Online school next week
Dredding this. Going to WAY over plan and prepare for all contingencies. I won't have that many hours that I'm responsible for during the week, so it should be easy.
Monday at 8:00AM I have all of the 8th grade students (three classes all at once). The other two eighth grade teachers will be teaching the sixth and seventh grades. It makes sense that class size becomes a bit irrelevant in this scenario. I'm going to run two online games with Kahoot (online educational game website) to review two concepts, factoring trinomials and laws of exponents. After the games assign a review worksheet that will be due later that evening. Students will submit it electronically that night. We will gather as an eighth grade team the next morning to grade the assignment and report results to parents immediately. We want to establish accountability for work online right away and set a precedent. Parents here quickly take action when their kids get zeros for not completing work.
I'll be responsible for two other classes next week. My tenth grade students will be directed by another tenth grade teacher, so I won't have to spend time prepping for that class. We do our best to stay on the same page all year so that anyone one of us could step into another similar classroom and take over. I have two "singlet" classes, the high level (HL) diploma programe (DP) classes. They were the reason I was hired at this school. My twelfth graders are just finishing a unit, so spending this week on review and formative assessment will be easy. My eleventh graders? Not so much. We need to cover important calculus concepts this next week, and falling behind is not an option. They just got done learning about limits, derivatives, and difference quotients. We need to hit chain rule, product rule, and quotient rules next week. That's going to be a stretch online. These are baseline fundamental concepts, and I can't screw this up. In the past I've used a lot of colorful notes and examples to teach these concepts. Not sure if that's realistic online. Ugh. I'm considering a "flipped" classroom concept. They watch a video before class to get an introduction to the material first, then we practice problems together using an online meeting. Again, ugh. Not ideal. I've got until Tuesday to figure this out and hatch a plan.
Not sure what my weekend holds. Maybe hit some golf balls at the range. Likely spend some time with Daisy. I think it will be sunny on Sunday, so maybe a river walk. We could also hit part of West Lake or Xianghu for something more scenic.