MTBoS Blaugust Report

 

Today is the final day of MTBos Blaugust!  This will be my 15th post for the month, which I am very pleased with, especially considering that I only blogged 17 times during the entire 2019-2020 school year.  

Many thanks to Sarah Carter (https://mathequalslove.blogspot.com/) and Druin (http://statteacher.blogspot.com/) for inspiring me to join in.  

We've made it through the first month of the 2020-21 school year!

Back to School

 

After starting the school year on August 12 with all students online, our school board voted on Tuesday to return to in-person learning on September 8.

We'll be moving into Phase Yellow, with elementary students attending 5 days a week and secondary students on a hybrid schedule.  Here's the secondary hybrid schedule:

Bloomington North is the only school in the district with block scheduling, and our hybrid schedule now looks like this:

Phew!  It's taken me about 7 years to adjust to block scheduling, and now this maroon maroon gold gold alternating maroon/gold makes my brain hurt!  I will definitely need to write everything down very deliberately.

Our community positivity rate has dropped to about 2%, which is quite good.  The big concern is that we are a university town, and 40,000 Indiana University students just returned to campus and started classes Monday. 

I just hope that we don't get everyone adjusted to being back in school, only to have to return to online learning a few weeks later.  Fingers crossed, and working to be 

It's β is not ß season

I think you have to have a healthy level of year to year amnesia to be a teacher.  Otherwise, no one would do it more than one year.  Case in point:

β is not ß season

There's always a phase about a week or two into the school year where my German 1 students struggle with typing German special characters, most especially ß.  

I give them a menu of options to chose from:  

But an ess-tset does look a lot like a Greek beta, so more than a few students type that instead of ß, and their answer is marked wrong even though it looks right.

It's especially intense this year since I have 3 full classes of German 1, which makes about 90 students.  

It's also harder to get the word out during remote learning.  In a classroom, once I notice it happening, I make multiple loud announcements, and this catches about 95% of the students.  

There really isn't an equivalent to a loud classroom announcement in remote learning.  I've put an announcement on our LMS, and I'm going through assignments to try to catch the students making this mistake.  And of course I'm replying to emails and Canvas messages asking "Why is my answer wrong?"  It definitely felt like that was all I did on Friday.

Sigh.  This too shall pass.

I need bells!

Me and Pavlov's dogs, I guess!

I've learned during the first few days of online learning just how dependent I am on bells.

This is our schedule:

It pretty much mirrors our in person schedule, though live classes are now only an hour (instead of 80 minutes), and there's a live instructional support / independent work time block to start the day which we don't have in person.  

But because I'm not in the school building, there are of course no bells.  And apparently I really need bells to help me not lose track of what class period it is.  

So, this morning I got smart and set timers on my computer to ring to remind me when a period is almost over.  (I tried my cell phone alarm first, but it kept startling me.)

It's a really good reminder to get up from the computer, stretch, and maybe get a little fresh air.  If you're teaching remotely, I highly recommend it!

 

New Routines

 

My morning routine BCE was to  start the day with a Duolingo lesson (I've been doing the Arabic class for a little over a year now - slow progress, but fun!) and then checking email while eating breakfast and drinking a cup of tea.

My CE routine still starts with Duolingo, but now it includes a check of the Indiana Department of Health Dashboard before I go to email.  

Here's how things look today.

Statewide:

Monroe County:

I try not to obsess about the numbers but still stay informed about how things are going in my county and in the state.  (I wonder if statistics teachers are using COVID data with their students...)  I don't think this new routine is going away any time soon.

Help! My German textbook is in German!

 

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today was the second day of class for my first two groups of students.  (We're on block schedule.)  On today's agenda was setting up students' notebooks and signing up to access the online textbook.

I was expecting to get lots of messages saying that students were having trouble connecting or the access code didn't work.  Nope.  Not one of those.  

I did have 2 students try to join the wrong section, but 2 out of 63 is not bad.  (Not everyone has signed up yet, so there's still time...)

What I did start getting was some variation on the theme of "Help!  My German textbook is in German!"  

Well, yes it is.  This is pretty standard for textbooks from German publishers, as their books are designed to be used in many different countries, not all of which are English-speaking.  I'm not opposed to a textbook by an American or British publisher, but there just aren't many to choose from out there.  

I've blogged previously about our struggles to find a good textbook.  We adopted this book in the spring, and it's the third textbook I've used at Bloomington North.  I think it's the best one we've had yet, but of course it isn't perfect.

So, I prepared this to help my students

Welcome to German class!

Detective Work

 

  Detective work describes what I did today during my prep time.  

On the first day of online classes, nearly all of my students logged in, did at least some of the lesson, and/or contacted me in a live meeting.  I consider that a win!

But...not everyone completed the lesson, which involved submitting a short video saying "My name is _____." in German.

So, my first task was to sort through the missing videos to see whether those students had completed the first item on the agenda.  If not, had they managed to log in to the course at all?

For my first two classes, I had only 4 students who were completely MIA. I sent out emails to them and their families to check in and see if there were any problems with technology or access that I could help with.  I heard back from 2 right away, so now I'm just missing 2 students.  

Students who had logged in but not done their video got a message in our LMS checking to see whether they understood what they needed to do and if they needed help with the technology.  I heard back from several more students after that, so I think my students are off to a good start!

First Student Day

 

Today was the first day of online learning for students.  It seemed to go well!  I did not have a required live meeting with my students; instead, they were to work through the above lesson on their own.

Based on the responses I got to the Germany Quiz and Introduce Yourself speaking task, most (though not all) of my students seem to have gotten themselves to the right place and been able to work on the lesson independently, as I had intended.  

I had 3 students live video chat with me to get help with technology problems they were having, and several others sent email messages with questions, so I think communication is off to a good start.

Now the challenge is to track down those students who haven't yet engaged and see what might be preventing them from doing so!

Morning Commute

 Breakfast at my Kitchen Table

School office at my Kitchen Table

Bloomington is not a huge place.  My drive to school BCE (Before COVID Era) took only about 15-20 minutes.  

Now CE (COVID Era) my commute is 30 seconds.  I love it!

Since my district switched to all remote learning to begin the year, teachers were told that they could work from school or home.  I really appreciate the flexibility that they have given us.  It's nice to be able to go in to the building to get materials I need, which we couldn't do in the spring due to the Stay at Home Order.  For the most part, though, it's been more convenient to work from home, and I'm enjoying the short commute.

One risk of working from home is that you never physically leave work to go home, so you never stop working.  I've been intentional the first few teacher prep days in switching out my tulip quilt for my German flag quilt in the morning at 7:30 when I "go to work."  Then, when I'm done for the day, I turn off my laptop (instead of just putting it in sleep) and switch the quilts back.  It feels a little silly, and I don't know that I'll always do this, but so far it's helping me remember that it's healthy to be done for the day and to focus on non-school things.

Video Success!

After my struggles trying to record a lesson using Microsoft Teams on Wednesday, I am very happy to report that things went much better the following day using Zoom.

I was able to record a 10 minute introductory video for students and families.  This is pretty much the talk I would normally give at Open House.

I also made a video of the lesson for the first day of school, which teaches students how to ask and answer "What's your name?"

After a busy but wonderful weekend helping a friend drive her son to his first year of college, I'm back home with 2 more days of prep before school starts on Wednesday.

Notebooks: BCE and CE

BCE (Before COVID-Era): 

In previous years I have given my students guided notes handouts which are hole punched for them to keep in a German binder.

I love my guided notes, but about 25% of my students refuse to organize their notes in a binder and just stuff them into a folder or their backpacks.  It drives me crazy!

I also worry that giving them this much structure may be doing them a disservice in the long run as it doesn't help them develop the ability to take and organize notes on their own.

Handouts don't work well under the current circumstances anyway, whether we're remote or in person, so this is giving me the opportunity to try something new that's actually pretty old school.  

CE (COVID-Era): 

I'm going low-tech and keeping it simple this year.  Students need a standard spiral or composition notebook.

Since so much is going to be digital this year, I think having a paper notebook will be a nice change of pace.  

I have all German 1 classes this year, which means I have a lot of 9th graders, so I'll need to be intentional in teaching how to organize and take good notes.

On the second day of class, students will set up their notebooks

and then they'll make a graphic organizer to record their first German phrases.

Stay tuned to hear how things go with notebooks this year!

First Teacher Day

Today was originally supposed to be students' first day of school, but that was pushed back a week, and it's now it's the first of 5 teacher professional development and work days.

Successes:

• I recorded a very short video clip introducing myself for an introductory video that my school is putting together for students.  

• I participated in our school faculty meeting on Microsoft Teams and was then able to organize a separate meeting on the fly with two colleagues on Teams.

Not yet:

• After multiple tries, I cannot get my microphone to work within Microsoft Teams when trying to record a lesson and share my screen.  Grrrrrr!  Super frustrating.  It works fine when I am meeting with people and share my screen, but once I start recording, my microphone cuts out.  I may give up on Teams for recording a lesson and try Zoom.

Virtual Manipulatives

Lots of things have to be done differently this year.  For example, my beloved Pronoun Dice:

These are a great hands-on tool for practicing verb conjugations.  Students work in groups and use the dice, white boards, and dry erase markers.

But obviously, groups and shared supplies are a no-go right now.  So, I started by googling "virtual dice" and pretty quickly came upon Flippity.net.

I used the Randomizer to make a simple spinner for subjects and verbs.  (Unfortunately, you can't embed flippity tools, but you can link to them.)

Success!  Hopefully some of the flippity tools will be helpful to other teachers, too.

I leave you with this thought:

Choice Board for Enrichment

Choice boards have become popular in teaching as a way to give students choices in how they learn a new concept.  

I designed my choice board for students who finish their work quickly and are ready to go deeper (or need something concrete to do so they don't immediately reach for their cell phones).  

This board is designed for German 1 students at the beginning of the year.  I hope to switch out some of the elements as we progress, both to keep things interesting and to provide more challenging choices.

I'm very proud that I've learned how to publish my choice board on Google Slides so that I can embed it into Canvas - and this blog!  You should be able to click on any element in the board and see where it takes you.

I've put a button for the choice board at the top of my Course Resources page

and included a link in the daily agenda.

This will be the first time I've tried a Choice Board.  Since we're starting the year online, it may be hard to know how much it's used, but I hope to keep it when we return to the classroom, too.

Dusting off the Blog

I haven't blogged since the end of last school year, and I didn't really have any plans to get back in the habit, but this morning I saw this:

And I thought, maybe it is time.  No promises that I'll blog every day or that every post will be great, but as I often tell my students, something is infinitely more than nothing.  So here goes...

If an image is worth a thousand words, here's mine for my teaching life at the moment:

That's what I'm working on, anyway - accepting and living with the uncertainty of the current moment.

My school district switched last week from an in person start to the school year (with an online option) to all online learning until at least early September, due to increasing virus rates in our community.  

Since the end of last school year, I had anticipated that when we did return to in person school, there would be some students who would still need remote instruction, and I would need to be able to provide both types of instruction at more or less the same time.  So, I've been planning during the summer with that in mind, which makes the switch to everyone online less hectic. 

During the summer, I was part of a group of teachers from my school who worked (remotely, of course!) on creating a common home page for our Learning Management System, Canvas.  The goal was to reduce confusion for students and caregivers when navigating online learning.  

I had fun learning how to make buttons and customized banners, and I got more experience with Google Drawings.  I also learned just enough html to be dangerous!

Here's what my homepage now looks like:

I'm pleased with the result, and designing it helped me think through how to structure online instruction.  

This is the first 3 day week of school:

It's not the same as in person, but I think it's the best we can do under the current circumstances, and with patience and flexibility, we can make it work.