COVID-19 Day 2 Online Learning and Teaching
It was a very big day today. Girls had a very full load of schoolwork and we navigated some bumps along the way as best we could.
Riley had one Zoom meeting for Spanish and homework in four subject areas. She used Schoology to look at what she needed to do. We printed out all of the paper that was needed and once she got started she did it easily. She was quite anxious for much of the time - very fidgety. What I found that helped was having her next to me at the same table - not even necessarily doing the same things or working together - and having her phone away. The other thing that really helped her was to divide the assignments into small portions. When you have 7 pages of English or 5 pages of Math (or all of the above) it looks overwhelming. So we took out one page at a time and she was able to not get overly analytic about it thinking she couldn't do it all and that it was too much. Small things at a time. One thing at a time. Focus was great once we realized what worked for her and she did very well.
Julia was sent a hyperdoc in Google Classroom with one slide per subject area that helped her know what needed to be done. She read off each slide and I made a checklist for her so she didn't have to keep referring back to the hyperdoc. Then she checked off what she had finished and moved on to the next item. All was fine until she tried to use Seesaw. It wouldn't open and said it needed the new update, which she couldn't do herself. So I texted Becky, the technologist, and after sending the wrong code twice (ugh), I finally sent her the code she needed. Julia's work was supposed to be finished and submitted by 3pm, but because of technical difficulties it was turned in around 4:30 or so.
There was one point where Julia experienced the same overloaded feeling that Riley also went through. She had to trace the outline of her state and make a state map on a larger piece of paper. We linked her iPad to our tv and then held the paper up to the tv so she could trace the outline. Then she labeled all of the cities and lakes/surrounding state borders on the map. The amount of cities ("I never knew such a small state could have so many cities" - Julia) was overwhelming for her. She began to cry and it took us a little bit of time to regather and do it together. I sat with her and talked about doing the same thing as what I did with Riley - one thing at a time. Writing one city name at a time. Once she got started, she was great. Julia shared later that she thought she was going to fail and then she didn't. Good lesson to keep going and to do one thing at a time.
I think that's the lesson in ALL of this: one thing at a time.
At the end of everything Julia shared that she hadn't done her PE lesson yet. Our grass is too long to do her soccer drills that her coach shared with us on video so that didn't work well either. So then she turned her attention to practicing her jumprope routine skills and told me that Coach Blount said that they could do 20 minutes of bike riding each day this week. So off the three of us went! We did our usual 4.5 mile ride on the Northaven Trail. It was a gorgeous day!
In the midst of everything I corresponded with students about assignments (I had four classes today - 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th with assignments in all grades), had a Zoom call with the entire middle school, and did grading/prepping for tomorrow. And somehow found time to run 2 miles in the morning, record a podcast intro, and a short podcast episode. And how was it done? One thing at a time.
I feel like our first day went incredibly well. Riley's upstairs on a Zoom call with her church small group friends (love this!) and Julia is happily playing a game with her birthday gift (controller that hooks to the tv for games). Jeremy is looking over Riley's math work because there were two problems that I didn't feel I could successfully tell Riley were correct. He has worked incredibly hard and still continues to go into work. He even has a letter from the owner of his company so that if he is ever asked about why he is out and headed into the building he has proof of his need to be there. Amazing what a Shelter-in-Place Lockdown causes you to have to do.
Thankful that the girls have handled this well as anyone could ever hope.
Riley had one Zoom meeting for Spanish and homework in four subject areas. She used Schoology to look at what she needed to do. We printed out all of the paper that was needed and once she got started she did it easily. She was quite anxious for much of the time - very fidgety. What I found that helped was having her next to me at the same table - not even necessarily doing the same things or working together - and having her phone away. The other thing that really helped her was to divide the assignments into small portions. When you have 7 pages of English or 5 pages of Math (or all of the above) it looks overwhelming. So we took out one page at a time and she was able to not get overly analytic about it thinking she couldn't do it all and that it was too much. Small things at a time. One thing at a time. Focus was great once we realized what worked for her and she did very well.
Julia was sent a hyperdoc in Google Classroom with one slide per subject area that helped her know what needed to be done. She read off each slide and I made a checklist for her so she didn't have to keep referring back to the hyperdoc. Then she checked off what she had finished and moved on to the next item. All was fine until she tried to use Seesaw. It wouldn't open and said it needed the new update, which she couldn't do herself. So I texted Becky, the technologist, and after sending the wrong code twice (ugh), I finally sent her the code she needed. Julia's work was supposed to be finished and submitted by 3pm, but because of technical difficulties it was turned in around 4:30 or so.
There was one point where Julia experienced the same overloaded feeling that Riley also went through. She had to trace the outline of her state and make a state map on a larger piece of paper. We linked her iPad to our tv and then held the paper up to the tv so she could trace the outline. Then she labeled all of the cities and lakes/surrounding state borders on the map. The amount of cities ("I never knew such a small state could have so many cities" - Julia) was overwhelming for her. She began to cry and it took us a little bit of time to regather and do it together. I sat with her and talked about doing the same thing as what I did with Riley - one thing at a time. Writing one city name at a time. Once she got started, she was great. Julia shared later that she thought she was going to fail and then she didn't. Good lesson to keep going and to do one thing at a time.
I think that's the lesson in ALL of this: one thing at a time.
At the end of everything Julia shared that she hadn't done her PE lesson yet. Our grass is too long to do her soccer drills that her coach shared with us on video so that didn't work well either. So then she turned her attention to practicing her jumprope routine skills and told me that Coach Blount said that they could do 20 minutes of bike riding each day this week. So off the three of us went! We did our usual 4.5 mile ride on the Northaven Trail. It was a gorgeous day!
In the midst of everything I corresponded with students about assignments (I had four classes today - 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th with assignments in all grades), had a Zoom call with the entire middle school, and did grading/prepping for tomorrow. And somehow found time to run 2 miles in the morning, record a podcast intro, and a short podcast episode. And how was it done? One thing at a time.
I feel like our first day went incredibly well. Riley's upstairs on a Zoom call with her church small group friends (love this!) and Julia is happily playing a game with her birthday gift (controller that hooks to the tv for games). Jeremy is looking over Riley's math work because there were two problems that I didn't feel I could successfully tell Riley were correct. He has worked incredibly hard and still continues to go into work. He even has a letter from the owner of his company so that if he is ever asked about why he is out and headed into the building he has proof of his need to be there. Amazing what a Shelter-in-Place Lockdown causes you to have to do.
Thankful that the girls have handled this well as anyone could ever hope.
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