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Step-by-Step Guidance from Cult of Pedagogy

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Step-by-Step Guidance from Cult of Pedagogy

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Sponsored by World101 and Listenwise

Disclaimer 1: This post was written in the Spring of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, so a lot of the information here is discussed through the lens of distance learning launched by a global pandemic. I have attempted to broaden the lens beyond our current situation to take other distance-learning situations into account.

Disclaimer 2: I recommend quite a few tech tools in this post. Before you proceed with them, please check with your district to make sure the tools comply with your specific use policies for age, privacy, etc.

If you've found yourself teaching in a distance-learning situation, especially if it's been foisted upon you by circumstance, you'll discover pretty quickly that distance learning offers different challenges from face-to-face instruction. And if you look online, you'll find tons of ideas and resources that can help you tackle those challenges, so much that it's easy to get paralyzed at the volume of it all. This is especially true if you're expected to hit the ground running with very little notice.

To help you, I'm going to take my best shot at sharing clear, carefully curated information on distance learning. We'll do this in four parts:

In Part 1 I'll address your head and your heart, the very real, valid emotional and psychological factors that may be preventing you from doing a decent job with online learning.

In Part 2 we'll get into the nuts and bolts of distance learning, options for content delivery, different ways students can demonstrate learning, and some of the tech that can make it all work.

In Part 3 I'll share some general tips and advice I've gathered from teachers in the field.

And in Part 4 we'll talk about troubleshooting, solving some of the more specific problems that come up often when we talk about online learning.

PART 1: START WITH YOUR HEAD AND YOUR HEART

None of the practical stuff is going to do any of us much good if we're in a distracted, panicked headspace and haven't tended to the ways our current situation has impacted our emotions. Here are three things you can do to get your head and heart in a better place.

Get Perspective

There will likely be times when the people in charge of you start to expect too much, or you expect too much of yourself. If you're in a situation like the one we happen to be in right now, in the spring of 2020, you may need to regularly step back from what's right in front of you and remember that we're dealing with life and death circumstances right now. None of this is normal, and there really is no precedent to follow. Most people are doing the best they can on any given day, and that means things will not go smoothly. And by "people," I mean everyone: students, parents, your colleagues, your administration, your family members, and you. YOU. Giving yourself plenty of grace is key at times like this.

If you need something to help you regain perspective and cut yourself some slack, read Carolyn Todd's editorial, Is Anyone Else Just Barely Functioning Right Now?

Now if you personally have a cool, level head at the moment, but someone else is pressuring you to do more, keep in mind that they are feeling their own unique pressure to perform, and they're passing that on to you. It may be an opportunity to validate their feelings, or it may be time to push back on expectations that are simply unreasonable.

Get Physical

When things start to feel like too much, start moving. Decades of research has pointed to the link between physical activity and brain function, but most of us don't need research to know that some of our best ideas come to us when we change things up and go for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. This is especially important during times when we are more likely to be cooped up in our homes, such as, say, a quarantine imposed by a global pandemic.

Get with Other People

One of the things that has really overwhelmed me in the process of putting this post together is knowing that everyone's situation is a little different and not having the tools to address each situation.

One way to alleviate this is to get in touch with others who are more familiar with your specific needs. Apart from collaborating with your colleagues, a great way to share ideas is to find and join online groups. Two I'm recommending here are on Facebook. If you're not on Facebook, I strongly suggest you set up an account just for the purpose of collaborating with others.

Dealing with Educational Inequities in Distance/Online Learning: This group was created "in response to the growing list of resources and practices during the COVID-19 shutdown that further increase the educational divide as it relates to accessibility; race; socio-economic status; gender; and other marginalized communities. We want to demonstrate real solutions in distance/online learning that can provide solutions for all learners."

PART 2: THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF ONLINE LEARNING

Online learning has so many components to it; each one could honestly get its own whole blog post. Since I can't go too in-depth all at once, I'll just do an overview of all the pieces and link out to a few resources that can help you learn more about each one.

1. CONNECTING AND COMMUNICATING WITH STUDENTS

It's essential that you have clear, consistent, accessible channels for communicating with your students. Different pathways for communication will need to be established. The first two are essential and asynchronous, meaning participants can access the conversation whenever it's convenient; they don't need to be present at the same time. The third pathway is optional and is usually synchronous, meaning participants must "attend" the conversation at the same time.

Must Have: Outgoing Communication asynchronous On this pathway, you give instructions, post announcements, and generally inform your students about what's going on and what's expected of them. Some teachers are creating daily or weekly videos for this purpose, while others are writing out instructions in places like Google Docs, and others are doubling up-pairing short videos with written instructions so students get the information through different modes.

It seems like one of the most important considerations with outgoing communication is that you keep it consistent: Pick one place to deliver and store outgoing messages and stick with that, so students know where to look, nothing gets lost in the mix, and no one gets overwhelmed with information overload.

Must Have: Incoming Communication asynchronous This pathway is for students and parents to reach out to you with questions, feedback, and updates on their ability to complete required work.

Nice to Have: Two-Way Communication
synchronous OR asynchronous On this pathway, you and your students can communicate back and forth in a more open dialogue, where you broadcast yourself live and students attend as participants in one-on-one, small-group, or whole-class sessions.

Video conferencing: For this pathway, many teachers are using video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet, and Microsoft Teams. These can be great for community-building and giving students a sense of connectedness with you and each other.

It's important to note that these platforms also have their pitfalls, one of which is that they may directly violate your school's privacy policies, so be sure to check with the people in your district who are in charge of compliance with those policies to make sure you're ok. This article from Edsurge does a good job of explaining the potential problems with video conferencing; it focuses specifically on Zoom, but the concepts would apply to any video conferencing tool.

This infographic, created by the Celina High School SWAT Team in Celina, TX, and their advisor, Tisha Poncio, offers tips for students when participating in video conferences:

Alternatives to Video Conferencing: If you've decided not to go the video conferencing route for now, you can still set up text-based discussions that can get students interacting:

Discussion boards: Many platforms, like Google Classroom, Blackboard, Edmodo, and Microsoft Teams, give you the option to set up ongoing, text-based discussions on individual topics. You can make these optional, open for students to ask questions on their work, or make participation a required part of students' grades.

Backchannel discussion: If you'd like something that feels more dynamic and "live," try a backchannel discussion, which can happen at a set time (synchronous) or stay open for a longer period of time to allow students to participate when it's convenient for them (asynchronous). You can open up a text-based chat room in YoTeach (which is very similar to the now-defunct TodaysMeet). If your students are 13 years or older, you could also set them up on Voxer, which allows them to use voice or text to carry on discussions.

2. KEEPING EVERYTHING ORGANIZED

Ideally, you and your colleagues will have chosen a single platform for storing and delivering assignments, collecting student work, posting announcements, and so on. Many schools are already set up on a learning management system (LMS) like Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, or Edmodo. If you don't already have something in place, and you don't have time to learn a new platform, it's probably not a good idea to jump into anything new.

But creating a central hub should be a priority. What parents and students are saying most often is that it's incredibly stressful to have to keep up with multiple platforms and multiple streams of information, with some pieces coming through email, others through Remind, others through an LMS, and so on. With more than one child at home and more than one teacher per child, things can get out of hand very fast. It's perfectly fine to use different tools as part of your instruction-you might assign Quizlet flashcards, Edpuzzle lessons, Newsela articles-but for communication, keep things as streamlined as possible.

One simple approach taken by some schools is to maintain a single document (usually a Google Doc) for the whole school. In that document are links to individual documents for each teacher.

This type of document-which is just a really simple hyperdoc -creates a central hub where parents and students can start every single time, then click over to the places where they can find updated information for their classes. Even if you don't use this specific model, setting up something like it will make your whole school run more smoothly.

Individual teachers can then replicate this type of hub for their own classes, creating a central folder or file where students can find daily or weekly assignments and other communications.

3. LESSON DESIGN

Entire degree programs have been created to show teachers how to design lessons for online learning, and I wasn't able to delve into this enough for this post. What I did find are two resources that you might find helpful without getting another master's degree:

One principle that I've seen in several discussions of online learning is the idea that it works better when you give students some choices, choices in how they take information in and choices in how they demonstrate learning. The next two sections will share some possibilities for both of those.

4. OPTIONS FOR DELIVERING CONTENT

One of the main things you need to do when setting up online instruction is figuring out how students are actually going to take in the content. You have a few options, and it's a good idea to not just stick to one avenue, since you ideally want to give students multiple modes of intake.

Readings

Google Docs or Microsoft Word Files: As long as you remember to manage the security settings on these so they can't be edited, these kinds of files are perfectly fine to use as reading materials.

Regular PDFs: One advantage of using PDFs is that you generally don't have to worry about them being altered by the student, and things like fonts and other design elements will be preserved no matter what device a student is using.

PDFs with Annotation Tools: Several tools like Edji and Kami allow users to annotate PDFs, which would make a great close-reading assignment.

Websites: There's a ton of outstanding free content online that would make excellent reading material for class assignments. On CommonLit, Newsela, and Actively Learn, you can find good reading material for many grade levels and subject areas. NewseumED offers fantastic primary sources for history and social studies.

Websites with Customized, Added Layers: With any website at all, you can use Insert Learning to layer on your own instructional content, such as notes, discussion questions, quizzes, and other embedded content.

Videos

Video is a very popular way to deliver content online, because it has the potential to restore the voice and visuals that are lost when we move away from face-to-face instruction. Once you have a good video, you can share it directly with a link or use a tool like Edpuzzle or PlayPosit to build a complete lesson around that video.

You have two options for sourcing your content: use videos that were created by someone else, or create the videos yourself.

Created by Someone Else
Obviously, the internet is absolutely loaded with videos, and using them means you don't have to make them yourself. What's challenging is finding videos that (a) are appropriate for student viewing, and (b) accurately represent the content you want to deliver, in a way that's succinct and maybe even entertaining. Finding videos that meet these criteria can be really time-consuming if you don't know where to look.

To save time, it helps to go to sources that have already proven themselves as creators of high-quality educational videos.

Khan Academy offers a massive library of videos on math, science, and arts & humanities, including history and government, so that would be a great place to start.

Look for YouTube channels created by organizations that already have a strong reputation for good content, like National Geographic, the History Channel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As with anything else, your colleagues are going to be one of your best sources for finding good stuff, so ask around at school, or find a group on Twitter that can recommend something for you.

Created by You The good thing about creating your own videos is that you have total control over the content. Probably the easiest way to create instructional videos is with screencasting software, which simply records whatever is on your screen while you narrate into a microphone. So you could, for example, create a PowerPoint-based lecture, then just deliver that lecture on your screen and use screencasting software to record it.

Here are two affordable, popular options for screencasting:

Screencastify
screencastify.com
This recorder is built right into Google Chrome, which makes it an incredibly convenient tool for creating on-the-spot screencasts. As of right now, the editing tools are still kind of rudimentary, which means you're not likely to end up with a very polished end product. Still, for many purposes, this tool gets the job done quickly and easily. Watch this video to learn how to use it.

Screencast-o-Matic
screencast-o-matic.com
This popular recorder is one that you download onto your computer, which is slightly less convenient than one that's built into a browser, but the editing features available with the paid plans might make it worth it for you. This video gives you an overview of how it works.

Static Slide Presentation

Slideshows that combine text with appealing visuals can be a nice alternative to text readings. They're also much quicker and easier to create than videos, and viewing them requires a lot less internet bandwidth.

These kinds of slideshows, which students would click through on their own, should ideally be designed with that independent experience in mind. Unlike a presentation that you give live, these would not be simply a support for a speaker; they'd need to stand completely alone, with all the necessary text on the slides, rather than in the speaker notes.

Rather than sharing these as a file, which would require you to adjust editing permissions and would likely result in the student looking at it in editing mode, you can share it in presentation mode so the slides take up the full screen and it feels more like an experience, like in this sample presentation. Learn how to set this up with a Google Slides presentation in the video below:

Audio

Content can also be delivered via audio, which can be a nice change of pace for students who are used to text or videos only, and because audio files are much smaller than video files, they're less likely to strain home internet capabilities.

Listenwise houses a fantastic library of curated, standards-aligned podcasts.

You can find lots of other podcasts on pretty much any topic imaginable. Here are some good ones that are produced specifically for student audiences.

Recording your own audio instructions, reflections, or lectures is simple and quick. You can use a voice recording app on a smartphone or a web-based tool like Online Voice Recorder to create MP3 files, which are just audio files, then upload those files right into whatever platform you're using to distribute information to students. In many cases, students will be able to play them right on that platform.

Interactive Learning Experiences

Some tools have come along in recent years that allow you to create interactive online learning modules, where students click through various instructional components, play games, take interactive quizzes, and so on. Although some activities may not justify the time it takes to put these interactives together, they can offer something different and more fun than the standard fare. You can find these on sites like GoConqr, Deck.Toys, BookWidgets, and Wizer. The one platform that seems to have the most robust collection of options is Genially. Take a look:

5. OPTIONS FOR DEMONSTRATING LEARNING

Just as there are many different ways to get the content into students' heads, you can also offer choices for how students demonstrate their learning. Probably the quickest, most traditional way to measure whether students learned the material is to give them some kind of test or quiz, but that may not be the best way to get students to experience the content in a deep way. Sticking only to tests also favors students who work well in that mode, rather than allowing other students to shine in areas they might be stronger in. Beyond all that, it's not much fun.

On Twitter, I asked teachers for some fresh ideas for "end products," and got tons of ideas back. Below I've listed some really good ones. Before you jump on these, be mindful that these end products still need to align with your instructional goals and are not what we call Grecian Urn assignments, creative-looking projects that don't ultimately have much instructional value.

Book: Students create a children's book, mini-textbook, handbook, comic, or other kind of book. These can be done on paper or created with apps like Book Creator.

Google Tour: Using Google Tour Builder, students can create customized tours that combine photos, text, and targeted locations on Google Earth. These could be used to create tours that explore current events, historical periods or phenomena, science or geography topics, global research topics, students' personal histories or future plans, or completely fictionalized stories that take place in various locations around the world.

Infographic: On paper or using a tool like Piktochart, have students create an infographic to represent or teach about an idea or set of data.

Lesson: Have students write their own lesson on a chunk of your content. Provide them with the basic structure of a lesson to follow, including objectives, direct instruction, guided practice, and some sort of assessment to measure their success.

Model: Students can create a physical model representing some aspect of your curriculum, then photograph it from various angles or create a video tour of the model with their own narration.

Museum or Multimedia Collection: Have students curate a collection of artifacts representing a curricular concept, along with their own written captions, in a Google Slides presentation. Two fantastic resources for gathering these artifacts are the Smithsonian Learning Lab and the Google Arts & Culture website.

Podcast: Have students use the recording tools mentioned in the "Audio" section above or an app like Anchor to record a podcast where they express an opinion, tell a story, or teach about a content-related topic. If students have a lot of material, they can break their podcast into multiple episodes and do a series instead.

Scavenger Hunt: Have students participate in a content-based scavenger hunt and take photos to record their findings. An app like GooseChase can make this even more fun.

Sketchnote: Have students create a sketchnote to represent a content-related topic using paper or with a drawing app like Sketchpad.

Video: Students can create their own videos as creative, informative, persuasive, or reflective pieces. These can be public service announcements, commercials, mini-documentaries, instructional videos, short feature films or animations, or TED-style talks. Tools for creating these can range from quick response platforms like Flipgrid, to screencasting tools listed in the previous section, a tool that creates stop motion videos like Stop Motion Studio, or simple online video creators like Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

Website: Using tools like Weebly, Wix, or Google Sites, have students develop a website to document a long-term project or teach about a particular idea.

PART 3: GENERAL TIPS AND ADVICE FROM TEACHERS

Begin again.

If distance learning has been introduced suddenly, where it takes the place of face-to-face learning rather than being the standard from the start, treat the beginning of the shift the same way you'd treat the beginning of a school year, by establishing routines and protocols before digging deeply into content, and giving extra energy to rekindling culture and relationships on the new platform even if they were already established in the face-to-face setting.

Keep home responsibilities in mind.

When schools are closed district-wide, all children are out of school and under one roof. This means older kids may be shouldering some responsibility for caring for their younger siblings, and that could impact how well they are able to keep up with deadlines, log in for synchronous events, or respond to communication in a timely manner. Letting students know up front that you get this, and maintaining flexibility with deadlines, can go a long way toward keeping lines of communication open and avoiding misunderstandings.

Make social interaction a priority.

When we are kept apart from one another for whatever reason, our need for human interaction increases. So if you're teaching a distance learning course that was set up that way to begin with, it's important to build in structures to keep students interacting with each other and with you.

This principle is even more vital in situations where distance learning is coupled with large-scale social isolation.

Some of the tools and systems I mentioned earlier, like video conferencing and discussion boards, can meet this need; even your own outgoing video, audio, and written communication can be used for more "human connection" reasons. A good general rule to keep in mind is that you don't need to use 100% of your time for instructional purposes; allowing space for regular conversation, venting, and laughter can be incredibly important.

Keep messaging to a minimum.

