Think beyond the facts, ​think conceptually
  • Home
  • Services
  • Free Resources
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Concepts in Action

A deep dive into Distance Learning

3/22/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
After our first week of Distance Learning (DL), I felt proud of our school's professionalism, commitment to learning and especially to the general wellbeing of our entire community (students, teachers, leaders and parents). Our team pulled together and worked hard to find solutions. The Learner Profile came alive in our staff. No-one on our team had previous experience with conducting DL sessions for primary students. Many of us have experienced DL as learners through the various professional development courses offered (i.e. online masters courses, IBO courses, etc.) but facilitating it is another issue entirely. Everyone demonstrated commitment, open-mindedness and risk-taking while relying on colleagues to support them along the way. Fortunately for our learning community, we were able to provide every student with a Macbook or iPad from school which helped us to avoid many potential issues with technology connections and software.

As COVID-19 began to spread slowly from China, our school took steps to begin preparations for launching a balanced DL program aligned not only to our mission and vision but also to 3 core values we identified as a team: continuity of learning, keep us connected as a learning community and make sure it both sustainable manageable for community wellbeing. After the first week of DL, we made adjustments for sustainability to our DL program expectations. Above all, this is one of the biggest take aways for me, the need for flexibility, growth mindset and the ability to think creatively and strategically about best practice teaching in the digital environment.

​Our learners are at the heart of the triangle; we seek to facilitate the learning and teaching so that our learners are successful in this new environment. This meant all hands on deck working to create content, learning new platforms and introducing students to an entirely different system for learning. Besides being involved in multiple meetings and joining grade level morning meetings on Google Hangouts, I made myself busy creating digital read aloud videos aligned to the current units of inquiry or to the approaches to learning, key concepts and learner profile of the IB PYP. Now I feel like a pro on iMovie. I've also learned how to ScreenCast. Next, I will be learning how to conduct a math group session on Google Hangouts while sharing my screen. So much to try and so much to learn, but I'm determined to figure it out and be successful so our students feel successful. 

Areas to consider for your program:
  • Child protection - ways to stay connected safely, limiting how we expose little ones to social media, digital citizenship
  • ​Wellbeing - providing creative ways to learn without screen-time (play-based learning, tinkering and maker ideas, forest school approaches; fostering the joy of reading); providing staff with time to unplug, rest and see to their wellbeing; getting the counselor involved with checking in on isolated international teachers
  • Community - sustain the sense of community through department and grade level check-in meetings with leadership; communicate consistently through morning messages from leadership; respond to emails as quickly as possible to ease anxiety and stress; schedule a staff get together in the virtual realm each week (happy hour)
  • Consolidate learning over new material - perhaps focus on consolidating learning from past lessons at this time rather than introducing new material; focus on conceptual understandings and deepening them in mathematics, language and extending on inquiry skills;
  • Routines - supporting students in establishing a routine at home and a place to learn with all their materials easily accessible to them.
  • Schedule - a balance between synchronous and asynchronous learning engagements, a balance between school programming and allowing for flexibility at home to meet the demands of the family. 
  • Resources - provide key or strategic resources to staff for immediate launch (login list for paid sites, quick training sessions to up-skill, specific platforms to begin using first; tools for staff collaboration and communication); encourage learning support staff to support differentiation needs; prevent teachers from being flooded with resources that lead to lost time following rabbit holes
  • Framing the lessons - do not forget about the ways children learn (make the goal clear, access prior knowledge and provide context, provide new information, provide a means of application, and review the goal). I have always used Jane Pollack's approach to planning a lesson mentally in my mind; it is worthwhile considering her GANAG model as you facilitate digital lessons. See the lesson plan template below for reference.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    As an international educator, I work with colleagues in my local and global network regularly to implement concept-based inquiry. It is a journey of discovery, learning and growing our own understandings about the ways children learn.

    Categories

    All
    Action Cycle
    Agency
    Beliefs
    Big Idea
    CBCI
    Collaboration
    Collective Wellbeing
    Competent
    Comprehensible Input
    Concepts
    Conceptual Understandings
    Contexts
    Creativity
    Curiosity
    Distance Learning (DL)
    Education
    Equal Groups
    Equitable Education
    Equity
    Feedback
    Generalizations
    Grit
    Image Of The Child
    Inductive Learning
    Inquiry
    Inquiry Cycle
    Interculturalism
    International Mindedness
    Language Development
    Learning Panels
    Mindset
    Motivation
    PWIM
    Questioning
    Reflection
    Reggio Emilia Approach
    Relevant Learning
    Selling The Why
    SIOP Method
    Social Construction
    Sustainability
    Sustainable
    UN 17 Sustainable Goals
    Values
    Wellbeing

    Archives

    March 2020
    August 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017

    RSS Feed

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies

Home

About

Services

Menu

Contact

Copyright © 2015
  • Home
  • Services
  • Free Resources
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact