Category: Distance Learning

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Distance Learning: Week 2

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning
Previous Essential Updates

Distance Learning: Week 1
• March 25 Letter / PDF
• March 27 Post

Week 2: March 30 – April 3

Continue to work on your projects. Follow these guidelines:

☈ Daily Goal: Set a specific goal each day before 1:30 PM. That would be the end of P8, the makerspace’s last class of seniors, on a normal school day.

☈ Office Hours: Still from 10-11 each morning, which corresponds to P4/P5 on a normal school day. If there is any sort of disruption to these, I’ll let you know in the daily Google Classroom announcements.

☈ GAP Evidence: Share evidence of your progress as often as you can. Put documents in the shared folders, send emails, request feedback directly — whatever will serve the dual purposes of helping your work and supporting your assessment profiles.

Note your options. You can tag teachers in comments on your own work. You can start discussions in the comment section of instructional posts. You can leave private comments through Google Classroom. You can send emails.

Keep up steady contact and ask for regular feedback. That’s the key during this second week: Adjust to distance learning, make steady progress on a project or two of your choosing, and get feedback at least once.

There are plenty of possible tools for us to consider as this situation continues. It looks like April will be spent at home, but let’s remain hopeful about May and June.

Ask questions below about the start of this week. If you want to begin with the optional analysis of your Q3A/Q3B GAP scores, read the March 27 post carefully.

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March 27, 2020

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning

GAP Scores: Q3A + Q3B (WIP)

Later today, March 27, students will receive their grades for the first half of Q3. This post will now do two things for all stakeholders:

  1. It will contextualize those scores, which will let us use them to improve learning.
  2. It will invite us all to talk, especially in the comment section of this post, about that student learning.

First, let’s talk about March 12. On Wednesday of this week, all stakeholders got the following:

✰ English 12: Distance Learning Update (March 25, 2020) + PDF version ✰

Distance Learning: Week 1

The letter was sent separately, because it is by far the most thorough explanation of our project-based work. The weekly update that followed is a review of each project and a collection of important links.

To understand what we’re currently doing, that letter and post are required reading. To understand where we were on March 12, when school dismissed early due to the coronavirus, you need another document:

March 12 was meant to be an inflection point for us. As that letter says, March 12 was exactly three months from the end of classes, exactly halfway through Q3, and exactly halfway through Q3B. On March 13, the high school planned to send out progress report notices.

You all know what happened next. Once our situation changed, those GAP scores had to be held in abeyance until distance learning could be put into place.

The most important thing to remember is this: The GAP scores posted today, March 27, reflect only the work done between February 3 and March 11. We also had a week off in February, which complicates the calendar:

  • 2/3–2/14 + 2/14–2/28 → GAP Q3A | Posted 3/27
  • 3/2–3/11 → GAP Q3B WIP | Posted 3/27
  • 3/25–4/24 → GAP Q3C | TBD

As the letter and post from March 25 explain, that last profile score will include any distance learning we do. Students need to set daily goals, work for 30+ minutes, and share evidence of their progress for feedback. The expectations for student work have been clarified by the district and building administration, too.

Meanwhile, we have the body of evidence students produced in February and early March. The main focus for that time frame: in-class focus and use of feedback. Again, the letter meant for March 12 is your best guide:

In a world without the coronavirus, you would’ve gotten GAP scores alongside this letter. March 12 had been highlighted for several weeks prior as an inflection point, a day when you would get a lot of feedback and direction before diving back into these end-of-the-year projects. The feedback included profile scores to unpack and analyze, individual comments on your progress, and that letter, which thoroughly explains what we are doing and why.

Of course, we went home early on March 12. We haven’t been back since. It’s unclear when we will be back. We have to adjust.

Unpacking the GAP Scores

Note: This is optional. It would make a good goal, however, for any of the next few days of distance learning.

Once you have your GAP scores on Infinite Campus, you can unpack and analyze them. Focus on that first verb: unpack. Each score corresponds to a profile, and the language of that profile can be unpacked to describe student skills, traits, and knowledge.

You can only make sense of these Q3 scores in the context of our project-based learning, which in turn requires a focus on in-class learning and feedback. You can start here:

Static GAP Score Feedback

Each tier and individual score can be used to build a blueprint for improvement or continued success. That’s your job now: to take what you can from the start of Q3 and apply to the you that is now working from home.