I mentioned this earlier, but it's important so I'm repeating it. If kids and parents are receiving multiple messages from multiple teachers every day, and families have multiple kids, they can become overwhelmed really quickly, and things will start slipping through the cracks.

Try to limit the number of platforms you and your school are using for distributing information. Ideally, you'll have one clear channel for sending out announcements and messages, and those will be limited in number. Parents and students will have one place to look for all important information, and that "place" will be clean, simple, easy to navigate, and updated regularly so that all users can count on the information being current. The closer you can get to this ideal, the more smoothly things will go.

PART 4: TROUBLESHOOTING

Two specific problems tend to come up more often than any others when it comes to distance learning. Although neither one is completely solvable, here are some of the ways schools are addressing them:

1. Students Who Do Not Have Home Access to Tech

The whole notion of distance learning becomes a problem if some of your students don't have devices or reliable internet access. Here are some ways to address this problem:

Get more students connected. In a 2017 post, When Your School is Short on Tech, I showcased some ways that schools are getting unconnected families online, including information on how some schools partner with organizations like Kajeet to loan WiFi hotspots out to families. Although some of the solutions may not be relevant to a distance-learning situation, you may find some resources that can be helpful in your community, even if they can't be implemented right away.

Offer non-digital options. Some districts are working around the problem by offering paper resources for pick-up and drop-off. This is how we did distance learning in all the years before the internet, so it's certainly possible to do it again.

Use the phone. If you've tried other avenues and still can't get a hold of some families, a regular phone call might be your best option. If you want to keep your number private, you can set up a Google Voice account, which allows you to call, text, or message another phone without sharing your personal number, or use some of these phone settings to block your regular number. If you are reaching out to families that don't speak your language, try the free TalkingPoints app, which allows you to communicate with them in their language.

Use the mail. Although not ideal or cheap, it may be possible to mail materials back and forth (if you have office staff still going to school each day, they may be able to help with this). Even if instruction isn't possible this way, consider the impact it would make if you took ten minutes to mail a hand-written letter to an otherwise unconnected student, just to let them know you're thinking about them.

Consider home visits as a last resort. This isn't out of the question. And if you're deeply concerned about reaching students who can't be reached in any other way, it may be possible to just drive to their neighborhoods and, maintaining all precautionary measures and social distancing, check in with them. One visit might be all that's needed to at least establish a phone connection that you can maintain from that point on.

2. Meeting Special Education, RTI, and Language Learning Needs

So many of our students have individual needs that we have figured out how to meet in a school setting. When school moves to a distance-learning model, both teachers and parents are often at a loss for how to continue working with students with IEPs, those who receive RTI support, English learners, and other students who get one-on-one time with educators specifically trained to meet their needs.

Since this one is really far out of my wheelhouse, I reached out on Twitter for help. Really, your best bet is to read the replies to see what might work for you. You'll not only get some good ideas, you're likely to connect with people you can reach out to for even more good ideas.

Apart from that, I have a two more resources to share:

Microsoft has a growing suite of tools made specifically to make online learning more accessible for all learners. One or more of these may make it easier for you to meet more students' needs from a distance.

The TalkingPoints app enables teachers to communicate with parents in the parents' native language, and it even works if parents only have text-based phones.

As I neared completion on this post, I opened up my inbox and found five other resources that had been sent to me for possible inclusion in this post. Looking through them made me realize I had missed gobs and gobs of information here. I felt completely deflated and overwhelmed all over again, but then, as I have often had to do in the past couple of weeks, I took a deep breath, closed up the things that were distracting and upsetting me, and said to myself, "Today you have done enough."

I hope this has helped you in some way. If not, tomorrow is another day.

Come back for more.
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Distance Learning: A Gently Curated Collection of Resources for Teachers

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An overview of the nuts and bolts of distance learning, including general tips, advice on tech, and troubleshooting some common problems.

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Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Information and Resources

These pages include various resources and supports for remote teaching and learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be updated frequently; please check back often.

Information for Educators

Information for Students and Parents

This information is provided to help Missouri educators find effective educational material. This list will be updated as necessary.

When reviewing and selecting materials to deploy, take care to understand the terms and conditions of their use. Be aware that some digital resources require teachers or students to create online accounts, some have copyright restrictions, and some are shared by companies that have temporarily suspended use fees. In addition, a resource previously contracted by districts for their students' use may have restrictions that govern its use in remote learning.
The views, opinions and content contained in these resources are solely those of the original contributors. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education does not endorse the views expressed by these contributors and reserves the right to refuse submissions. Questions related to any of these resources should be directed to the organizations, people and opportunities as shared.

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Supports for Remote Teaching and Learning

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These pages include various resources and supports for remote teaching and learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be updated frequently; please check back often. This information is provided to help Missouri educators find effective educational material. This list will be updated as necessary.

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1-855-243-8892 - call if you would like 2 months free internet - must have students in your home

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DESE - Missouri curriculum and assessment resources

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Free TI Graphing Calculator emulators (6 mos)

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Free TI Graphing Calculator emulators (6 mos)

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for teachers and students

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Texas Instruments Calculators and Education Technology - US and Canada

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See why Texas Instruments (TI) is the #1 recommended brand of graphing calculator in the U.S. Download free math, science and STEM lessons. Update your calculator to the latest OS.

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Daily video lessons by teachers-writers of Eureka Math, Wit &Wisdom, and PhD Science

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new knowledge-building lessons every day

Our teachers and teacher-writers know it's important for students to build knowledge every day, even when schools are closed. That's why we are providing knowledge-building resources here-written materials for math (Grades K-12) and daily instructional videos for English language arts (Grades K-8), math (Grades K-12), and science (Grades 3-5). We will post new video lessons and update our content daily. Continue checking this page for more free resources as we refresh our content.

Let's keep inspiring greatness and building knowledge together during these uncertain times. Choose your grade level below to find materials and video lessons for your student(s).

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Our teachers and teacher-writers know it's important for students to build knowledge every day, even when schools are closed. That's why we are providing knowledge-building resources here-written materials for math (Grades K-12) and daily instructional videos for English language arts (Grades K-8), math (Grades K-12), and science (Grades 3-5).

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Lessons for AP Calculus.

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Calc Medic helps math teachers bring calculus to life.

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virtual video conferencing

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COVID-19 Resources for Schools, Students, and Families | U.S. Department of Education

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COVID-19 Resources for Schools, Students, and Families

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The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) updates this page often with new details related to COVID-19 and DESE and/or public school operations. See the topics below and click to expand each of those sections for more specific information.

Administrative Memos & Previously Released Documents

Alternative Methods of Instruction

DESE has compiled all Alternative Methods of Instruction (AMI) information on a new webpage. That information can be found at https://dese.mo.gov/alternative-methods-instruction-0.

COVID-19 Testing: Antigen and Screening Testing

Update: Expiration Date Extension for Antigen Test Kits

Please note: Individual components inside the box will have varying expiration dates; do not pay attention to those dates. Only pay attention to the expiration date on the outside of the box beside the hour glass icon.

Alert: Limited Antigen Test Inventory

As you are likely well aware, there is a nationwide shortage of rapid COVID-19 antigen tests and an increased demand for tests as case counts continue to climb. Missouri received no new supply from Abbott, the antigen testing manufacturer, in the last two weeks and was not notified of a pause in shipments until DHSS asked about the issue this week.

Because of these issues, effective immediately and until further notice, the State of Missouri must make the following changes until the supply/demand issues are resolved:

1) The State of Missouri is placing a pause on fulfilling most antigen test reorders. Due to the importance of keeping school buildings open for in-person learning, a very limited quantity of the state's current antigen test inventory was reserved for K-12 schools. As of Monday, January 10, 2022, this limited inventory for K-12 schools was depleted. Moving forward, no reorders will be fulfilled until supply becomes available again.

2) New applicants into the K-12 Antigen Testing Program will not be accepted. We will maintain any new applications received for future potential approval.

This pause is due only to the current constrained supply, and we will resume shipping antigen tests once they become available. Rest assured that we will communicate with you as soon as this situation changes and these issues are rectified.

We know what a challenge this unfortunate situation is going to create for the hundreds of schools across the state that are taking part in our K-12 Antigen Testing Program and we want to express our sincere apologies. It has been so important to DESE and the State of Missouri to make these rapid antigen tests available to K-12 schools, free of charge, since fall 2020. We know that these rapid tests allow schools to quickly determine if the mild symptoms their students and/or staff members have are COVID, or something else. This rapid test is often the difference in knowing if a teacher can teach that day, or if a student attend school to take part in valuable in-person learning.

The Screening Testing Program being administered by DHSS continues to be available, and DHSS coordinators are working with vendors to secure an inventory of tests needed for the required follow-up testing when there's a positive test within the pooled sample. If your district/school is interested in joining the screening testing program, please email K12screeningtesting@health.mo.gov.

Alert: New Saliva-Based PCR Testing Option for Schools

1. Prior to administering the PCR tests, districts/schools must complete an on-boarding process which includes identifying a Test Supervisor and Test Champion, gathering consent forms from staff members and students' parents/guardians, reviewing training materials to learn the testing process, and receiving supplies needed to conduct the tests. It will take one to two weeks to complete this on-boarding process.

2. Once you notify DHSS of your interest, a representative from Concentric will contact you to begin the process.

3. Districts/Schools will use the Concentric Online Portal for managing testing inventory and results.

4. Test results are returned within 48 hours through the Concentric Online Portal to the Test Champion.

5. Due to courier requirements, this testing option is most appropriate for districts/schools conducting at least five PCR tests per day. If your district/school is testing fewer than this and you want to participate, please let us know so that we can help identify a more appropriate solution.

Next steps:

1. District name.

2. A point of contact for the testing vendor to work with.

Supplemental Funding Available for Missouri K-12 Schools Participating in COVID-19 Testing Programs

To apply, please complete the . Schools/school districts receiving the supplemental funding are required to submit a prior to expending any of the funds. Please reach out to the K-12 Screening Testing team at or questions regarding supplemental funding availability or visit the online supplemental funding application budget for the funding k12screeningtesting@health.mo.gov f DHSS website here

Screening Testing

Please see the following important information from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS).

DHSS is offering Missouri's K-12 local education agencies the opportunity to participate in a COVID-19 screening testing program using a pooled testing approach during the 2021-22 school year. Please reference the Missouri Screening Testing Program for K-12 Schools Guide for complete information about the program. Screening testing means regularly (e.g., weekly) testing people without symptoms with the goal of identifying and isolating COVID-19 positive individuals. This type of testing can help schools identify potential outbreaks early and give them the confidence needed to safely, and with precautions, maintain in-person learning for their students. Screening testing is just one piece of a comprehensive approach for COVID-19 mitigation in schools.

DHSS invites all K-12 schools to participate, including public school districts, charter schools and private schools. Participating schools/districts will receive testing resources and staffing, if desired. Staffing support includes assistance with the entire testing process including registering individuals for testing, providing testing materials, collecting and testing samples, and reporting results. Schools will also receive communication resources.

To participate in the K-12 Screening Testing Program, schools/districts need to complete an Authorized School Application, which includes completing a Statement of Assurances and Testing Plan Worksheet. For more information about Missouri's K-12 Screening Testing Program and other questions about screening testing, please contact K12screeningtesting@health.mo.gov or visit the K-12 Screening Testing webpage.

Antigen Testing

The Missouri Legislature provided the Department of Health and Senior Services the spending authority needed to confirm that funding will be available for Missouri to continue providing rapid antigen tests to public and private schools through June 2022.

Please contact AntigenTesting@dese.mo.gov with questions.

CDC & U.S. Department of Education Information

COVID-19 Cases Among School-Aged Children

The state of Missouri has re-launched the COVID-19 in School District Communities dashboard, which tracks positive cases among all school-aged residents (ages 5-19), including non-public school students, in each school district's geographic boundary.

Civil Rights Resources for Schools

U.S. Department of Education Provides Technical Assistance Amid Pandemic: The U.S. Department of Education's (USED's) Office for Civil Rights has released new COVID-19-related technical assistance for elementary and secondary schools. The technical assistance document, Questions and Answers for K-12 Public Schools in the Current COVID-19 Environment, is issued primarily in response to inquiries received by USED and provides important information related to schools' obligations under Section 504/Title II, Title VI and Title IX as schools continue to make decisions regarding the provision of educational services for all children.

Early Childhood Information

Review the CDC's COVID-19 Guidance for Operating Early Care and Education/Child Care Programs.
Updates to the guidance emphasize the importance of universal masking for everyone ages 2 and older, regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, this guidance provides more information on screening testing and updated guidance for fully vaccinated staff. Early care and education (ECE) programs can promote vaccinations among staff and families, including pregnant women, by providing information about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination, encouraging vaccine trust and confidence, and establishing supportive policies and practices. The updated version of the guidance outlines strategies for ECE programs to implement to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and to maintain safer operations. ECE programs include child care centers, home-based and family child care programs, Head Start programs, and other prekindergarten programs.

Missouri First Steps Guidance Manual

First Steps Notice of Action/Consent During COVID-19

#HealthyatSchool Toolkit

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is providing a toolkit for local education agencies, state organizations and the general public to access social media and other shareable content for the #HealthyatSchool "Sick? Stay Home!" campaign. Please visit the #HealthyatSchool toolkit for more specific information.

Operating Guidance for Schools

U.S. Department of Education's 2022 Guide to Staying in School In-Person Operating Guidance for Schools
DHSS and DESE have compiled the Missouri School COVID-19 Operating Guidance document. Information previously found in DHSS' Guidance for Assessing COVID-19 Exposures and Defining Close Contacts in a School Setting document is now contained in the main/primary DHSS/DESE guidance document, allowing all information to be found in one place.

The section regarding guidance for assessing exposures and recommendations regarding quarantine of close contacts includes the following key additions:

Option 4 - Test to Stay: See pg. 5 for complete details about the Test to Stay Option that enables a close contact to continue activities during the quarantine period through participation in frequent testing. The Test to Stay Option provides LPHAs and LEAs an additional option to consider for persons who do not meet current options for staying in school following an exposure to COVID-19 in the K-12 setting.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): See pg. 7 for FAQs and their responses, covering topics including, but not limited to: at home tests, antibody tests, and the use of ShowMeVax.

Resources and Tools: See pgs. 12-15 for resources, including the DHSS/DESE graphic and flowchart that describe the recommended scenario-based options for quarantine as outlined in the updated guidance document, including the Test to Stay Option.

In December 2021, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released two studies around Test to Stay programs and, as a result, updated its guidance for schools to reflect the use of Test to Stay. Here are the links to review the new information from the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) and the CDC:
U.S. Department of Education's "Return to School Roadmap"
On August 2, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) released the " Return to School Roadmap," a resource to support students, schools, educators, and communities as they prepare to return to safe, healthy in-person learning this fall. The roadmap provides key resources and supports for students, parents, educators, and school communities to build excitement around returning to classrooms this school year and outlines how federal funding can support the safe and sustained return to in-person learning.

ABC Science Collaborative Publishes COVID-19 Resource & Guidance

The ABC Science Collaborative has identified strategies to help school leaders use current data to consider the best, safest, and most practical policies to promote attendance in the classroom, where most students learn best, during the 2021-22 school year. The ABC Science Collaborative coordinated a comprehensive review of the current scientific literature and available data on COVID-19 transmission and mitigation strategies for K-12 schools. The group recently published a summary of those findings - COVID-19 and Schools: The Year in Review and a Path Forward - to provide an informational resource and practical guidance for school leaders and policy makers to consider as they plan a path forward for safely resuming full in-person instruction in the coming school year.

The ABC Science Collaborative is coordinated by the Duke Clinical Research Institute at the Duke University School of Medicine and is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Additional Resources
Additional reopening and operating guidance information can be found in the following resources:

Special Education Information & Guidance

Early Childhood Special Education opportunities are of great value to children and their families. Attending a high-quality preschool program that is in a public school, or is community-based, provides children with rich experiences that support on-going success in school. Given these unusual times, early childhood experiences, especially for our most vulnerable populations (e.g., children with disabilities, English language learners), can help close opportunity and achievement gaps that have been persistent in Missouri. During COVID-19, guidance is being issued in response to changing circumstances and information. The ECSE COVID-19 Resource Table is designed to provide resources for early childhood special educators and parents to access as enhancements to learning. Please note that many community-based childcare programs continue to serve children safely through the COVID-19 public health emergency.

After receiving many questions from constituents, the DESE Office of Special Education developed a COVID-19 question and answer guide. The compliance team utilized information from a variety of resources, including guidance documents posted by other states and national organizations as well as questions received from Missouri educators serving special education students. State and local education agencies are testing these uncharted waters together. Our challenge is to think about the intent and purpose behind the procedural requirements for each step of the special education process, and then lead teams as they reflect on how they can fulfill that same purpose and intent in an alternate way, in light of our current circumstances. We must do the best we can to stay true to the intent of IDEA. Please remember to review the daily LRP site for new information. View the DESE Special Education Compliance COVID-19 Question and Answer Guide.

Statutory Waivers

Executive Order 21-09, which declared a State of Emergency due to COVID-19, expired on December 31, 2021. Therefore, the following education-related statutory waivers are now terminated:

Use of School Buses - Section 163.161.1, RSMo

Retired Member of PSRS Working for a District - Sections 169.560.1 and .2, RSMo

Retired Member of PSRS Working for a District - Section 169.660.2, RSMo

With the expiration of the Retired Member of PSRS/PEERS waiver, the counting period for the 550 hour limit will begin January 1, 2022, and continue through June 30, 2022.
The following education-related statutory waivers were previously terminated:

Hearings for Unaccredited or Provisionally Accredited - Section 162.081.2, RSMo

Professional Development Fund, etc. - Section 160.530, RSMo

Hold Harmless Districts Exempt from Withholdings - Section 163.031.7, RSMo

Transfers to and from the Incidental Fund - Section 165.011, RSMo

Audits of Records - Section 165.121.4, RSMo and 5 CSR 30-4.030

Vaccine Information

CDC's Guide to School-Located Vaccination Clinics: Best Practices for School Districts
The CDC's School-Located Vaccination Clinics: Best Practices for School Districts provides a roadmap for school administrators to work directly with local health departments and other vaccine providers (e.g., pharmacies) to set up vaccination clinics in places that K-12 students and their parents know and trust. The guide provides a three-tiered approach for school districts to follow to partner with an appropriate vaccine provider for school-located vaccination clinics.

In addition to identifying a partner vaccine provider, School-Located Vaccination Clinics: Best Practices for School Districts for School Districts provides guidance relating to roles and responsibilities, date and site selection, outreach, and hosting the clinic.
Children and COVID-19 Vaccination
The CDC recommends that children and adolescents age 5 and older get a COVID-19 vaccine. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for children and adolescents age 5 and up, as a 2-dose series taken 3 weeks apart. The dose for children age 5-11 is one-third of the dosage of the vaccine for older adolescents and adults.

Vaccination is the best way to protect children age 5 and older from COVID-19. COVID-19 has become one of the top 10 causes of pediatric death, and tens of thousands of children and teens have been hospitalized with COVID-19. While children and adolescents are typically at lower risk than adults of becoming severely ill or hospitalized from COVID-19, it is still possible.

The vaccine is safe and effective. Before being authorized for children, scientists and medical experts completed their review of safety and effectiveness data from clinical trials of thousands of children. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was rigorously tested and reviewed, and more than 11 million adolescents ages 12-17 have already safely received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Visit MOStopsCOVID.com for more information and details on how to get a vaccine for your child.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (DHHS') COVID-19 Public Education Campaign has made available two great resources to promote COVID-19 vaccination as we approach the new school year.

The Back to School toolkit (The English and resource hub has a number of outreach materials specifically designed for various audiences, including students and parents. Spanish)is available for school district leaders, teachers, parent leaders, and school supporters that want to help increase confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in their school. The toolkit includes vaccination clinic guides, resources for parent leader meetings, and more.
Vaccine Toolkit
Complete information about the COVID-19 vaccine can be found at MOStopsCOVID.com.

Webinars Hosted

Need special assistance to access this content? Submit a request to receive a captioned video or transcript.

Outdated COVID-19 information from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years has been archived here.

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The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) updates this page often with new details related to COVID-19 and DESE and/or public school operations. See the topics below and click to expand each of those sections for more specific information.

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All resources involving special education in regards to COVID-19, special education websites, apps, communication,etc...

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Not to be obvious - but have you checked out the free on-line resources at the library? They are awesome!

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English-Learners May Be Left Behind as Remote Learning Becomes 'New Normal'

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English-Learners May Be Left Behind as Remote Learning Becomes 'New Normal'

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Staff writer Corey Mitchell covers English-language learners, bilingual education and civil rights issues for Education Week . Join him as he explores the educational, policy, and social issues surrounding ELLs in U.S. schools.

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English Learner Family Engagement During Coronavirus

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English Learner Family Engagement During Coronavirus

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playlists on Youtube that are organized by subject, grade level, and language (English or Spanish), Parent Toolkit and much more!!

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Set up remote learning quickly with CK-12. Hand-picked math and science lessons, popular during this time of year, ready to be shared. Always free.

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Hours ago the federal government passed the first substantial change to paid leave laws in response to the current public health emergency. Earlier this week, the House passed an amended version of its Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which significantly amends the Family Medical Leave Act and enacts the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act. On March 18 th, the Act was passed by the Senate and was signed into law by the President.

These new laws provide sweeping changes to the already complex maze of paid and unpaid sick leave laws, even as school districts grapple with the unprecedented task of educating students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here is what school districts need to know about the new laws before they take effect in the next few weeks.

The Emergency Family Medical Leave Expansion Act

The Emergency Family Medical Leave Expansion Act will go into effect on April 2, 2020, 15 days after the President signed it into law, and will sunset by December 31, 2020. The new law temporarily amends the FMLA in the following key ways.

Coverage. The Act applies to public school districts (regardless of number of employees), as well as all private employers with fewer than 500 employees.

Employee Eligibility. All full and part-time employees are eligible if they have worked for the employer for at least 30 calendar days prior to the designated leave related to the public health emergency. This is substantial change away from the current eligibility requirements of FMLA (1 year of employment, 1,250 hours worked in the 12 months before taking leave).

Leave Entitlement. An eligible employee may take up to 12 weeks of Emergency FMLA, same as the current entitlement under FMLA.

Qualifying Reasons. An eligible employee may take leave under this emergency provision if they are unable to work or telework because of needing to care for the employee's child (under the age of 18) if the child's school or place of care is closed or the childcare provider is unavailable due to a public health emergency.

Amount of Paid Leave. The first 2 weeks (10 work days) of the Emergency FMLA leave may be unpaid, but the employee may substitute their accrued but unused paid leave (sick, PTO, vacation, or the new Emergency Paid Sick Leave discussed below).

After 2 weeks, employees get paid at least two-thirds (2/3) of their regular rate of pay for their normal work schedule with a cap of $200 per day and $10,000 per employee in the aggregate. Employees who work part time or whose schedules change week to week must be paid the average number of hours worked over the prior six (6) months.

Intermittent Leave. The Act is unclear whether a district must grant an employee's request for intermittent leave.

Reinstatement Rights. Employees have the right to return to work to the same or equivalent position, same as the default rules under the current FMLA.

Depending on certain circumstances, the Act potentially allows for limited exceptions for a school district with fewer than 25 employees. In those cases, the district may be permitted to not bring back an employee from Emergency FMLA leave if the employee's position no longer exists due to the economic conditions related to public health emergency. This exclusion from the job restoration requires the district to make reasonable efforts to return the employee to work for up to one year following the employee's leave (think of it as an abbreviated version of the reduction-in-force requirement within the Teacher Tenure Act that requires the employer to return an employee up to three years after the involuntary leave).

Discrimination, Retaliation, Liability. The same anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation provisions under the current FMLA apply to the new revisions.

Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act

Similar to the emergency changes to FMLA, the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act will go into effect on April 2, 2020, 15 days after the President signed it into law, and will sunset by December 31, 2020. The key provisions of the new law are below.

Coverage. The Act applies to all public school districts (regardless of number of employees), as well as all private employers with fewer than 500 employees.

Employee Eligibility. All full and part-time employees, regardless of days of service.

Leave Entitlement. Employees may receive up to 2 weeks of paid sick leave, so 80 hours for full-time employees and a pro-rata amount for part-time employees (equal to the average number of hours worked during a two-week period).

Qualifying Reasons. An employee may take paid sick leave under the Act if they are unable to work or telework because of at least one of the following reasons:

Governmental (federal/state/local) Order to quarantine or self-isolate;

Advised by health care provider to self-isolate;

Symptoms of COVID-19 and seeking medical diagnosis;

Caring for family member who is subject to a quarantine/isolation order or who has been advised by a health care provider to self-isolate; or

Caring for child whose school is closed or child care provider is unavailable.

Amount of Paid Leave. School districts must pay an employee taking leave for any of the first three reasons listed above at the employee's regular rate of pay, capped at $511 per day or $5,110 per employee in the aggregate.

If an employee takes paid sick leave for a family member or child (one of the last two reasons listed above), the employee shall be paid at two-thirds (2/3) of their regular rate of pay, capped at $200 per day or $2,000 per employee in the aggregate.

Other Accrued Leave. Employees can use this Emergency Paid Sick leave first and a school district cannot require the employee to exhaust other paid leave prior to the Emergency Paid Sick leave. In other words, an employee gets paid sick time under the new law in addition to any other accrued paid leave.

Carryover. Paid sick leave under this Act does not carry over to the next year. Also, post-employment payout for this paid sick leave is not available to employees.

Discrimination, Retaliation, Liability. The Act includes anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation provisions, and allows for the same liability and penalties as available under the FLSA.

Federal and state government continue to develop additional responses to the ongoing public health emergency. At Mickes O'Toole, our Education Department will continue to monitor and provide updates as things change. In the meantime, our attorneys are ready to assist the education community with questions regarding COVID-19. Please reach out to us at the number below.

Natalie Hoernschemeyer | Grant Wiens

(314) 878-5600
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Federal Government Responds to Coronavirus Pandemic With New Requirements for School Districts Regarding Paid And Unpaid Leave

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Hours ago the federal government passed the first substantial change to paid leave laws in response to the current public health emergency. Earlier this week, the House passed an amended version of its Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which significantly amends the Family Medical Leave Act and enacts the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act.

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Practical Strategies & Resources to Teach K-12 ELs Online from SupportEd

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Practical Strategies & Resources to Teach K-12 ELs Online from SupportEd

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I've taken the most successful videos from my YouTube channel (55,000+ subscribers and 27,000,000 views and counting), and transformed them into mini-lessons with all the materials you will need to make Spanish lessons active, musical, fresh, and fun!

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I've taken the most successful videos from my YouTube channel (55,000+ subscribers and 27,000,000 views and counting), and transformed them into mini-lessons with all the materials you will need to make Spanish lessons active, musical, fresh, and fun!

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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3-12th gr. resources; by theme or unit and Lexile

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from The Today show

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With schools closing to stop the spread of coronavirus, you may find yourself working from home with a new side-gig: teacher.

If you're new to homeschooling, you're probably wondering how you can help your kids learn and keep them occupied while you work. Is it possible to avoid a screen time free-for-all and keep your sanity?

With everything from free lessons from Scholastic to a daily doodle with Mo Willems, these free homeschool resources will help:

First things first, see if your teacher or school has learning packets or classes via Google classrooms or Zoom. States and cities that are shutting down schools generally provide some online resources. New York City has grade-by-grade guidance. Check with your child's teacher or principal for guidance for a free homeschool curriculum.

NBC Learn's Parent Toolkit has guidelines for what students ought to know by the end of the year.

Looking for a homeschool daily schedule? This quarantine homeschool schedule template has been making the rounds as a COVID-19 daily schedule.

You may want to try to follow your child's regular school schedule, or decide on a plan with a family meeting. These printable schedules let you plan out your day.

Keep in mind younger children may only be able to focus on a task for 10 or 15 minutes. Take lots of movement breaks, sing songs and get outside when you can.

Mo Willems, of "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Elephant and Piggie" fame, is hosting "lunchtime doodles" at 1 p.m. EDT.

Jarret J. Krosoczka, author of the "Lunch Lady" graphic novel series and the National Book Award finalist "Hey, Kiddo," is hosting daily drawing webcasts on YouTube at 2 p.m. EDT for all ages.

Khan Academy is a great, free resource for instructional videos on many topics.

Mystery Science is offering free science lessons during school shutdowns.

TED-Ed has video lessons and series by top educators, made into animated videos for kids.

The Kennedy Space Center is having live presentations on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Facebook Live at 9:30 a.m. EDT for younger children, and 1 p.m. for young adults.

Some of your children's favorite authors are offering daily read-alouds during the crisis. Mac Barnett ("Sam and Dave Dig a Hole," "Mac B: Kid Spy") will read daily at 3 p.m. EDT and Oliver Jeffers ("Stuck," "Here We Are") at 2 p.m. EDT.

Peter H. Reynolds, author of "The Dot" and "ish" will have daily Facebook Lives.

Kate Messner, author of the new middle grade novel "Chirp" and picture book "The Next President" with Adam Rex, shares an array lessons from other authors on her website.

Romper put together "Operation Storytime" with read-alouds from enough authors to fill a virtual library.

Authors who are planning new read-alouds and lessons are sharing their schedules in a google doc created by literacy advocate Olivia Van Ledtje, and more are sharing resources with the Twitter hashtag #kidlitquarantine.

And major children's publishers, including Penguin and HarperCollins, are planning daily read-alouds and activities.

Many educational websites are offering free subscriptions during school closures. The Facebook group Amazing Educational Resources gathered them into a public spreadsheet. It includes resources for reading, math, history, Chinese, coding, music and more.

Scholastic learn-at-home is offering free online resources during the crisis, including 20 days of lessons for grades pre-K to 9 and up to three hours of lessons a day.

Open Culture has free textbooks, movies and audiobooks and links to free online courses from professors.

Prodigy Math, which is used by many school districts, has free video game style math learning. And the language program Duolingo offers free online learning tools. And the website CK-12 has age-appropriate lessons in all subjects for different grades.

For high schoolers, Fiveable is a free resource for Advanced Placement class learning and test prep.

Outschool, which offers live online classes in small groups, is offering free classes to those affected by school shutdowns.

Audible announced a free Audible Stories website with audiobooks for children of all ages. Everything on the site is free, with no login or membership required.

The streaming audio service Pinna is offering families and teachers two free months of access to their audio streaming service for kids ages 3-12. To activate, go to Pinna and use the promo code: PINNA4KIDS.

There are plenty of educational and entertaining podcasts for kids, including NPR's WOW in the World, Story Pirates and Brains On!

The Story Seeds podcast shows the creative process in real time, with kids and authors collaborating on story ideas. And Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest with author Adam Gidwitz ("A Tale Dark and Grimm") offers safely thrilling spooky tales.

The But Why? podcast includes an episode to explain what's happening with coronavirus to kids.

Many libraries are closing, but online resources remain available. Check SimplyE, Libby and Kanopy to get free resources with your library card.

The Epic! reading app announced Monday that it would be free to parents for the rest of the school year. To unlock free at-home access, students and their families need a digital invitation from a teacher or school librarian, who can sign up free to provide access to their students and even assign books to read remotely.

VOOKS, an online streaming library, is offering a month for free during school shutdowns in addition to resources and lesson plans.

Many children's book authors offer free activity sheets on their websites. Jarrett Lerner, author of "Enginerds," is creating new worksheets every few days that let kids finish a comic or complete a drawing with their own silly ideas.

Author/illustrator Elise Gravel also made some new (relevant) worksheets, like make your own silly virus.

Your local independent bookstore may be shutting down but offer free delivery or limited pick-up hours. Consider open-ended activity books along with reading material that your child loves.

With kids kept indoors more than usual, don't forget to provide plenty of wiggle time.

The Kidz Bop YouTube channel has dance-along videos. Mark Kanemura, a former backup dancer with Lady Gaga and contestant on "So You Think You Can Dance," is offering virtual dance parties on Instagram.

Cosmic Kids Yoga has free yoga resources for young children. And Go Noodle features short videos to get kids moving.

Just because you're quarantined doesn't mean you're under house arrest. Take your work outside and let the kids dig, or just observe nature. They can track what they see in a science notebook.

Tinkergarten, the outdoor early learning program, is offering Tinkergarten At Home for families with weekly activity ideas and other resources.

This whole exercise is going to require loads of creativity for any parent, especially those working while homeschooling.

Keri Smith, author of the "Wreck This Journal" books, is creating daily exploration prompts at her website. The Rebel Girls team is launching Rebel Girls at Home, including a digital download of their "I Am a Rebel Girl" journal, podcasts and activities from their books.

Illustrator Carson Ellis is providing illustration prompts on Instagram.

Author Kate DiCamillo is providing weekly writing prompts on YouTube. Bonus: Writing time for kids is quiet time for parents.

Author and illustrator Dan Santat is giving kids a chance to earn "badges" during the pandemic, with extra points for leaving parents alone to work.

Americas Test Kitchen Kids is offering free recipes, activities and experiments for kids during the coronavirus crisis. Raddish kids also offers resources and recipes for kids, and is giving away some free meal kits.

Sign up for the PBS Kids newsletter for more activities to try with kids.

National Geographic Kids also has quizzes, puzzles and games. And Quizlet provides free learning games and tools.

KiwiCrate has free educational resources and DIYS on its website.

If your kids Netflix, you can chill (or get some work done). And there are plenty of quality films to get you through quarantine.

Commonsense media keeps a list of the best documentaries for kids.

For an all-family TV break, shows about cooking and travel can be great cross-overs.

Be kind to yourself; remember this is temporary and no one expects perfection. If you make good use of the new Disney Plus streaming service, your kids may remember it as the best school year ever.

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How to homeschool during the coronavirus crisis with free resources

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With schools closing to stop the spread of coronavirus, you may find yourself working from home with a new side-gig: teacher. If you're new to homeschooling, you're probably wondering how you can help your kids learn and keep them occupied while you work. Is it possible to avoid a screen time free-for-all and keep your sanity?

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My almost-6-year-old marched down the stairs a couple of days ago holding his baby doll. "My baby has coronavirus," he told me. Then he spiked the (luckily rubber) doll like a football. "So I'm gonna do that to him!"

My 4-year-old is upset that his preschool class trips have been canceled (as of now, the school itself is still open, though that's likely to change soon, as all signs suggest it should). "And it's all because of the stupid virus," he moped as he got dressed this morning.

Coronavirus. COVID-19. Social distancing. A week ago these were obscure, unknown terms. Now our social media feeds are littered with them. We are being inundated with information. And then inundated again, because things change hour to hour. And as they do, we readjust our schedules, our daily routines, our expectations, our plans. The atmosphere is one of uncomfortable uncertainty at best, sheer terror at worst, and most of the time somewhere in between.

Articles about how to parent right now - how to talk to our kids and help calm their fears - abound. I've read many. Contributed to some. And now I'm writing my own. Why? Because what I haven't seen yet is a bulleted list, a set of short and sweet and pragmatic tips you could print out and hang on your fridge as a reference. And so that's going to be my contribution. For today. Here goes:

Be the grown-ups. It's on us to start conversations with our kids. Continue to ask them what new things they've heard about the virus, to correct misinformation, and to answer their questions honestly and using short sentences. Kids get bogged down in words.

Point out things that are different. Birthday parties are being canceled. Mommy is working from home. (Maybe) there's no school. People aren't traveling for spring break.

Point out things that are the same. You're still having Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. You're still watching your favorite shows. We still have to brush our teeth.

Play, play, play. Kids work things out with stuffed animals, dolls, action figures, costumes. Let your little ones be mad at the virus, attempt to control it. Maybe Elsa casts a spell so that it freezes in its tracks. Maybe Ryder and the pups go on a rescue mission to help those who are sick. Maybe you mix a COVID-19 cure potion involving food coloring, glitter, and whatever else.

Put your phone away for set periods of time. Our kids sense, and feel uneasy, when we are distracted. Mumbling "Mmmmhmmm" as your child tells a story, while you simultaneously scroll and swipe, is not helpful. Being intentional and clear about your phone use is. "I am going to play with you right now, so I'm putting my phone on the shelf"; and "I am going to take a few minutes to check my phone right now, so I won't be able to play for a bit."

Structure and routines are your friends. Even more than usual, and particularly as daily life looks less and less familiar. The world may feel chaotic and unpredictable, but your home doesn't have to. Consider making a daily schedule and hanging it up for all to see (use pictures if your kids can't read yet).

Validate feelings of anger and disappointment. It stinks that you had to cancel your spring break travel plans. Or your sleepover party. Or your school play. It's OK to cry, hit the couch, even yell for a bit. Spending time at your local park as opposed to Disney World is not, in fact, a "super fun adventure." Your kids are little, not stupid.

Simultaneously, model reframing and looking on the bright side. Maybe there's a lot more family time now that both parents are working from home. Or maybe your child can finally do that epic art project he's been thinking about. Or maybe he can take on a new job or chore, now that the whole family needs to pitch in, and you can emphasize what a "big kid" he's become.

Emphasize agency. Your family is not just sitting around at home passively waiting for forces out of your control to take shape as they will. No! Frame what you are doing, what we all need to do, as a set of actions. Your family is doing its part by helping to stop the virus, exercising agency by washing hands so thoroughly, working together as superheroes spreading health and safety around the world.

Answer questions with factual knowledge. Then stop. If your children have questions about the virus, answer them honestly. Then stop talking. If they have follow-up questions, they'll ask. And then you can answer again.

If your child asks the same question again and again, point that out. "But are we going to get it?" "Wait, are we going to get it?" "Are Grandma and Grandpa going to get it?" If your child continues to ask the same question, or very similar ones, then he or she is likely reassurance-seeking, which is a sign of anxiety. It's okay to acknowledge that: "Sometimes when we are worried, we ask the same question over and over. The worry fools us into thinking that will help, but it actually doesn't."

Then provide helpful, calming strategies. What does help when we're worried is getting into our bodies ("Let's do some jumping jacks!"), or doing some deep breathing ("Smell the cookies as they come out of the oven, now blow on them since they're too hot to eat"). You know what makes worry get even bigger? Worrying about the worry! ("And then worrying about the worrying about the worry!" your child may say, and suddenly you're in a playful interaction and things don't feel quite as bad anymore.)

It's OK to say "I don't know," or "I have to think about it." Our little ones need us to project a calm, clear confidence. This is not synonymous with knowing all of the answers. Pause. Think. Look something up. Ask a parent friend how they might respond.

Move your body. Jump. Dance. Stretch. Family dance party. The mind-body connection is real. When we feel grounded in our bodies, our emotional state often improves as well.

Focus on community, both local and global. Talk out loud about how you are going to check in on your elderly neighbors to make sure they have all they need. Mention that right now everyone in the world is working together to solve this problem. Guess how many people on your street are washing their hands at the exact same time you are. Your family is not alone in handling these challenges; you are part of a greater whole.

Let your little ones play "Baby." One common way that little kids ask for extra comfort and nurturing is by playing baby, either directly ("Let's pretend I'm your baby") or indirectly (e.g., speaking in baby talk). Don't shut this down right away; rather, play along. "Oh, my little sweet baby, yes, let me pick you up and give you snuggles." Don't you kind of wish you could play baby right about now, too?

Expect regressions. When children have to adjust to a completely new routine, or are sensing anxiety around them, their developing brains can't always handle that shift on top of everything else; internal resources get allocated to the new task at hand, and something else goes. Your potty-trained toddler may start having accidents, or your self-assured kindergartner might start showing some clinginess. That's okay, and to be expected.

Take care of yourself. The number one thing children need to stay calm during difficult times is a parent (or caregiver) who stays calm during difficult times. If you are feeling panicked or overwhelmed, do what you can to regulate yourself before attempting to calm your child. If your attempts to soothe your child are out of sync with your worried demeanor and energy, your child will notice, and this will be even more distressing for them. You're better off being honest than faking it: "I am feeling a bit worried myself right now, and so I am going to take a few deep breaths before answering your questions. Do you want to come sit next to me and we'll take them together?"

Reach out for professional support if needed. As always, if you are worried about, or even just confused by, something your child is doing or saying, please don't hesitate to reach out to a child mental health professional for guidance. We are in uncharted territory, and you don't have to go it alone.

Facebook image: TijanaM/Shutterstock

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My almost-6-year-old marched down the stairs a couple of days ago holding his baby doll. "My baby has coronavirus," he told me. Then he spiked the (luckily rubber) doll like a football. "So I'm gonna do that to him!"

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English Learner Family Engagement During Coronavirus - copied from from EL column

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English Learner Family Engagement During Coronavirus - copied from from EL column

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playlists on Youtube that are organized by subject, grade level, and language (English or Spanish), Parent Toolkit and much more!!

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Keep Moving (K-5)

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Dr. Mary McConnell interview with Dr. Brett Coffman

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Teachable Moments for Parents and Grandparents during Coronavirus with Dr. Mary McConnell by KCRPDC

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Teachable Moments for Parents and Grandparents during Coronavirus with Dr. Mary McConnell by KCRPDC

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Dr. McConnell gives us seven tips to create a positive and healthy atmosphere at home for your children during the Coronavirus.

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Edutopia Resource

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from the American Society for Nutrition

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There is little doubt that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting every aspect of our lives—from virtual classrooms to telecommuting to early restaurant closing times to outright quarantines. Observing public health measures and reducing exposure to the virus are required to slow the spread of this disease. No one knows how long these virus safety measures will need to stay in place, but it presents a perfect time to protect and improve your health while practicing social distancing. Healthy eating is especially important for keeping your immune system in top condition. Here are some steps you can take to eat healthy in the times of COVID.

*American Society for Nutrition members Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, PhD, RD, FAND, Kaitlyn Eck, PhD, RD, and Jaclyn Maurer Abbot, PhD, RD have contributed their advice for staying healthy during this time.

3 Steps you can take to stay healthy during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

1. Minimize trips to the supermarket during the pandemic and eat healthy.

Before you shop for Coronavirus preparations…

Plan ahead. Visualize breakfast, lunch, and dinner for at least 5 days. What will you serve? What do you need? Consider the foods your family likes, your food preparation methods, interests and skills, and the time and energy you will have for preparing meals. Working from home may not mean there is more time to cook—especially if you are now responsible for teaching your kids and doing the work your employer expects.

Have children at home? Include children in meal planning, preparation, and clean up while teaching them writing, math, reading, and science.

Reading/Writing: Ask your kids to make a list of what’s in the pantry and refrigerator. Then, have them look through cookbooks or online recipes sites to find meals and snacks that use up what is on hand.  Have them share their breakfast, lunch, or dinner meal ideas.

Math: Find math in measuring spoons and cups, counting out numbers of ingredients, taking stock of pantry items, or planning the time it will take to prepare, cook, eat, and clean up a meal.

Science: Get kids involved in baking bread, cooking an egg, or creating a homemade salad dressing—then, search the internet to discover the science behind why ingredients change when they are combined, heated, or blended

Think nutrition. The healthiest meals emphasize whole grains, vegetables, and fruits—serve them in the greatest amounts.  Meat portions should be smaller—this will save money and help keep dietary saturated fat in check.

Make a shopping list—and use it!  You’ll be less like to forget items or buy impulse items.

Stock up on nutrition-packed foods that will stay fresh for a week or longer.

Breads—corn tortillas, whole grain English muffins, bagels, breads, wraps, frozen whole wheat waffles

Grains—instant oatmeal, quick cooking pasta, frozen brown rice, couscous, refrigerated pizza crust

Fruits—sturdy fresh fruit (apples, citrus), dried, plain frozen, canned in juice or water

Vegetables—sturdy fresh veggies (celery, broccoli, onions, potatoes), plain frozen, low sodium canned, sun-dried

Sauces—tomato pasta sauce, salsa

Soups & Broths—canned, frozen, shelf-stable cartons

100% Juice—refrigerated, frozen, canned, boxed

Milk—fresh, canned, shelf-stable packages

Eggs—fresh eggs, egg whites in cartons

Cheese—sliced, cubed, shredded, crumbled, grated hard cheese

Beans/Legumes—canned beans (black beans, chickpeas), dry beans

Nuts and seeds—bagged, canned, nut butters

Chicken—frozen or canned

Seafood—frozen ready-to-cook fish fillets, frozen shrimp, canned tuna, salmon, and sardines

Beef—pre-made frozen lean ground patties or meatballs

Flavorings—add zing with dried herbs & spices, vinegars, mustard, hot/steak sauces, lemon/lime juice, light dressings, honey, Greek yogurt

Go easy on the frozen dinners—most are high in sodium, fat, and calories.

Limit purchases of tempting foods like chips, sodas, cookies, and ice cream. They are high in empty calories and run up your grocery bill.

Keep costs down—consider low cost alternatives. Instead of buying ready-made hummus, pureed a drained can of chickpeas to make your own. Try a meatless meal, like chili with beans instead of beef. If fresh fruits and veggies are too costly—remember, canned and frozen fruits and vegetables provide the same nutrients as fresh. Best bets are plain frozen veggies and fruits. Go for low sodium canned veggies and fruits canned in juice or water—if these are in short supply, buy regular canned fruits and veggies—drain and rinse before use.

Think about friends and neighbors, especially older adults or those with health conditions. Could you save them a trip to the grocery store?

Try online shopping—it will save you time and let you keep your social distance. Be sure to play ahead, many stores need a day or two from order to delivery or pickup.

While at the supermarket during the Coronavirus pandemic…

Use a disinfecting wipe—wipe your hands and grocery cart handle, then put the wipe in the trash.

Prepared for the unexpected—supermarkets are running low on many items. Be sure to take your own bags. Be ready with a back-up plan if an ingredient you need is unavailable.

Keep the less fortunate in mind—contribute to local pantries and soup kitchens now. Then, when it is all over—donate extra food you stocked up on that is still fresh and safe to eat.

Use contactless payment or credit cards. If you use the payment keypad, tap the buttons and screen with your knuckle—then use hand sanitizer after completing your payment.

2. Eat out safely during the Coronavirus pandemic with restaurant curfews

If you want to have take-out meals, take the food home right away and eat it while it is hot. Store leftovers safely—wrap tightly and refrigerate any dishes with meat, fish, poultry, or dairy products—be sure to reheat these leftovers thoroughly before eating.

Make eating together at home a positive experience

Whether it is homemade or takeout, eating more meals at home is a new routine for many families. Keep the stress down by making mealtime fun.

Get the family involved—kids can help set the table, pour the water, make the salad, or grate the cheese. Make mealtimes a family affair.

Try some new recipes—if you have never made homemade pizza, roasted a whole chicken, or cooked meatballs from scratch—now is a good time to try!  There are lots of great recipes on the internet! Look for those that call for only a few ingredients and use common kitchen tools.

Reconnect with the family—eat together at the table or spread a blanket on the floor and have an indoor picnic. Be sure to separate mealtime and TV time—watching while eating makes it too easy to pay attention to TV and not your food, so you are likely to overeat. Wonder what to talk about at mealtime? Chat about things you will do this summer, tell jokes—just keep the conversation upbeat and fun.

3. Think Positive! Mindset is vital to getting through this pandemic physically and mentally healthy.

Practice positive stress management strategies. Walk the dog, call a friend, soak in the tub, or cuddle your kids. Skip the alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.

Stick with your routine as much as you can. Go to bed and get up in the morning on your usual schedule. Eat meals at regular times. Find ways to exercise away from the gym—do yoga in the living room, trim the hedge, have a scavenger hunt in the backyard with your kids, or just toss a ball or play tag as a family.

Manage boredom. Stay busy and engaged—resist hanging around the fridge or mindlessly watching TV. Enjoy your hobbies, read, cook, make videos with your kids, start a scrapbook, help your kids with their virtual schoolwork, and stay in touch with family, friends, and colleagues.

When you do go out, wash your hands before you leave home and as soon as you return.

Have a dry cough? Feeling feverish?  Hard time breathing? Don’t hesitate to reach out to your health care provider for further instructions.

We are all in facing this together. Let’s make the most of it to come out stronger and wiser and ready to enjoy all the wonderful times to come!

Related Content:

After the publication of this article, contributor Jaclyn Abbot, PhD, RD, participated in a related interview with CNN’s New Day Weekend broadcast on Sunday, March 22. Read the transcript of the segment here.

*Written by American Society for Nutrition members:
Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, PhD, RD, FAND, Kaitlyn Eck, PhD, RD, and Jaclyn Maurer Abbot, PhD, RD
Nutritional Sciences Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

*ASN Member Contributor

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March 18, 2020 by *ASN Member Contributor

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Making Health and Nutrition a Priority During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

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There is little doubt that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting every aspect of our lives—from virtual classrooms to telecommuting Read More

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WeAreTeachers

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It's no surprise that authors are incredibly good at bringing their own books to life. Whether through live or pre-recorded visits, read-aloud videos, or other virtual author activities, kids will connect with books like never before! Here are some of our favorite options to try.

Pre-Recorded Virtual Author Visits

Check out these videos of presentations authors have given at schools and libraries. There are authors here that will interest students at any age.

Arree Chung

Hear Chung talk about the process of creating his book Mixed: A Colorful Story. The allegory of one color who thinks it's better than the others is meaningful at any age.

Bao Phi

Bao Phi's lovely book A Different Pond showcases the relationship between a father and his son. As they fish for the food their family needs, the father tells his son about a pond from his own childhood in faraway Vietnam.

Jasmine Warga

Author of the Newbery Honor book Other Words for Home, Jasmine Warga gives an engaging talk about how she writes.

Jennifer L. Holm

From her Babymouse graphic novels to the Sunny series and beyond, Holm writes books that middle grade readers absolutely love.

J.H. Reynolds

Do your students love the thrills and chills of the MonsterStreet series? Then they'll love seeing its author answer kids' questions about reading and writing!

J.K. Rowling

Every kid will recognize the author of the beloved Harry Potter books! See her interview with the Harry Potter Reading Club in this video.

Kate Messner

Kate Messner writes fiction, nonfiction, novels, chapter books, and picture books, so there's a good chance most kids have read at least one of her books.

Katherine Applegate

Lots of kids read The One and Only Ivan in class, and Applegate has plenty of other popular and award-winning books as well. Hear her talk about her books (and even show off her adorable dog!).

Lois Lowry

Here's another name kids will recognize. Whether they love The Giver, the Gooney Bird series, or any of her other numerous works, they'll enjoy listening to her speak and answer audience questions.

Max Brallier

The Last Kids on Earth book series is now a Netflix series too! Listen to author Max Brallier talk about his writing process and give kids a writing challenge of their own.

Live Virtual Author Visits

Want to set up a virtual author visit live for your class or school? If you have a particular author in mind, visit their website (or their publisher's) to contact them and find out if they do virtual visits. Scholastic offers virtual author visits through their catalog, so that's a great place to start.

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators has a terrific roundup of virtual author visits and writing workshops too. Here are some to consider.

Gutman has written all sorts of books for kids, and he's happy to do virtual school visits. Find his offerings and prices at his website.

Nonfiction children's author Kurtz loves to present his books to kids of all ages. His virtual offerings include readings, interviews, and concept-based workshops.

Long does both in-person and virtual author visits based on her popular books, like How I Became a Pirate. Visit her website to see her offerings and book a visit.

Biebow's colorful book about the inventor of Crayola crayons is a delight. She offers free virtual visits, plus interactive in-person workshops.

Known for Dahlia in Bloom, Koehler offers both virtual author visits and writing workshops. She does professional development workshops for teachers too.

Virtual Author Read-Alouds

When you hear authors read their own books, it gives you a whole new perspective on their works. That makes read-alouds some of our favorite virtual author activities.

Hale's YouTube channel includes a playlist called Storytime With Uncle Bruce. Hear him read about Clark the Shark and other hilarious characters.

Gutman has a whole collection of read-alouds on his Facebook page, like Miss Blake Is a Flake. Kids will love his wacky style!

Visit her YouTube channel to see the author read her book Where Are My Books? She's got a few other read-alouds too, along with drawing tips.

Fabien Cousteau is the grandson of famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau. His book series explores his own experiences under the water, and you can watch his read-aloud on Facebook.

You'll feel inspired when you hear Byers read her heartfelt book I Am Enough.

Lin reads aloud from her picture books as well as chapters from her longer books on her YouTube channel.

Watch Knowles read the first chapter of her middle-grade novel Where the Heart Is, while giving students a fun writing exercise.

Hear Cook read a variety of books from her collection, like Wilma Jean the Worry Machine. Her YouTube channel also includes interviews, advice, and other fun virtual author activities.

Watch Messner read Fergus and Zeke and the 100th Day of School in this YouTube video.

This read-aloud of Fry Bread includes some of the author's thoughts on writing the book and the recipe he included at the end.

Listen to Henderson read the first chapter of her book The Magic in Changing Your Stars on YouTube.

The author regularly shares read-alouds of his books, like I Love You Like a Pig, on his Instagram page.

The author has added a collection of videos of herself reading from her picture books on Instagram. Titles include When We Are Kind and You Hold Me Up.

Hear readings from Shusterman's books on his YouTube channel, including excerpts and complete short stories.

The author created a Stay at Home: Story Time section on his website. Initially made during the 2020 COVID lockdown, these videos are still lots of fun to watch.

Visit Reynolds' Facebook page to see him read from some of his most popular books, like The Dot.

The award-winning author and illustrator reads from her book The Story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in this YouTube video.

The author reads his picture books on his YouTube channel, where he also has lots of drawing videos for inspiration.

Other Virtual Author Activities

So many wonderful authors and publishers have YouTube or Instagram channels! Join them as they teach you how to draw, offer writing tips, and lots more.

Kids will do more than just watch these videos. They'll write, draw, and create on their own, inspired by famous authors and illustrators.

Watch story time, Cressida Cowell's summer camp, author interviews, how-to-draw videos, and a whole lot more.

The prolific author has a robust website full of videos, activities, podcasts, and more virtual author activities to engage kids of a variety of ages.

The Lunch Lady author and illustrator has a series of videos showing kids how to draw some of their favorite characters. His YouTube channel also has cartooning tips, writing tips, pep talks, and shorts.

This YouTube channel is rich with content, including interviews, tour journals, how-to-draw tips, and so much more.

The Kennedy Center sponsored this series of videos with the beloved author of classics like Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Author and illustrator of hits like Smile and Drama shares drawings, time-lapse videos, and more on her Instagram page.

Aspiring illustrators will enjoy this series, where any kid can learn to draw creatures of every kind.

These half-hour chats with well-known middle grade authors are the perfect length to share with your classes.

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The Big List of Virtual Author Activities

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Check out live and pre-recorded author visits, read-alouds, and other virtual author activities like drawing sessions to share with students.

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WeAreTeachers

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It's no surprise that authors are incredibly good at bringing their own books to life. Whether through live or pre-recorded visits, read-aloud videos, or other virtual author activities, kids will connect with books like never before! Here are some of our favorite options to try.

Pre-Recorded Virtual Author Visits

Check out these videos of presentations authors have given at schools and libraries. There are authors here that will interest students at any age.

Arree Chung

Hear Chung talk about the process of creating his book Mixed: A Colorful Story. The allegory of one color who thinks it's better than the others is meaningful at any age.

Bao Phi

Bao Phi's lovely book A Different Pond showcases the relationship between a father and his son. As they fish for the food their family needs, the father tells his son about a pond from his own childhood in faraway Vietnam.

Jasmine Warga

Author of the Newbery Honor book Other Words for Home, Jasmine Warga gives an engaging talk about how she writes.

Jennifer L. Holm

From her Babymouse graphic novels to the Sunny series and beyond, Holm writes books that middle grade readers absolutely love.

J.H. Reynolds

Do your students love the thrills and chills of the MonsterStreet series? Then they'll love seeing its author answer kids' questions about reading and writing!

J.K. Rowling

Every kid will recognize the author of the beloved Harry Potter books! See her interview with the Harry Potter Reading Club in this video.

Kate Messner

Kate Messner writes fiction, nonfiction, novels, chapter books, and picture books, so there's a good chance most kids have read at least one of her books.

Katherine Applegate

Lots of kids read The One and Only Ivan in class, and Applegate has plenty of other popular and award-winning books as well. Hear her talk about her books (and even show off her adorable dog!).

Lois Lowry

Here's another name kids will recognize. Whether they love The Giver, the Gooney Bird series, or any of her other numerous works, they'll enjoy listening to her speak and answer audience questions.

Max Brallier

The Last Kids on Earth book series is now a Netflix series too! Listen to author Max Brallier talk about his writing process and give kids a writing challenge of their own.

Live Virtual Author Visits

Want to set up a virtual author visit live for your class or school? If you have a particular author in mind, visit their website (or their publisher's) to contact them and find out if they do virtual visits. Scholastic offers virtual author visits through their catalog, so that's a great place to start.

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators has a terrific roundup of virtual author visits and writing workshops too. Here are some to consider.

Gutman has written all sorts of books for kids, and he's happy to do virtual school visits. Find his offerings and prices at his website.

Nonfiction children's author Kurtz loves to present his books to kids of all ages. His virtual offerings include readings, interviews, and concept-based workshops.

Long does both in-person and virtual author visits based on her popular books, like How I Became a Pirate. Visit her website to see her offerings and book a visit.

Biebow's colorful book about the inventor of Crayola crayons is a delight. She offers free virtual visits, plus interactive in-person workshops.

Known for Dahlia in Bloom, Koehler offers both virtual author visits and writing workshops. She does professional development workshops for teachers too.

Virtual Author Read-Alouds

When you hear authors read their own books, it gives you a whole new perspective on their works. That makes read-alouds some of our favorite virtual author activities.

Hale's YouTube channel includes a playlist called Storytime With Uncle Bruce. Hear him read about Clark the Shark and other hilarious characters.

Gutman has a whole collection of read-alouds on his Facebook page, like Miss Blake Is a Flake. Kids will love his wacky style!

Visit her YouTube channel to see the author read her book Where Are My Books? She's got a few other read-alouds too, along with drawing tips.

Fabien Cousteau is the grandson of famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau. His book series explores his own experiences under the water, and you can watch his read-aloud on Facebook.

You'll feel inspired when you hear Byers read her heartfelt book I Am Enough.

Lin reads aloud from her picture books as well as chapters from her longer books on her YouTube channel.

Watch Knowles read the first chapter of her middle-grade novel Where the Heart Is, while giving students a fun writing exercise.

Hear Cook read a variety of books from her collection, like Wilma Jean the Worry Machine. Her YouTube channel also includes interviews, advice, and other fun virtual author activities.

Watch Messner read Fergus and Zeke and the 100th Day of School in this YouTube video.

This read-aloud of Fry Bread includes some of the author's thoughts on writing the book and the recipe he included at the end.

Listen to Henderson read the first chapter of her book The Magic in Changing Your Stars on YouTube.

The author regularly shares read-alouds of his books, like I Love You Like a Pig, on his Instagram page.

The author has added a collection of videos of herself reading from her picture books on Instagram. Titles include When We Are Kind and You Hold Me Up.

Hear readings from Shusterman's books on his YouTube channel, including excerpts and complete short stories.

The author created a Stay at Home: Story Time section on his website. Initially made during the 2020 COVID lockdown, these videos are still lots of fun to watch.

Visit Reynolds' Facebook page to see him read from some of his most popular books, like The Dot.

The award-winning author and illustrator reads from her book The Story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in this YouTube video.

The author reads his picture books on his YouTube channel, where he also has lots of drawing videos for inspiration.

Other Virtual Author Activities

So many wonderful authors and publishers have YouTube or Instagram channels! Join them as they teach you how to draw, offer writing tips, and lots more.

Kids will do more than just watch these videos. They'll write, draw, and create on their own, inspired by famous authors and illustrators.

Watch story time, Cressida Cowell's summer camp, author interviews, how-to-draw videos, and a whole lot more.

The prolific author has a robust website full of videos, activities, podcasts, and more virtual author activities to engage kids of a variety of ages.

The Lunch Lady author and illustrator has a series of videos showing kids how to draw some of their favorite characters. His YouTube channel also has cartooning tips, writing tips, pep talks, and shorts.

This YouTube channel is rich with content, including interviews, tour journals, how-to-draw tips, and so much more.

The Kennedy Center sponsored this series of videos with the beloved author of classics like Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Author and illustrator of hits like Smile and Drama shares drawings, time-lapse videos, and more on her Instagram page.

Aspiring illustrators will enjoy this series, where any kid can learn to draw creatures of every kind.

These half-hour chats with well-known middle grade authors are the perfect length to share with your classes.

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The Big List of Virtual Author Activities

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Check out live and pre-recorded author visits, read-alouds, and other virtual author activities like drawing sessions to share with students.

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online math workshop

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My six-week online workshop for math educators will give educators an actionable and intuitive plan for how to help students become better problem solvers who make sense of mathematics.

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Corwin Resources

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Welcome to Corwin's Resources for Teaching Online! As many schools and districts are rapidly transitioning to online learning in response to COVID-19, this toolkit will provide you with the resources you need to adapt and provide exceptional online instruction for your students.

It's important to remember to stay calm and to maintain as much normalcy with your students as possible. They take their cues from you! As you'll see in this guide, many of our best practices for teaching and learning can easily be adapted for online learning. You do not need to start from scratch!

Stay Connected With Corwin!

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Instructional Best Practices for Online Learning

Good news! Our best practices of face-to-face teaching still apply when teaching online. We do not have to start from scratch. The resources linked below will help you think through your current classroom practice and how it might best translate to online teaching.

Quick Tips

During online lessons, maintain a balance between instructional time and student practice. Consider allowing online class time for students to complete work that you would normally assign for homework. Remember that students will be learning on a screen all day, so we want to mitigate the amount of time they have to spend online after school hours.

Encourage students to keep a physical planner to keep track of assignments and class schedules. During online learning, students are getting a lot of input with instruction and assignments posted online for all of their classes. This has the potential to be information overload. Writing down key information in their planners will force them to process and prioritize the tasks at hand.

Utilize the Learning Management System your school already has to post instructional content, the learning calendar, and assignments. There is no need to reinvent the wheel!

Resources
Setting Up Your Digital Classroom Designing Remote Learning Experiences Instructional Tools & Best Practices Back to top ↑
Assessment in Online Learning

There are some new factors you may have to consider as you plan assessment for online learning, such as students' access to the internet and learning resources. However, these factors shouldn't have a huge effect on how we measure learning if we are employing best practices in assessment.

Students will have all of their learning resources at their fingertips, and we should embrace this instead of attempt to control or limit access for the sake of assessment. Instead, design assessments that measure higher level thinking and students' ability to transfer their learning - not the ability to recall basic facts they can easily look up online or in the instructional resources.

Use online tools to collect students' self-assessment throughout each unit. Because you aren't meeting with students face to face, this feedback will be crucial in your formative assessment process.

Make the most of your Learning Management System by designing assessments within the program and asking for students to share all deliverables through that system.

Resources
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Student Engagement in Online Learning

How do we get a sense of student engagement and learning when we aren't spending time with students face-to-face? This set of resources will help you plan to promote and assess student engagement throughout the online learning journey.

Quick Tips

Use online polls (like Poll Everywhere) to encourage thinking and participation during an online lesson

Engage students by asking good questions that prompt higher level thinking. Higher level thinking is crucial in online learning! Students will have the internet and all their resources at their fingertips. How can we design instruction and assessment that makes use of their access to those resources, and how can we ask questions in a way that promotes engagement and critical thinking skills?

If you are posting short instructional videos instead of hosting live online class sessions, consider asking quick questions in each video (with a specific time students must respond by) to ensure student participation. If a student doesn't send in a response, make a note to touch base with that student - this is a good opportunity to make sure all students have access to the online classroom environment.

Resources
Lean on Self-Assessment to Get Students Engaged in Their Own Learning Ask Questions that Will Engage Students in the Learning Take Brain Breaks!

Here are just a few Energizing Brain Breaks you can do with students during an online class to get them moving and refreshed.
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Feedback in Online Learning

Providing students with ongoing, individualized feedback can actually be easier and more effective when using online tools! Here are some resources to help you design feedback cycles for online learning.

Quick Tips

Schedule miniconferences with individual students throughout each week. Use the self-assessment tools (linked in Student Engagement tab) to help students communicate where they think they are at in the learning journey. Their self-assessment will help guide you to give them appropriate and needed feedback.

Send students your plan for online feedback. When can they expect to touch base? What will you be providing feedback on each week? What are the ways you'll be providing feedback?

Resources
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Family Communication and Engagement in Online Learning

Your students' families will likely have a lot of questions about the online learning environment! The resources below will help you keep families in the loop and communicate important ways they can support their children's learning.

Quick Tips

Be proactive! If you get word that your school will be moving to online learning, send an update to your students' families as soon as possible. Use this email template to get started.

Let parents know how they should contact you. You may want all parent communication to come through your LMS or another platform so that internal communications and updates about your school closure are not lost in your email inbox.

Set a threshold grade that will determine when you should make additional contact with a student's family (i.e. if a student is currently receiving a grade under a B, I will make a call home)

Resources
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Connecting With Other Teachers Online

Finally, it's important to remember that YOU ARE NOT ALONE during this time! You can find new resources and support from fellow teachers online with the following resources:
Twitter/Social Media Hashtags Facebook Groups Back to top ↑
Further Reading

If you'd like to read more, here are links to all of the books referenced in this guide:
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Stay Connected as We Update This Page!

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Free online resources for school teachers responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Find support and best practices for online teaching and learning, setting up your digital classroom, how to flip the learning, how to assess in online learning, how to keep students engaged, provide feedback in an online environment, resources for communicating with families, and more.

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how to navigate as a teacher

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Sponsored by World101 and Listenwise

Disclaimer 1: This post was written in the Spring of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, so a lot of the information here is discussed through the lens of distance learning launched by a global pandemic. I have attempted to broaden the lens beyond our current situation to take other distance-learning situations into account.

Disclaimer 2: I recommend quite a few tech tools in this post. Before you proceed with them, please check with your district to make sure the tools comply with your specific use policies for age, privacy, etc.

If you've found yourself teaching in a distance-learning situation, especially if it's been foisted upon you by circumstance, you'll discover pretty quickly that distance learning offers different challenges from face-to-face instruction. And if you look online, you'll find tons of ideas and resources that can help you tackle those challenges, so much that it's easy to get paralyzed at the volume of it all. This is especially true if you're expected to hit the ground running with very little notice.

To help you, I'm going to take my best shot at sharing clear, carefully curated information on distance learning. We'll do this in four parts:

In Part 1 I'll address your head and your heart, the very real, valid emotional and psychological factors that may be preventing you from doing a decent job with online learning.

In Part 2 we'll get into the nuts and bolts of distance learning, options for content delivery, different ways students can demonstrate learning, and some of the tech that can make it all work.

In Part 3 I'll share some general tips and advice I've gathered from teachers in the field.

And in Part 4 we'll talk about troubleshooting, solving some of the more specific problems that come up often when we talk about online learning.

PART 1: START WITH YOUR HEAD AND YOUR HEART

None of the practical stuff is going to do any of us much good if we're in a distracted, panicked headspace and haven't tended to the ways our current situation has impacted our emotions. Here are three things you can do to get your head and heart in a better place.

Get Perspective

There will likely be times when the people in charge of you start to expect too much, or you expect too much of yourself. If you're in a situation like the one we happen to be in right now, in the spring of 2020, you may need to regularly step back from what's right in front of you and remember that we're dealing with life and death circumstances right now. None of this is normal, and there really is no precedent to follow. Most people are doing the best they can on any given day, and that means things will not go smoothly. And by "people," I mean everyone: students, parents, your colleagues, your administration, your family members, and you. YOU. Giving yourself plenty of grace is key at times like this.

If you need something to help you regain perspective and cut yourself some slack, read Carolyn Todd's editorial, Is Anyone Else Just Barely Functioning Right Now?

Now if you personally have a cool, level head at the moment, but someone else is pressuring you to do more, keep in mind that they are feeling their own unique pressure to perform, and they're passing that on to you. It may be an opportunity to validate their feelings, or it may be time to push back on expectations that are simply unreasonable.

Get Physical

When things start to feel like too much, start moving. Decades of research has pointed to the link between physical activity and brain function, but most of us don't need research to know that some of our best ideas come to us when we change things up and go for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. This is especially important during times when we are more likely to be cooped up in our homes, such as, say, a quarantine imposed by a global pandemic.

Get with Other People

One of the things that has really overwhelmed me in the process of putting this post together is knowing that everyone's situation is a little different and not having the tools to address each situation.

One way to alleviate this is to get in touch with others who are more familiar with your specific needs. Apart from collaborating with your colleagues, a great way to share ideas is to find and join online groups. Two I'm recommending here are on Facebook. If you're not on Facebook, I strongly suggest you set up an account just for the purpose of collaborating with others.

Dealing with Educational Inequities in Distance/Online Learning: This group was created "in response to the growing list of resources and practices during the COVID-19 shutdown that further increase the educational divide as it relates to accessibility; race; socio-economic status; gender; and other marginalized communities. We want to demonstrate real solutions in distance/online learning that can provide solutions for all learners."

PART 2: THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF ONLINE LEARNING

Online learning has so many components to it; each one could honestly get its own whole blog post. Since I can't go too in-depth all at once, I'll just do an overview of all the pieces and link out to a few resources that can help you learn more about each one.

1. CONNECTING AND COMMUNICATING WITH STUDENTS

It's essential that you have clear, consistent, accessible channels for communicating with your students. Different pathways for communication will need to be established. The first two are essential and asynchronous, meaning participants can access the conversation whenever it's convenient; they don't need to be present at the same time. The third pathway is optional and is usually synchronous, meaning participants must "attend" the conversation at the same time.

Must Have: Outgoing Communication asynchronous On this pathway, you give instructions, post announcements, and generally inform your students about what's going on and what's expected of them. Some teachers are creating daily or weekly videos for this purpose, while others are writing out instructions in places like Google Docs, and others are doubling up-pairing short videos with written instructions so students get the information through different modes.

It seems like one of the most important considerations with outgoing communication is that you keep it consistent: Pick one place to deliver and store outgoing messages and stick with that, so students know where to look, nothing gets lost in the mix, and no one gets overwhelmed with information overload.

Must Have: Incoming Communication asynchronous This pathway is for students and parents to reach out to you with questions, feedback, and updates on their ability to complete required work.

Nice to Have: Two-Way Communication
synchronous OR asynchronous On this pathway, you and your students can communicate back and forth in a more open dialogue, where you broadcast yourself live and students attend as participants in one-on-one, small-group, or whole-class sessions.

Video conferencing: For this pathway, many teachers are using video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet, and Microsoft Teams. These can be great for community-building and giving students a sense of connectedness with you and each other.

It's important to note that these platforms also have their pitfalls, one of which is that they may directly violate your school's privacy policies, so be sure to check with the people in your district who are in charge of compliance with those policies to make sure you're ok. This article from Edsurge does a good job of explaining the potential problems with video conferencing; it focuses specifically on Zoom, but the concepts would apply to any video conferencing tool.

This infographic, created by the Celina High School SWAT Team in Celina, TX, and their advisor, Tisha Poncio, offers tips for students when participating in video conferences:

Alternatives to Video Conferencing: If you've decided not to go the video conferencing route for now, you can still set up text-based discussions that can get students interacting:

Discussion boards: Many platforms, like Google Classroom, Blackboard, Edmodo, and Microsoft Teams, give you the option to set up ongoing, text-based discussions on individual topics. You can make these optional, open for students to ask questions on their work, or make participation a required part of students' grades.

Backchannel discussion: If you'd like something that feels more dynamic and "live," try a backchannel discussion, which can happen at a set time (synchronous) or stay open for a longer period of time to allow students to participate when it's convenient for them (asynchronous). You can open up a text-based chat room in YoTeach (which is very similar to the now-defunct TodaysMeet). If your students are 13 years or older, you could also set them up on Voxer, which allows them to use voice or text to carry on discussions.

2. KEEPING EVERYTHING ORGANIZED

Ideally, you and your colleagues will have chosen a single platform for storing and delivering assignments, collecting student work, posting announcements, and so on. Many schools are already set up on a learning management system (LMS) like Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, or Edmodo. If you don't already have something in place, and you don't have time to learn a new platform, it's probably not a good idea to jump into anything new.

But creating a central hub should be a priority. What parents and students are saying most often is that it's incredibly stressful to have to keep up with multiple platforms and multiple streams of information, with some pieces coming through email, others through Remind, others through an LMS, and so on. With more than one child at home and more than one teacher per child, things can get out of hand very fast. It's perfectly fine to use different tools as part of your instruction-you might assign Quizlet flashcards, Edpuzzle lessons, Newsela articles-but for communication, keep things as streamlined as possible.

One simple approach taken by some schools is to maintain a single document (usually a Google Doc) for the whole school. In that document are links to individual documents for each teacher.

This type of document-which is just a really simple hyperdoc -creates a central hub where parents and students can start every single time, then click over to the places where they can find updated information for their classes. Even if you don't use this specific model, setting up something like it will make your whole school run more smoothly.

Individual teachers can then replicate this type of hub for their own classes, creating a central folder or file where students can find daily or weekly assignments and other communications.

3. LESSON DESIGN

Entire degree programs have been created to show teachers how to design lessons for online learning, and I wasn't able to delve into this enough for this post. What I did find are two resources that you might find helpful without getting another master's degree:

One principle that I've seen in several discussions of online learning is the idea that it works better when you give students some choices, choices in how they take information in and choices in how they demonstrate learning. The next two sections will share some possibilities for both of those.

4. OPTIONS FOR DELIVERING CONTENT

One of the main things you need to do when setting up online instruction is figuring out how students are actually going to take in the content. You have a few options, and it's a good idea to not just stick to one avenue, since you ideally want to give students multiple modes of intake.

Readings

Google Docs or Microsoft Word Files: As long as you remember to manage the security settings on these so they can't be edited, these kinds of files are perfectly fine to use as reading materials.

Regular PDFs: One advantage of using PDFs is that you generally don't have to worry about them being altered by the student, and things like fonts and other design elements will be preserved no matter what device a student is using.

PDFs with Annotation Tools: Several tools like Edji and Kami allow users to annotate PDFs, which would make a great close-reading assignment.

Websites: There's a ton of outstanding free content online that would make excellent reading material for class assignments. On CommonLit, Newsela, and Actively Learn, you can find good reading material for many grade levels and subject areas. NewseumED offers fantastic primary sources for history and social studies.

Websites with Customized, Added Layers: With any website at all, you can use Insert Learning to layer on your own instructional content, such as notes, discussion questions, quizzes, and other embedded content.

Videos

Video is a very popular way to deliver content online, because it has the potential to restore the voice and visuals that are lost when we move away from face-to-face instruction. Once you have a good video, you can share it directly with a link or use a tool like Edpuzzle or PlayPosit to build a complete lesson around that video.

You have two options for sourcing your content: use videos that were created by someone else, or create the videos yourself.

Created by Someone Else
Obviously, the internet is absolutely loaded with videos, and using them means you don't have to make them yourself. What's challenging is finding videos that (a) are appropriate for student viewing, and (b) accurately represent the content you want to deliver, in a way that's succinct and maybe even entertaining. Finding videos that meet these criteria can be really time-consuming if you don't know where to look.

To save time, it helps to go to sources that have already proven themselves as creators of high-quality educational videos.

Khan Academy offers a massive library of videos on math, science, and arts & humanities, including history and government, so that would be a great place to start.

Look for YouTube channels created by organizations that already have a strong reputation for good content, like National Geographic, the History Channel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As with anything else, your colleagues are going to be one of your best sources for finding good stuff, so ask around at school, or find a group on Twitter that can recommend something for you.

Created by You The good thing about creating your own videos is that you have total control over the content. Probably the easiest way to create instructional videos is with screencasting software, which simply records whatever is on your screen while you narrate into a microphone. So you could, for example, create a PowerPoint-based lecture, then just deliver that lecture on your screen and use screencasting software to record it.

Here are two affordable, popular options for screencasting:

Screencastify
screencastify.com
This recorder is built right into Google Chrome, which makes it an incredibly convenient tool for creating on-the-spot screencasts. As of right now, the editing tools are still kind of rudimentary, which means you're not likely to end up with a very polished end product. Still, for many purposes, this tool gets the job done quickly and easily. Watch this video to learn how to use it.

Screencast-o-Matic
screencast-o-matic.com
This popular recorder is one that you download onto your computer, which is slightly less convenient than one that's built into a browser, but the editing features available with the paid plans might make it worth it for you. This video gives you an overview of how it works.

Static Slide Presentation

Slideshows that combine text with appealing visuals can be a nice alternative to text readings. They're also much quicker and easier to create than videos, and viewing them requires a lot less internet bandwidth.

These kinds of slideshows, which students would click through on their own, should ideally be designed with that independent experience in mind. Unlike a presentation that you give live, these would not be simply a support for a speaker; they'd need to stand completely alone, with all the necessary text on the slides, rather than in the speaker notes.

Rather than sharing these as a file, which would require you to adjust editing permissions and would likely result in the student looking at it in editing mode, you can share it in presentation mode so the slides take up the full screen and it feels more like an experience, like in this sample presentation. Learn how to set this up with a Google Slides presentation in the video below:

Audio

Content can also be delivered via audio, which can be a nice change of pace for students who are used to text or videos only, and because audio files are much smaller than video files, they're less likely to strain home internet capabilities.

Listenwise houses a fantastic library of curated, standards-aligned podcasts.

You can find lots of other podcasts on pretty much any topic imaginable. Here are some good ones that are produced specifically for student audiences.

Recording your own audio instructions, reflections, or lectures is simple and quick. You can use a voice recording app on a smartphone or a web-based tool like Online Voice Recorder to create MP3 files, which are just audio files, then upload those files right into whatever platform you're using to distribute information to students. In many cases, students will be able to play them right on that platform.

Interactive Learning Experiences

Some tools have come along in recent years that allow you to create interactive online learning modules, where students click through various instructional components, play games, take interactive quizzes, and so on. Although some activities may not justify the time it takes to put these interactives together, they can offer something different and more fun than the standard fare. You can find these on sites like GoConqr, Deck.Toys, BookWidgets, and Wizer. The one platform that seems to have the most robust collection of options is Genially. Take a look:

5. OPTIONS FOR DEMONSTRATING LEARNING

Just as there are many different ways to get the content into students' heads, you can also offer choices for how students demonstrate their learning. Probably the quickest, most traditional way to measure whether students learned the material is to give them some kind of test or quiz, but that may not be the best way to get students to experience the content in a deep way. Sticking only to tests also favors students who work well in that mode, rather than allowing other students to shine in areas they might be stronger in. Beyond all that, it's not much fun.

On Twitter, I asked teachers for some fresh ideas for "end products," and got tons of ideas back. Below I've listed some really good ones. Before you jump on these, be mindful that these end products still need to align with your instructional goals and are not what we call Grecian Urn assignments, creative-looking projects that don't ultimately have much instructional value.

Book: Students create a children's book, mini-textbook, handbook, comic, or other kind of book. These can be done on paper or created with apps like Book Creator.

Google Tour: Using Google Tour Builder, students can create customized tours that combine photos, text, and targeted locations on Google Earth. These could be used to create tours that explore current events, historical periods or phenomena, science or geography topics, global research topics, students' personal histories or future plans, or completely fictionalized stories that take place in various locations around the world.

Infographic: On paper or using a tool like Piktochart, have students create an infographic to represent or teach about an idea or set of data.

Lesson: Have students write their own lesson on a chunk of your content. Provide them with the basic structure of a lesson to follow, including objectives, direct instruction, guided practice, and some sort of assessment to measure their success.

Model: Students can create a physical model representing some aspect of your curriculum, then photograph it from various angles or create a video tour of the model with their own narration.

Museum or Multimedia Collection: Have students curate a collection of artifacts representing a curricular concept, along with their own written captions, in a Google Slides presentation. Two fantastic resources for gathering these artifacts are the Smithsonian Learning Lab and the Google Arts & Culture website.

Podcast: Have students use the recording tools mentioned in the "Audio" section above or an app like Anchor to record a podcast where they express an opinion, tell a story, or teach about a content-related topic. If students have a lot of material, they can break their podcast into multiple episodes and do a series instead.

Scavenger Hunt: Have students participate in a content-based scavenger hunt and take photos to record their findings. An app like GooseChase can make this even more fun.

Sketchnote: Have students create a sketchnote to represent a content-related topic using paper or with a drawing app like Sketchpad.

Video: Students can create their own videos as creative, informative, persuasive, or reflective pieces. These can be public service announcements, commercials, mini-documentaries, instructional videos, short feature films or animations, or TED-style talks. Tools for creating these can range from quick response platforms like Flipgrid, to screencasting tools listed in the previous section, a tool that creates stop motion videos like Stop Motion Studio, or simple online video creators like Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

Website: Using tools like Weebly, Wix, or Google Sites, have students develop a website to document a long-term project or teach about a particular idea.

PART 3: GENERAL TIPS AND ADVICE FROM TEACHERS

Begin again.

If distance learning has been introduced suddenly, where it takes the place of face-to-face learning rather than being the standard from the start, treat the beginning of the shift the same way you'd treat the beginning of a school year, by establishing routines and protocols before digging deeply into content, and giving extra energy to rekindling culture and relationships on the new platform even if they were already established in the face-to-face setting.

Keep home responsibilities in mind.

When schools are closed district-wide, all children are out of school and under one roof. This means older kids may be shouldering some responsibility for caring for their younger siblings, and that could impact how well they are able to keep up with deadlines, log in for synchronous events, or respond to communication in a timely manner. Letting students know up front that you get this, and maintaining flexibility with deadlines, can go a long way toward keeping lines of communication open and avoiding misunderstandings.

Make social interaction a priority.

When we are kept apart from one another for whatever reason, our need for human interaction increases. So if you're teaching a distance learning course that was set up that way to begin with, it's important to build in structures to keep students interacting with each other and with you.

This principle is even more vital in situations where distance learning is coupled with large-scale social isolation.

Some of the tools and systems I mentioned earlier, like video conferencing and discussion boards, can meet this need; even your own outgoing video, audio, and written communication can be used for more "human connection" reasons. A good general rule to keep in mind is that you don't need to use 100% of your time for instructional purposes; allowing space for regular conversation, venting, and laughter can be incredibly important.

Keep messaging to a minimum.

I mentioned this earlier, but it's important so I'm repeating it. If kids and parents are receiving multiple messages from multiple teachers every day, and families have multiple kids, they can become overwhelmed really quickly, and things will start slipping through the cracks.

Try to limit the number of platforms you and your school are using for distributing information. Ideally, you'll have one clear channel for sending out announcements and messages, and those will be limited in number. Parents and students will have one place to look for all important information, and that "place" will be clean, simple, easy to navigate, and updated regularly so that all users can count on the information being current. The closer you can get to this ideal, the more smoothly things will go.

PART 4: TROUBLESHOOTING

Two specific problems tend to come up more often than any others when it comes to distance learning. Although neither one is completely solvable, here are some of the ways schools are addressing them:

1. Students Who Do Not Have Home Access to Tech

The whole notion of distance learning becomes a problem if some of your students don't have devices or reliable internet access. Here are some ways to address this problem:

Get more students connected. In a 2017 post, When Your School is Short on Tech, I showcased some ways that schools are getting unconnected families online, including information on how some schools partner with organizations like Kajeet to loan WiFi hotspots out to families. Although some of the solutions may not be relevant to a distance-learning situation, you may find some resources that can be helpful in your community, even if they can't be implemented right away.

Offer non-digital options. Some districts are working around the problem by offering paper resources for pick-up and drop-off. This is how we did distance learning in all the years before the internet, so it's certainly possible to do it again.

Use the phone. If you've tried other avenues and still can't get a hold of some families, a regular phone call might be your best option. If you want to keep your number private, you can set up a Google Voice account, which allows you to call, text, or message another phone without sharing your personal number, or use some of these phone settings to block your regular number. If you are reaching out to families that don't speak your language, try the free TalkingPoints app, which allows you to communicate with them in their language.

Use the mail. Although not ideal or cheap, it may be possible to mail materials back and forth (if you have office staff still going to school each day, they may be able to help with this). Even if instruction isn't possible this way, consider the impact it would make if you took ten minutes to mail a hand-written letter to an otherwise unconnected student, just to let them know you're thinking about them.

Consider home visits as a last resort. This isn't out of the question. And if you're deeply concerned about reaching students who can't be reached in any other way, it may be possible to just drive to their neighborhoods and, maintaining all precautionary measures and social distancing, check in with them. One visit might be all that's needed to at least establish a phone connection that you can maintain from that point on.

2. Meeting Special Education, RTI, and Language Learning Needs

So many of our students have individual needs that we have figured out how to meet in a school setting. When school moves to a distance-learning model, both teachers and parents are often at a loss for how to continue working with students with IEPs, those who receive RTI support, English learners, and other students who get one-on-one time with educators specifically trained to meet their needs.

