance, baby siblings), so adaptability was key to creating the best year of learning possible. Scavenger hunts were one of my favorite virtual games to play, asking each student to find me something connected to our learning (ie something beginning with the letter A, something made out of wood, something you can recycle). These games were successful as they established clear rules, students could build on their knowledge as we played them again and again, and created an even environment that any student could engage in, no matter their resources.
Though it took some practice, I loved learning to use the function where students could take control of the mouse! This enabled me to allow students to click and drag materials across the screen and interact in gameplay. For example, we virtually carved our own pumpkin, choosing different numbers of shapes for each feature. We also played many pattern games, where students could physically click and drag the materials to successfully make different patterns.
And, as I am want to do, we used lots and lots of virtual dramatic play to spice up our lessons! In one of my favorite lessons during the buildings unit, I created an "around the world" building challenge, asking students to bring a building material of their choice to class. Then I created an animated powerpoint where, with just the click of a button, we watched a plane fly from country to country, landing on various buildings and monuments. When we arrived at each building, students had a timed challenge to try to build that building! We would then "board our plane" and fly to the next monument.