You’ll also want the usual reference links, especially if you invite another stakeholder into this work:

Grade Abatement Profiles
Universal Skills and Traits
Step-By-Step Guide to Assessment

And I think the post clarifying what grade abatement is, how it works, and why it is so important is always worth revisiting:

Clarifying Grade Abatement

Take your score at face value. Connect it to a profile. Unpack that profile, bit by bit, to form a picture. Then use the resources I’ve just listed to build a better approach to your learning for the future.

If you do this in writing, I can help you refine your analysis. We will have to hold off on our usual face-to-face conferences until next week, when there should be more clarity on the length of our distance learning.

Ask questions below. Focus here on questions that might help others. Email individual questions, or share individual writing directly.

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Distance Learning: Week 1

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning

Today is the first day of distance learning in English 12. In addition to this post, there will be an announcement on Google Classroom and a static link on my BHS website. The most important document is the following letter:

This letter will be attached to the March 25 announcement on Google Classroom. It will also be added as a formative assignment in that section of Classwork, sent home to your parents, and copied to administration.

Please note that this letter is designed to work on two levels: first, as a shorter reminder of what you were doing in Q3; second, as a thorough explanation of what you will be doing, whether as distance learning or back in the makerspace, for the rest of the year.

If you have not already, please read the two most recent updates from the Superintendent and the rest of the BCSD administrative team:

  1. tinyurl.com/bcsd-update-0323 | Updates on high-stakes testing and K-5 parent-teacher conferences.
  2. tinyurl.com/bcsd-update-0324 | Full update on distance learning expectations and schedule.

I am hopeful that we will return to regular instruction soon. In the interim, I will use the existing structures of our course to keep you and every other stakeholder involved and invested. Let’s start with the three most important details:

Daily Announcements | Will be posted every morning to Google Classroom. It will include reminders, links, and general feedback. Start here each day and follow instructions, just as you have all year.

Weekly Updates | Will be posted every Wednesday to this website. These weekly updates will cover any adjustments and updates to your projects. They are also a place where you can ask questions in the comment section.

Office Hours | Every morning from 10:00–11:00, I will be available to help in real time through email, the course website, and Google Classroom. I will post these to the front page of the BHS and Sisyphean High websites, as well.

Note on Synchronous Learning: We will not be using Zoom or any other form of FaceTime during our distance learning. We will focus on real-time annotations, synchronous editing of documents, and Q&A sessions through the course website and Google Classroom.

Read on for more.

Distance Learning: Week 1

Per that 3/24 update from the BCSD, the first week of distance learning requires 30 minutes or more of work per day. That is just enough time for you to return to your project-based work and build some momentum.

Your requirements each day:

  1. Set a specific daily goal by 10:00 AM. Use the same form and protocol we have used all year.
  2. Collect all evidence of your work each day and copy it into the evidence folders assigned to you on February 26.

To set your learning goal each day, do what you have always done. Load the link at the top of Google Classroom:

Remember that it will open up to give you all the resources you need to set a goal, self-assess mentally and physically, and share anything else you want to share:

Those resources:

What to do at the start of class: tinyurl.com/makerspace-start
Reformatted as a post: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=3561
Prefilled form: tinyurl.com/sisyphus-calibrates

For each day of distance learning, you must set a specific goal. I will check that goal against your progress, but it’s more important than that: Simply setting a goal will help you to stay focused.

As an example of just how much data comes out of these daily calibrations, look at this spreadsheet from Q1:

You can see how helpful this is on both ends of the learning experience. That’s why the daily check-in is a requirement. Again, it should be done before office hours start at 10:00 AM.

As you work, you will generate evidence of some kind. You must collect it, whether you worked for 30 minutes or much longer, and make sure it goes into one of the folders you were asked to create on February 26.

The assignment for setting up these project folders is under the Classwork tab, in the category for Grade Abatement:

These evidence folders will allow me to check your progress, provide regular feedback, and help you put together the final products for each project. Start organizing them. This is what you will see when you open up the assignment:

Those directions were printed and distributed in class, and you can access them through that simple URL: tinyurl.com/gap-pbl-1.

Remember, too, that Ms. Egan and I spent every class period after February 26 helping students set up their folders. If you are behind, make this your first daily goal. Get it done by Friday. We are available to help directly during office hours, but we can walk you through the process and check your work at any point during the school day.

The rest of the information you need is in the instructional letter. Make reading it a priority:

I’ll continue to remind you what to do each morning, and Ms. Egan and I will be available throughout the day to help.

Use the comment section below to ask any questions you have.