Add dimension to student book talks with Lynne Dorfman’s version of the Book-in-a-Bag project. And it works online, as students introduce their books by sharing a paper bag covered in images they recreate from fiction or nonfiction and by pulling out representative objects.
I Will Screw This Up / Remote Teaching
by Dina Strasser · Published 04/20/2020 · Last modified 09/03/2020
“Covid-19 is a red contrast dye,” writes Dina Strasser. “Dumped into the cauldron of schools, it shows us the cracks and flaws that were already there.” Even so, as her students slowly figure out their tech, “they are coming alive to me and for me in ways I never could have predicted.”
In response to the sudden shift to remote learning, history teacher Sarah Cooper has jettisoned her usual fourth-quarter Civil War unit and launched an opportunity for her 8th graders to create podcasts on challenging events in US history. Here’s the project in process.
In Writing, Redefined Shawna Coppola proposes alternatives (comics, podcasts, etc.) to traditional writing assignments to welcome the students who aren’t drawn to essays and book reviews. Literacy coach Pam Hamilton likes the ideas but wonders if teachers are ready for them.
Design thinking allows students to own the knowledge they’re acquiring by connecting content in meaningful ways to their homes, the activities they engage in, their reasons for learning, their transformative life experiences, and their special attributes. Dr. Lindsay Portnoy explains.
We now find ourselves in uncharted territory which requires we improve our remote teaching while we work to maintain calmness, clarity, consistency, and high standards for learning. Teacher educator Dr. Curtis Chandler offers educators a game plan to meet the challenge.
If you’re interested in doing some professional learning at home in addition to the on-the-fly learning that comes with reorganizing your classes so they are distance-friendly, take a look at Principal and NBCT Rita Platt’s collection of online and web-free PD resources.
What the Robbs have done so well is share their experiences as researchers and as educators and provide detailed procedures, anecdotes and insights to guide teachers as they help students become avid readers, writes teacher educator and middle grades veteran Linda Biondi.
Now that her interaction with students is limited to a two-dimensional screen, Sarah Cooper is experiencing what many middle school teachers must feel each day of virtual learning – she misses the physicality of her kids’ messy, evolving, nonlinear growing-up process.
This is not a casual, read-in-an-afternoon book. It is more like a math master class filled with ways to deepen students’ understanding through a problem-solving approach. Veteran math teacher Michael Hernandez highly recommends its tools and models from start to finish.