Since this one is really far out of my wheelhouse, I reached out on Twitter for help. Really, your best bet is to read the replies to see what might work for you. You'll not only get some good ideas, you're likely to connect with people you can reach out to for even more good ideas.

Apart from that, I have a two more resources to share:

Microsoft has a growing suite of tools made specifically to make online learning more accessible for all learners. One or more of these may make it easier for you to meet more students' needs from a distance.

The TalkingPoints app enables teachers to communicate with parents in the parents' native language, and it even works if parents only have text-based phones.

As I neared completion on this post, I opened up my inbox and found five other resources that had been sent to me for possible inclusion in this post. Looking through them made me realize I had missed gobs and gobs of information here. I felt completely deflated and overwhelmed all over again, but then, as I have often had to do in the past couple of weeks, I took a deep breath, closed up the things that were distracting and upsetting me, and said to myself, "Today you have done enough."

I hope this has helped you in some way. If not, tomorrow is another day.

Come back for more.
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Distance Learning: A Gently Curated Collection of Resources for Teachers

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An overview of the nuts and bolts of distance learning, including general tips, advice on tech, and troubleshooting some common problems.

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Lessons from China - how to remotely teach and learn

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Lessons from China - how to remotely teach and learn

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contributed by Kathy Growney

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What Teachers in China Have Learned in the Past Month  Edutopia

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Walk through of an example class flow for educators teaching students virtually

This is a companion piece to Making Virtual Feel More Human, published on the Stanford d.school’s Medium, and if you haven’t read that yet, it might make sense to start there first. We discovered that there’s to a lot that we can learn from the context of in-person that we can apply to virtual. But it requires deconstructing and remixing… and getting curious about the context of virtual.

Here are the Cliff notes of the main piece:

By understanding why virtual work can feel awkward, we avoid feeling trapped and monotonous, and we can begin designing the structure of our virtual interactions for human needs.

There are multiple ways we interact in-person and by understanding those interactions we can creatively use a combination of tools to activate different styles of learning virtually.

The fact that virtual is voluntary adds an extra challenge, but if we can embrace it, it’s an opportunity to foster everyone’s intrinsic motivation to make virtual…work. One way is to help people make something together that they want to give attention to.

In this companion piece, we’ll get more tangible and concrete. We’ll walk through an example of a class for educators teaching students virtually. You’ll see how you might use a combination of tools. You’ll find examples of how to get people warmed up, dive them into immediate activity, play around with ideas, bubble up key points, and reflect to capture key learnings.

Students interacting in multiple ways online (photo credit: Kal Joffres)

Let’s say we have a virtual class with 16 people, where we were using Zoom as our video call and a MURAL digital whiteboard as our “everyone edit digital space.”

And let’s say that the main topic for this class session was this: “How can we keep living life to its fullest, during this coronavirus situation, when many have to stay at home and practice social distancing?”

Here’s what we might do:

Warm-up. We’ll play a game called “Name Tag” to get everyone warmed up, loosened up, and into the flow. This is entirely in Zoom — everyone is asked to be in gallery view, and unmute your mic because it’s going to go fast. Instructions to the group: 1) The person who is “it” tags someone by saying their name out loud. 2) The person who is tagged “receives” the tag by raising both hands in the air and saying “woooooo!” 3) Now that person is “it.” Go to step 1).

Idea flare. This is a short, individual writing exercise for everyone to get ideas out, so everyone starts actively engaging from the start. The prompt is this: “With the coronavirus situation, it’s changing the way we can interact. Is there something that you feel like you’re missing out on with this class, in terms of how you interact with your classmates? Think of at least five different ways you could fill in this blank: ‘I wish we could ______ together.’” This is done in MURAL, with each person having a designated spot, with sticky notes. Time limit is 3 minutes, and participants can see the time remaining at the top of MURAL.

What an idea flare can look like in MURAL

What’s most interesting? We have a lot of possibilities now! The facilitator tells the group we’re going to pick a few ideas that we’d like to dig deeper into. Each person has four votes, and is voting on which sticky notes look most interesting. Voting is done individually, using a voting session in MURAL. Time limit is 3 minutes. After time’s up, we look at voting results. The top four ideas are moved into another section of the MURAL canvas, where students in small teams will work on the ideas.

Quick build. Now we’re going to get tangible, together. The facilitator puts students into four small teams, using breakout rooms in Zoom. Now instead of being in the Zoom main room with 16 students, we now have more intimate discussions with 4 students each, where people can grow stronger rapport with each other. Each team is assigned one of the four top ideas to work on. Students quickly introduce themselves to each other in their Zoom breakout room with their name and favorite flavor of ice cream. Then the team has to come up with four different possible ways to address the sticky note they were assigned, with the constraint that we’d have to be able to do ______ together in a virtual way. Teams have 12 minutes to do this.

Share out. Teams have built tangible concepts to share! The facilitator brings all students back into the main room in Zoom. Each team has 3 minutes to summarize what they came up with and their biggest a-ha’s. The “audience” is encouraged to write questions on sticky notes in MURAL, and provide silent body motion feedback in real-time so it can be seen on the Zoom call (e.g. silent cheering, mind blown motion, etc). We’ve been building to think, and getting inspired by each other’s explorations.

“Pops” reflection. The facilitator asks students to reflect and think about, “What popped out most for you today?” And why?” Students have 3 minutes to write their reflections in MURAL. Then students have 1 minute to silently browse their classmates’ reflections. Then the facilitator calls on 3 students to share their reflections with the class. After that sharing, the facilitator summarizes major themes that emerged from this class session. Reflecting helps us process and more deeply encode key learnings into our memories.

Closing high-five. At the very end of class, at the count of three, everyone gives each other a high five on camera in Zoom. It’s a simple closing ritual reinforcing esprit de corps.

Participants warmed up, actively engaged from the start, made sense of things together, built out ideas, shared what they made, reflected on what they learned, and closed with a moment of community. We helped people make something together that they want to give attention to.

This is one example. What virtual learning experiences might you craft?

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Making virtual more human: What can it look like in practice?

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This is a companion piece to Making Virtual Feel More Human, published on the Stanford d.school's Medium, and if you haven't read that yet, it might make sense to start there first. We discovered that there's to a lot that we can learn from the context of in-person that we can apply to virtual.

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9 New Ways to Use Flipgrid in the Classroom

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The popular tool has features that teachers in any subject can use to help students connect with each other and share their learning.

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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from "The Teacher Clarity Playbook"

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How to connect and co-survive: Penny Kittle/Kelly Gallagher

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Conversations on Teaching & Learning with Kelly Gallagher & Penny Kittle 2020

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Connecting and co-surviving during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher

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Round Three

Following the recent publication of their latest book, 4 Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency (Heinemann, 2021), Kelly and Penny eagerly embark on a new series of video chats that focus on the ideas and people making a difference in literacy education. Be sure to visit their Padlet for additional resources related to each discussion.

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Following the recent publication of their latest book, 4 Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency (Heinemann, 2021), Kelly and Penny eagerly embark on a new series of video chats that focus on the ideas and people making a difference in literacy education.

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FREE Math online learning resources from NCTM 

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FREE Math online learning resources from NCTM 

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Free to all - no membership needed

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Problems to Ponder are individual problems or groups of problems that are grade-band specific, much like those that appeared in NCTM's legacy journals: the Math by the Month department in Teaching Children Mathematics, the Palette of Problems in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, and the Calendar in Mathematics Teacher.

Growing Problem Solvers are rich tasks that can potentially span four points along the PK-12 learning trajectory (elementary, intermediate, junior high, and high school) and can elicit higher-order thinking. Each task is a low-floor/high-ceiling task with multiple entry points, allowing for a variety of solution strategies and reaching many different learners. A teacher page explores the math and potential instructional strategies.

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Problems to Ponder are individual problems or groups of problems that are grade-band specific, much like those that appeared in NCTM's legacy journals: the Math by the Month department in Teaching Children Mathematics, the Palette of Problems in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, and the Calendar in Mathematics Teacher.

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Edutopia: advice from a primary teacher 

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Edutopia: advice from a primary teacher 

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home learning for his students and reaching out to families

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Like me, you're probably now being inundated with emails, links to resources, and social media shares offering free access to educational programming for home learning. You're also juggling directives and restrictions from your district, administration, and technology department. Your students' families are scrambling to figure out working from home, child care, and what supplies they may need while awaiting information from you and the school about home learning. And you've got your own life and family to take care of.

Know that nearly every educator is in the same boat. As a result, the educational community is focusing-a huge professional learning community-on the goal of providing our students with activities they can do to continue to love learning and not lose that spark we've worked so hard to nurture throughout the school year.

I followed up with a short video directed at my students to reassure them there will be some familiar and fun activities coming their way-I have found that watching a video of their teacher can help ease students' fears. And students will have fears about the coronavirus, so I shared a handbook for young kids from Amanda McGuinness, the Autism Educator, to help explain the coronavirus.

Creating a Sense of Familiarity

Next up is sharing a classroom plan for how learning will take place. One of the challenges is to find a way to provide assurance, support, routines, and familiarity.

Let's take a look at some ways you can take your current classroom routines and send them home. If you do a morning meeting, reflect on the elements you have in your meeting and what could be completed virtually at home. If technology allows, record and share daily video announcements and story read-alouds.

I'm going to use Seesaw for two-way communication. Communicate often-students will find comfort in seeing your face and hearing your voice. Record at school if you can, so they see a familiar setting. Have students share a photo or video of a toy, hobby, collection, stuffed animal, pet, or favorite book-students can share only with the teacher using Seesaw, not with each other, but teachers can create a blog to choose what gets shared with the whole class.

Dig out all your ideas for building a responsive classroom from the beginning of the year-I use The First Six Weeks of School-and see what you can use virtually to strengthen the learning community.

When you send work home, include daily SEL prompts for your students to reflect on, ideally one for the beginning and end of their day.

Possible SEL check-ins:

How are you doing?

What have you done today that was fun, and why was it fun?

What's your internal weather?

Roses and Thorns

Get your students communicating with their peers. If technology doesn't allow, create pen pals or other paper-and-pen activities by sending home envelopes, paper, and stamps if your school is able. Or mimic "turn and talk to a neighbor" by setting up phone pals where students call each other on the phone several times a week to discuss specific topics or prompts. Perhaps send home a link to a virtual field trip.

Just as you would in your classroom, be sure to have some individual communication with your students. If time allows, send a personal email, message, or video check-in, especially for students who may have a more difficult transition.

Getting Started on Academics

When you begin work on academic content, I would focus on no new material at first and keep it simple. Start with something successful and build from there. Send activities to students that they can feel confident in completing while they navigate working from home. Review topics are good, especially as your families figure out the technology aspect. We should remember the amount of pressure on families right now, and have realistic expectations about what can be achieved due to juggling work, child care, siblings, illnesses, and caring for extended family.

We all want the best for our students, so let's keep things in perspective. While students will be challenged, they will be learning more about technology, problem-solving, working together, and communicating, as well as any academic concepts we can integrate into our plans.

In the big picture, we're talking about a few weeks to a month or two over the course of a 13-year educational career. While we should try to provide activities that are as meaningful as possible, we should also remember that on short notice we can't switch seamlessly to online learning and tackle everything we wanted to do, especially when many of us and our students and families have limited experience utilizing these technology tools.

It's OK to give ourselves time and permission to figure this out. Please realize home learning will be different, and that's OK too-it will be hard, and it won't replace interacting face-to-face. But we can work to set up home learning activities that we hope our students will use to keep their love of learning alive.

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How to Support Home Learning in Elementary Grades

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Like me, you're probably now being inundated with emails, links to resources, and social media shares offering free access to educational programming for home learning. You're also juggling directives and restrictions from your district, administration, and technology department.

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tool to organize a variety of resource formats

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How to provide effective feedback of learning

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How to provide effective feedback of learning

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning
contributed by Laura Reynolds

While assessment gets all the press, we often misunderstand feedback for learning.

When feedback is predominately negative, studies have shown that it can discourage student effort and achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, Dinham). Like my experience, the only thing I knew is that I hated public speaking and I would do anything possible to get out of it. As a teacher, most of the time it is easy to give encouraging, positive feedback.

However, it is in the other times that we have to dig deep to find an appropriate feedback response that will not discourage a student's learning. This is where the good teachers, the ones students remember forever in a positive light, separate themselves from the others.

A teacher has the distinct responsibility to nurture a student's learning and to provide feedback in such a manner that the student does not leave the classroom feeling defeated. Here you will find 20 ideas and techniques on how to give effective learning feedback that will leave your students with the feeling they can conquer the world.

20 Ways to Provide Effective Feedback
1. Feedback should be educative in nature.
Providing feedback means giving students an explanation of what they are doing correctly and incorrectly. However, the focus of the feedback should be based essentially on what the students is doing right. It is most productive to a student's learning when they are provided with an explanation and example as to what is accurate and inaccurate about their work.

Consider using the concept of a 'feedback sandwich' to guide your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.
2. Feedback should be given in a timely manner.
When feedback is given immediately after showing proof of learning, the student responds positively and remembers the experience about what is being learned in a confident manner. If we wait too long to give feedback, the moment is lost and the student might not connect the feedback with the action.
3. Be sensitive to the individual needs of the student.
It is vital that we take into consideration each student individually when giving feedback. Our classrooms are full of diverse learners. Some students need to be nudged to achieve at a higher level and other needs to be handled very gently so as not to discourage learning and damage self-esteem. A balance between not wanting to hurt a student's feelings and providing proper encouragement is essential.
4. Ask the 4 questions.
Studies of effective teaching and learning (Dinham, 2002, 2007a; 2007b) have shown that learners want to know where they stand in regards to their work. Providing answers to the following four questions on a regular basis will help provide quality feedback. These four questions are also helpful when providing feedback to parents:

What can the student do?

What can't the student do?

How does the student's work compare with that of others?

How can the student do better?
5. Feedback should reference a skill or specific knowledge.
This is when rubrics become a useful tool (single-point rubrics, for example). A rubric is an instrument to communicate expectations for an assignment. Effective rubrics provide students with very specific information about their performance, comparative to an established range of standards. For younger students, try highlighting rubric items that the student is meeting or try using a sticker chart.
6. Give feedback to keep students 'on target' for achievement.
Regular 'check-ins' with students lets them know where they stand in the classroom and with you. Utilize the '4 questions' to guide your feedback.
7. Host a one-on-one conference.
Providing a one-on-one meeting with a student is one of the most effective means of providing feedback. The student will look forward to having the attention and allows the opportunity to ask necessary questions. A one-on-one conference should be generally optimistic, as this will encourage the student to look forward to the next meeting.

As with all aspects of teaching, this strategy requires good time management. Try meeting with a student while the other students are working independently. Time the meetings so that they last no longer than 10 minutes.
8. Feedback can be given verbally, non-verbally or in written form.
Be sure to keep your frowns in check. It is imperative that we examine our non-verbal cues. Facial expressions and gestures are also means of delivering feedback. This means that when you hand back that English paper, it is best not to scowl.
9. Concentrate on one ability.
It makes a far greater impact on the student when only one skill is critiqued versus the entire paper being the focus of everything that is wrong.

For example, when I taught Writer's Workshop at the elementary level, I would let students know that for that day I was going to be checking on the indentation of paragraphs within their writing. When I conferenced with a student, that was my focus instead of all the other aspects of their writing. The next day would feature a new focus.
10. Alternate due dates for your students/classes.
Utilize this strategy when grading papers or tests. This strategy allows you the necessary time to provide quality, written feedback. This can also include using a rotation chart for students to conference with at a deeper more meaningful level. Students will also know when it is their turn to meet with you and are more likely to bring questions of their own to the conference.
11. Educate students on how to give feedback to each other.
Model for students what appropriate feedback looks like and sounds like. As an elementary teacher, we call this 'peer conferencing.' Train students to give each other constructive feedback in a way that is positive and helpful. Encourage students to use post-it notes to record the given feedback.
12. Ask another adult to give feedback.
The principal at the school I taught at would often volunteer to grade history tests or read student's writing pieces. You can imagine how the student's quality of work increased tenfold! If the principal is too busy (and most are), invite a 'guest' teacher or student teacher to critique work.
13. Have the student take notes.
During a conference over a test, paper or a general 'check in,' have the student do the writing while you do the talking. The student can use a notebook to jot down notes as you provide the verbal feedback.
14. Use a notebook to keep track of student progress.
Keep a section of a notebook for each student. Write daily or weekly, dated comments about each student as necessary. Keep track of good questions the student asks, behavior issues, areas for improvement, test scores etc. Of course this requires a lot of essential time management but when it is time to conference with a student or parent, you are ready to go.
15. Return tests, papers or comment cards at the beginning of class.
Returning papers and tests at the beginning of class, rather than at the end, allows students to ask necessary questions and to hold a relevant discussion.
16. Use Post-It notes.
Sometimes seeing a comment written out is more effective than just hearing it aloud. During independent work time, try writing feedback comments on a post-it note. Place the note on the student's desk the feedback is meant for. One of my former students had a difficult time staying on task but he would get frustrated and embarrassed when I called him out on his inattentive behaviors in front of the class.

