Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

COVID-19

Returning to School During COVID-19 (Part Two)

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This E-Hint is the second segment in a two-part series providing suggestions for returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of Part One was on meeting the social-emotional needs of students and planning to instruct the curriculum. Part Two (this segment) delves into onsite and online instructional options and checking for understanding in an online environment. 

Instructional Options

Sadly, uncontrollable factors during the spring last year, caused a loss and possible regression in learning for some students. Although a quarter of onsite contact time was lost in the 19-20 school year, try to avoid reteaching the end of the previous year’s curriculum. Instead, consider these options and use those that work best for your students.

Find a baseline for content and skills. Use questions from your summative assessments to create a pre-assessment aligned to your local curriculum for this school year. Many companies promote standardized tests promising a quick gauge of students’ current abilities. While these cookie-cutter assessments may seem appealing as a fast, easy solution, unfortunately, they do not give accurate information about your local curriculum. Additionally, they are not an accurate diagnostic measure to determine individual student deficiencies. 

Provide a formative pre-lesson check. Ask a few brief questions to get a read on student understanding for each lesson. You’ll need a quick response, so use instructional technology like Quizizz or Google Forms to gather results and guide your next step. Formative checks are for learning, so it is a natural fit. Using this option requires you to have a couple of lesson options ready for the day. If students are prepared to move forward, go with Plan A, but if they are not prepared, go with Plan B.

Implement looping for the upcoming school year to increase tracking and development of individual student skills. Looping is the educational practice of assigning students to the same teacher for two or three consecutive grade levels. There are several advantages to looping students. On the academic side, teachers know their student’s strengths and challenges. By looping, you can save time without having to discover the best learning style of each student.   Instruction can be more focused and efficient, which will translate into higher student success.  Looping also creates social-emotional security for students as they already have relationships with their teachers and peers. Those relationships quickly grow in a familiar setting with familiar routines. Therefore, looping results in higher attendance rates. The sudden end to onsite learning last year robbed students and teachers a sense of closure. So, additional time together could change a negative situation into a positive one.

Use the Instructional Planning Resource (IPR) to plan your instruction. The IPR has been a part of the CLI Model for many years. It has evolved from hard paper copies to static electronic versions to real-time Google Docs. The IPR requires you to align your instruction to the local curriculum, and is often called an “educational toolbox.” Multiple teaching methods, student activities, and supplemental resources are included on the IPR to help you plan your instruction. The academic range of your students may have grown wider, so utilizing the differentiation feature on the IPR provides intervention and enrichment options to meet their needs. While teachers never expected to deliver so much online instruction, they did discover new tools to add to the old ones. Some even work better! Utilize new strategies, activities, and online tools as you move forward in a face-to-face setting. Not only will it give your instruction a fresh feel, but it will also create a sense of familiarity for students before there is a need to return solely to online practices. If you are currently planning for the new school year, create both onsite and online options for teaching the curriculum. Offering choices to your students is never a waste of time, and strategies that you don’t use for full group instruction may fit well with a smaller group who require additional options to reinforce their learning.

Use technology daily to support onsite instruction. Create student groups, establish classroom norms, and guide the use of technology while onsite. This way, you can provide immediate support and save time troubleshooting program features should you need to move to remote learning.

Checking for Understanding – Use Your New Tech Skills!

Solid instruction includes formative checks for learning and requires immediate feedback to the student. But, how can this still be manageable in an online setting? Here are some handy tech tools to help you be creative:

  1. Observe student work using the drawing features on a digital whiteboard. For example, when communicating through ZOOM, the student selects the writing instrument after the teacher assigns a task.  Student responses are written in their handwriting and viewed by the teacher on the student’s whiteboard. This feature works great with math problems, handwriting practice, or original graphic organizers. Teachers can see progress and offer input in real-time.
  2. Some online learning platforms include a polling feature that can be used similarly to the traditional bell ringer. When students enter class, pose them with a question. When submitted, their answer is accessible to you, the meeting host.
  3. Another easy check is to ask all students a question in chat mode. Students can respond directly to you, who can then provide feedback in real-time.
  4. Google Forms are a quick and easy way to gather student feedback.  Individual responses from students are collected, compiled, and organized with charts and graphs, quickly allowing you to determine the next steps for instruction.    
  5. Several standards require collaboration between students.  Google makes this expectation easier by sharing features.  Students can review a piece of work with you or their peers through Slides, Sheets, or Docs and offer suggestions.  Making digital comments is speedier than handwritten feedback!
  6. Finally, frequent emails to your students can keep them on target through personal messages.  You can include parents on your emails to help their kids at home and to keep them accountable.

The best approach for an uncertain future is to prepare with options.  Create a plan and provide structure for students and parents, provide opportunities for interaction and feedback, and address the social-emotional needs of your students.  Flexibility is a common characteristic of educators, so take a deep breath, do your best, and remember that you’re only human. You’re going to need to remain flexible, especially through the upcoming school year.

Returning to School During COVID-19 (Part One)

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Chalk board saying Time for Planning

When the school year began last fall, no one could have imagined the events that transpired to change our educational setting for the foreseeable future. While it is easier to focus on the negative aspects of the situation, there were several opportunities for personal and professional growth. Perspective can turn those challenges into learning experiences so that the new school year can start on a positive note. As you prepare for the possibility of more uncertainty, use those recent lessons to provide the best learning environment for your students. In this two-part E-hint, you will receive suggestions to address the social-emotional needs of your students, plan to teach the curriculum, utilize various options for instruction, and check for student learning. One size does not fit all, so select those that work best for your district and student population.

Meet the social-emotional needs of your students.

Many students experienced anxiety throughout COVID-19. With the abrupt switch to online instruction, schools made their best attempt to provide support virtually. When students gather back in person, whether full-time or part-time, procedures and logistics will be new to them. Some students may feel like they are attending school for the very first time, so thoroughly explaining and modeling expectations will help to ease stress. Fulfill your students’ social-emotional needs first. Doing so may require you to use some of the time initially designated for instructional purposes.

Keep in mind, “Students have to Maslow before they can Bloom.” The meaning behind this common saying is that children’s basic needs, identified by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy, must be met before they can embrace academics as outlined in Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy. Students must feel safe, connected, and heard. Set aside time to talk before time to learn. If teachers feel short on time, incorporating students’ thoughts and feelings into a lesson through an art project or writing activity is one way of blending needs and academics.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Develop a plan to teach the curriculum, and be ready to adjust.

Curriculum Leadership Institute recommends that teachers develop a curriculum pacing guide and update it at the beginning of each school year.  Last year, planning was based on delivering the curriculum through onsite instruction.  We now know that this may not be possible for the upcoming year. Therefore, everyone needs to be prepared to teach online to some degree.

The first step in creating a pacing guide for instruction is to prioritize the curriculum at each grade-level and in each subject area.  Some targets are critical for sequential learning, but to keep students on grade-level, teachers will need to let go of some targets of lesser importance.   Facilitate collaborative conversations between teachers of adjacent grades to make sure there are no preventable gaps in skills or content when prioritizing.

Next, identify any parts of your curriculum that didn’t get taught during the stay-at-home order. This should also be discussed during those grade-band conversations.  If essential pieces are missing from the previous grade, students need those gaps filled before they can be successful in learning the essential grade-level material.  A natural solution is to teach them consecutively.  For example, consider the second-grade math outcome that was omitted last spring. It reads: Students will determine the attributes of two-dimensional shapes. Students must learn this concept before they can be successful in the third-grade outcome: Students will use the attributes of two-dimensional shapes to classify and calculate perimeter.  On your pacing guide, block a few weeks for teaching attributes of shapes and plan to instruct the second and third-grade outcomes consecutively as illustrated below.

If your school implements a hybrid schedule to include both onsite and online learning, encourage teachers to teach the critical pieces of their curriculum onsite. Then, online instruction can be used to review previous essentials through guided practice and real-life application.  A hybrid approach to learning will require frequent updating of pacing guides. Flexibility is critical when moving between onsite and online learning.

One last note for planning is to use time during an onsite parent night or open house to share important details relating to instruction.  The learning targets provided to parents should include the essentials recently determined by the grade-level teams.  Also, take a moment to give parents a little online instruction regarding the features of the Learning Management System (LMS) you plan to use throughout the year.  Many parents became “substitute” teachers last spring and will appreciate the opportunity to receive a little advance training if they are required to step in for instructional support.

The next segment of our two-part E-hint will focus on instructional options and checking for understanding.  Stay tuned for its release to help you continue your preparation for the new year.