and that is a wrap...

This will most likely be the last post for this blog.  My travels in third grade are over!  There have been some interesting events this year--- the plant up on Gessner exploding one morning (it didn't affect us, but my husband's office used to be a street over from there, so it seemed close to home).  There was the unexpected day off because of a water pipe that broke elsewhere in the city, but making the water unsafe to use and drink. 

And then the Thursday before Spring Break....2020.  We had been told for several days to make sure we took our laptop home with us each evening.  There was a virus spreading rapidly across the world and it had arrived in the United States.  Washington and New York were getting hit hardest, but it was rapidly moving into other cities and states.  On Thursday we sent some things home with children as a "just in case" we weren't able to come right back after Spring Break, and then Thursday night we got the notification that school was closed for Friday.  Then it was through the month of March, then through the month of April, until finally it was announced that we were not going to return to "normal" school this school year.  Last week I had the task of packing up the belongings of students so they could come do a "drive by" pickup.  They couldn't get out of the car, we were to put their belongings into the trunk.  One car that came through for my class did a clever thing.  When the trunk opened, there was a paper saying thank you to Mrs. Wolf and I, then arrows pointing down.  They had put envelopes for us to retrieve as we put their things into the trunk.  It was bittersweet.  Not at all like the goodbyes on the last day of school for the last 24 years of my teaching career.  No.  This one will forever be known as the "Covid Class of 2020".

As my students move along to fourth grade, I will be skipping over them and heading to the fifth grade.  So, while I say good-bye to them this week, I will get to see them again in a short while, and maybe that time we'll have a proper end of the school year together.

   Au revoir!

As we approach the end of the school year...

I am playing and need a space to put it...

Nothing to report here-- just doing some tech learning and playing around.  I can't remember what the password is for the blog I used when doing the district's tech professional development back in 2009/2012!  LOL!!

I found some educators using bitmojis and google slides for things and I am playing around with what I find.  We use the ItsLearning platform, and most of these educators use Google classroom for their regular classrooms and with the distance learning.  This was the slide I showed the students this morning during our digital backpack meeting.

A Different Way to Do School

I hope everyone had a safe Spring Break and found something enjoyable to do!  My Twitter feed and Facebook blew up with posts from teachers around the country that are now learning a new way to teach from their homes instead of face-to-face with their pupils.  There is a LOT of stuff out there!  One thing I am grateful for-- PTA let me attend a technology conference last February in San Antonio.  While there, I learned about an online platform called Seesaw.  I have the free version set up for my two classes and we have completed a couple of activities on there, so the children should have some working knowledge of how to use the tools available to them.  I might utilize this online platform to have students show me about their learning from home.

Speaking of learning from home, all of us will be in this together!  The district rolled out the digital backpack to parents on Sunday, March 22nd.  These are activities that should be fairly easy to implement, to help you get a sense of what kind of a schedule you need to set at home.  Please do not feel that you should be "doing school" from 8-3.  This week teachers are checking in with families and doing some online learning ourselves.  Once we get a feel for what the district expectations are, we'll get together as teaching teams to put together some distance learning plans for the students.  For now, use the resources from the district.  There are a lot of questions that I don't have answers to at this time, but feel free to email any that you have to me.  I will answer what I can!

Please download the app for Zoom.  We will possibly be using this app for a lot of our eLearning.  Here is a link for more information about Zoom (Click here).  You might want to go ahead and practice getting onto zoom by using this link:  zoom.us/test
Once we get more information about how we are using Zoom with students, I'll be able to send you an email with the date and time to log in using a link that I will include in the email.  Students will click on the link, and hopefully be able to join in fairly easily!