He would then shut down and refused to do any work because he was mad that I humiliated him. I resorted to using post-it notes to point out when he was on task or not. Although it was not the most effective use of my time, it really worked for him.
17. Give genuine praise.
Students are quick to figure out which teachers use meaningless praise to win approval. If you are constantly telling your students "Good Job" or "Nice Work" then, over time, these words become meaningless. Make a big deal out of a student's A+ on that vocabulary test. If you are thrilled with a student's recent on-task behaviors, go above and beyond with the encouragement and praise.

Make a phone call home to let mom or dad know how thrilled you are with the student's behavior. Comments and suggestions within genuine feedback should also be 'focused, practical and based on an assessment of what the student can do and is capable of achieving' (Dinham).
18. "I noticed...."
Make an effort to notice a student's behavior or effort at a task. For example; "I noticed when you regrouped correctly in the hundreds column, you got the problem right." "I noticed you arrived on time to class this entire week." Acknowledging a student and the efforts they are making goes a long way to positively influence academic performance.
19. Provide a model or example.
Communicate with your students the purpose for an assessment and/or feedback. Demonstrate to students what you are looking for by giving them an example of what an A+ paper looks like. Provide a contrast of what a C- paper looks like. This is especially important at the upper learning levels.
20. Invite students to give you feedback.
Remember when you finished a class in college and you were given the chance to 'grade' the professor? How nice was it to finally tell the professor that the reading material was so incredibly boring without worrying about it affecting your grade? Why not let students give you feedback on how you are doing as a teacher?

Make it so that they can do it anonymously. What did they like about your class? What didn't they like? If they were teaching the class, what would they do differently? What did they learn the most from you as a teacher? If we are open to it, we will quickly learn a few things about ourselves as educators.

Remember that feedback goes both ways and as teachers it is wise to never stop improving and honing our skills as teachers.
A version of this post first appeared on opencolleges.edu.au; image attribution flickr user nist6ss

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning -

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning contributed by Laura Reynolds While assessment gets all the press, we often misunderstand feedback for learning. When feedback is predominately negative, studies have shown that it can discourage student effort and achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, Dinham).

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Learn at Home Resources

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Scholastic Learn at Home provides 20 days' worth of active learning journeys designed to reinforce and sustain educational opportunities for those students who are unable to attend school.
Click here to get started.
Please share these free resources with your students and your students' parents to keep the learning going.

Want more great content? Click here to subscribe to our Teacher Newsletter and get teaching ideas delivered right to your inbox.

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Scholastic Learn at Home: Free Resources for School Closures

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Scholastic Learn at Home provides 20 days' worth of active learning journeys designed to reinforce and sustain educational opportunities for those students who are unable to attend school. Click here to get started. Please share these free resources with your students and your students' parents to keep the learning going.

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Meaningful learning can happen anywhere. Set up a secure remote/distance learning environment when emergencies like COVID-19 cause school closure. We're here to help with resources to support effective remote/distance learning experiences for students, teachers, and families.

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online resources with schedule suggestions for families

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Freckle by Renaissance - Differentiation Platform for K-12

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Accelerate literacy equitably with differentiated resources.

K-12 coverage of standards and skills

Over 1,000 nonfiction and fiction passages that adapt to each student's level

Teachers can assign a specific standard for some or all students to practice

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Freckle by Renaissance | Reach Every Student at Their Level

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Freckle helps K-12 teachers differentiate instruction and reach every student at their own level across Math, ELA, Social Studies and Science.

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Wonders of Learning, K-8

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Have you ever tasted an Arab taco?

When was the Arab taco invented?

What is shawarma?

Find it out

How are currency exchange rates determined?

What was the gold standard?

Which type of currency exchange rate system does the U.S. use?

Find it out
Which of the following is usually NOT a factor in determining currency exchange rates?

Test your knowledge

How can I use Wonderopolis?

What are the parts of a Wonder?

How do writers make a Wonder?

Find it out
Based on information from the Wonder, what was Lou Castro known for when he was alive?

Test your knowledge

What is an okapi?

Where do okapis live?

What do okapis eat?

Find it out

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Where the Wonders of Learning Never Cease | Wonderopolis

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Where the Wonders of Learning Never Cease

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K-5; online resources, intervention and PD

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Teachers lead rich math discussions pulling from flexible materials for whole class or small group learning.

Teachers are supported with on-demand PD for each unit.

Teachers have access to foundational lessons targeting unfinished learning.

Students log in outside of school, working independently on 30-minute digital lessons (print packets also available).

Teachers see real-time progress and assessment data for each student.

Teachers have access to all lesson materials for teaching virtually.

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Teachers lead rich math discussions pulling from flexible materials for whole class or small group learning. Teachers are supported with on-demand PD for each unit. Teachers have access to foundational lessons targeting unfinished learning. Students log in outside of school, working independently on 30-minute digital lessons (print packets also available).

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K-12

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PBS LearningMedia | Teaching Resources For Students And Teachers

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Inspire your students with thousands of free teaching resources including videos, lesson plans, and games aligned to state and national standards.

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Ideas for creating a daily schedule for at-home learning.

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March 20, 2020

As schools and communities navigate the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the health and safety of educators and students are the AP Program's top priorities. Here's how we're supporting schools:

Through our members across the country, we understand the new time constraints on everyone in the education community. These solutions are meant to be as simple and lightweight as possible for both students and teachers - without creating additional burdens for school leaders during this time.

Traditional face-to-face exam administrations will not take place. Students will take a 45-minute online free-response exam at home.

Some students may want to take the exam sooner rather than later, while the content is still fresh. Other students may want more time to practice. For each AP subject, there will be 2 different testing dates.

The full exam schedule, specific free-response question types that will be on each AP Exam, and additional testing details will be available by April 3. We'll also unlock any relevant free-response questions in AP Classroom for digital use so students can access all practice questions of the type that will appear on the exam.

About This Year's AP Exams

Students remain eager to take AP Exams and to have a chance to earn credit and placement. We surveyed 18,000 AP students and 91% indicated they want to complete this important step, urging us not to cancel this opportunity they have been working toward.

We'll continue to support students with free resources through exam day. And while we encourage students to wait until closer to the test date to decide, any student already registered for an exam can choose to cancel at no charge.

The AP Program will invest heavily over the next month in the following ways:

For the 2019-20 exam administration only, students can take a 45-minute online free-response exam at home. Educator-led development committees are currently selecting the exam questions that will be administered.

AP curricula are locally developed and we defer to local decisions on how best to help students complete coursework. To be fair to all students, some of whom have lost more instructional time than others, the exam will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March.

Colleges support this solution and are committed to ensuring that AP students receive the credit they have worked this year to earn. For decades, colleges have accepted a shortened AP Exam for college credit when groups of students have experienced emergencies.

Students will be able to take these streamlined exams on any device they have access to-computer, tablet, or smartphone. Taking a photo of handwritten work will also be an option.

We recognize that the digital divide could prevent some low-income and rural students from participating. Working with partners, we will invest so that these students have the tools and connectivity they need to review AP content online and take the exam. If your students need mobile tools or connectivity, you can reach out to us directly to let us know.

Test security is a concern.

The exam questions are designed and administered in ways that prevent cheating; we use a range of digital security tools and techniques, including plagiarism detection software, to protect the integrity of the exams.

Scoring at-home work for an AP Exam is not new to the AP Program. For years the AP Program has received and scored at-home student work as part of the exams for the AP Computer Science Principles and AP Capstone courses.

AP Subject

Exam question(s) will only cover:

Exam question(s) will NOT cover:

Exam question type(s)

Exam Date #1

Exam Date #2

* This information will be posted here by Friday, April 3.
** It will not be possible to provide subscores this year.

Instructional Support

Beginning on Wednesday, March 25, students and teachers can attend free, live AP review courses, delivered by AP teachers from across the country. These mobile-friendly classes are:

Designed to be used alongside work that may be given by schools.

Will be recorded and available on-demand so teachers and students can access them any time.

Not dependent on current AP teachers continuing instruction. We know many AP teachers now face challenges that would make that impossible.

Will focus on reviewing the skills and concepts from the first 75% of the course. There will also be some supplementary lessons including topics from the final 25% of the course.

Teachers who are providing remote instruction can continue to leverage AP Classroom, which we introduced at the start of the school year.

Within AP Classroom, free-response questions that were only available for in-classroom use due to security concerns will now be unlocked.

Teachers will be able to assign questions to students digitally.

Here is a one-page overview (.pdf/514KB) of how AP teachers can use the free, daily online practice in AP Classroom to help students prepare for exam day.

AP teachers can access these additional resources to help them get set up with AP Classroom:

Foundations. Learn how AP Classroom complements the new AP course and exam descriptions and offers students opportunities for practice and feedback throughout the year.

AP Classroom Demo. See a click-through demonstration of AP Classroom, which highlights how to assign, score, and interpret results from Topic Questions, Personal Progress Checks, and teacher-created assignments and quizzes from the AP Question Bank.

AP Quick Start Videos.Watch short tutorials on the recent features added to AP Classroom.

AP Services for Educators

Email: apexams@info.collegeboard.org Email: apexams-intl@info.collegeboard.org (for educators outside the United States)
Phone: +1-877-274-6474 or +1-212-632-1781

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AP Updates for Schools Impacted by Coronavirus

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March 20, 2020 As schools and communities navigate the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the health and safety of educators and students are the AP Program's top priorities. Here's how we're supporting schools: We're providing free remote learning resources. We're investing in the development of a new at-home testing option.

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online resources for 9-12

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teaching math at home

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Christina - Today's podcast is actually from a Facebook Live I did recently with Kate Snow from Kate's Homeschool Math . We wanted to do a video that helps parents and teachers think about what Teaching Math at Home right now looks like.

Christina - We talk about it from the perspective of teachers trying to scramble and give good resources to parents and from the perspective of the parent at home trying to help ensure learning continues.

Christina - In this video we talk about:

-Giving Grace and Permission Slips to each other

-Doing math in your daily life with your kids (measuring, estimating, playing games)

-Using "what if?" types of questions

-Don't try to be the expert, take the opportunity to learn how your child is thinking instead of trying to teach them how to solve problems

-Math doesn't need to be 50 problems: Quality over Quantity

Christina - If you want to check out the resources both Kate and I have for teaching math at home head over to buildmathminds.com/55 and I'll link up her site kateshomeschoolmath.com and my site buildmathminds.com/resources .

Christina - Okay, here's my discussion with Kate.

Christina - Okay, it looks like we are officially live.

Kate - All right!

Christina - All right, so thank you guys for hopping on here with us. I am Christina Tondevold, The Recovering Traditionalist. And I brought on a guest today, Kate Snow, from Kate's Homeschool Math.

Kate - Hello everybody.

Christina - And I've linked up both of our websites in the description. We'll put a fuller description here after the live video. Once we see what all we talk about. But our main point of jumping on today was coming on to talk about teaching math at home during this time. Kate and I are both educators, we both have kids at home and we feel the pain from both sides of this. We understand what educators are going through of trying to hurry up and figure out how to help and bring resources to our homes to help us continue the learning. But we also feel the struggle. I have four kids at home, ranging from 6th grade down to 1st grade, and Kate you have a 7th grader and-

Kate - A 4th grader.

Christins - A 4th grader.

Christina - So all of this of just trying to balance everything and we wanted to come on from both of the perspectives of being educators, but also being parents, and the struggles of what's happening right now. So our first thing that we want to encourage everybody out there, both teachers and parents, is not to stress too much about this. So Kate, what do you want to tell the educators and now home educators, the parents, about why we shouldn't be stressing too much about this. It feels very overwhelming and very stressful.

Kate - It does.

Christina - So why shouldn't we be stressed?

Kate - The main reason is that we're all in this together. And I think that's the thing. I think none of us want our kids to fall behind, none of us want our kids to not succeed in math, but we're all in this together, we're all in the same boat. And so, we really do not need to be afraid right now that like we're doing something wrong and everybody else is doing it right. And that, you know.

Christina - Yeah, no kidding.

Kate - Like our kids are just gonna be in so much trouble! So as a parent, I'm trying to calm down a little bit about that because right now what the most important is my family's mental health. Like for me, that's just made a lot of decisions very easy this week. Where I just think, you know, what will make us happy and help us to get along with each other and to do this again tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that, for as long as we need to do this. And, you know, math can be something that helps with that. Like for me, having some structure to my kids' days this week from the work that my kids' school has provided has been very helpful. But when it crosses the line to being stressful, is when as a parent I'm saying right now. "Nope, that's not what I need right now."

Christina - Right. That's right, and I think it's the messages that have come from schools have been so different across the entire United States, it's because educators are just so unsure. Like all of a sudden, you've heard stories of they were in class normal on Thursday and then Thursday night they get the email that says "No school." And it's like.

Christina - Teachers are so upset, because they didn't get to see their kids anymore.

Kate - It's just anger.

Christina - I mean, our students are our kids too, take a lot of love and responsibility for those kids and it's heart-breaking to not be able to have them, and so teachers are scrambling to try to give parents resources and help along the way, but it's very stressful for the teachers too. All of the sudden I'm being thrown into this and the teachers have to figure out online learning and the best way to bring things that we've never been trained in before and it's very stressful for the teachers. So a lot of times, it's just kinda like, here's some stuff until we figure stuff out right now.

Kate - It's a huge learning curve for everybody. For the kids, for the parents, for the teachers. I know, my kids' school just kinda started Microsoft Teams on Monday and all of a sudden there were all of these different apps and ways of submitting work and Monday and Tuesday I just felt crazed, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, how I could organize this for my kids, how I could get everything submitted back to the teachers. And I so appreciate the effort they're putting in it, but I felt really overwhelmed by everything that was coming out at me. And I homeschooled for 5 years, so this is kinda normal for my family, or it was normal, but it sure isn't right now. And I think what I would most like teachers to know as they think about what to assign is just to keep in mind that homeschooling is not the same thing as school at home. And by that I mean, you know, as a teacher you are coming up with like, say in your math block, like a 45 to 60-minute wonderful lesson that takes kids through some number sense routine, some problem solving, some practice. But you have a full hour with 25 children, say, to do that with. You know, parents at home aren't going to have that kind of time to give each of their kids. Like you have 4 kids, right?

Christina - Yeah.

Kate - If you do that times 6 subjects a day, you have 24 subjects to teach.

Christina - Right.

Kate - And you also need to make lunch, you need to break up a fight and you need to, you know-

Christina - Feed them.

Kate - Feed them, maybe some laundry. Maybe you have some work to do, maybe, that would be nice to get done. And so to keep things as simple as possible, like the parents will bless you for it. Like I appreciate the structure for that, like some structure and some purpose for my kids' days is so helpful right now. But don't feel like you have to overdo it. Don't feel like you have to provide what you would like to do in the classroom, because a parent just cannot implement that.

Christina - And as teachers, we are famously over-planners. Like we plan so much in a day, because you never want any of that downtime.

Christina - Yeah, so I know teachers aren't trying to send everything, because we all get it, it does take longer to get through a lesson when you have 20 to 30 kids in the classroom versus having 1 child. But we do have a lot of families that, I mean our situations are just unique, because we are able to be home with our kids. My husband is working outside of the house, so is yours, but both of us get to be home with our kids. We have a lot of families who do not have that option and are struggling even just to figure out what are they going to do with the kids during the day.

Kate - Right.

Christina - And the only time that they have to sit down and work with the kids is at night. And that may not be the highest priority right now. Like we said, I mean their learning is an important piece, but mental health for the adults in the family and the kids is something that is even more important during this time of crisis. You know, it feels like the time of crisis. It really does feel like there are days when I just want to roll up in bed and watch some Netflix.

Kate - Absolutely.

Chistina - And that's it.

Kate - Very stressful right now for everyone. And our kids pick up on that stress too, of course. And so they're experiencing that as well. And so some days we might just need to watch a movie together and not do school and that might be the very best decision parent can make that day. Like some normalcy, some coziness.

Christina - Exactly.

Kate - So I would encourage teachers who are thinking about this to make deadlines very flexible, you know, if they're collecting work. And many schools I know aren't going to have deadlines, they really just suggested activities. But if you're collecting anything, collect it in a batch, maybe once a week. Provide as much flexibility for parents to be able to spread it out over.

Christina - And I would think that parents too, if there is things that are like hard deadlines and be in communication with the teachers and let them know about the situation. I mean, everybody's situation is different and they're trying to send out stuff that works the best for the mass majority of people, but if there is a situation, just be in contact and give grace to everyone. Like I want educators and administrators, sometimes it's not the teachers deciding what is being sent, it's the administration is saying, we have to do these things, and the teachers don't have a really say in it and they're just trying to figure out what to do to help you. So give everybody grace, you know. As a parent, if you are having trouble, go to the educators and reach out, but always with the mind frame of they're doing the best they can, they don't know my situation and so, you know, go with that in mind. And vice versa, with the teachers taking with parents, give parents grace because we don't know their situation.

Kate - Absolutely. We have to assume best intentions in everybody right now.

Christina - All the way around.

Kate - Yes, for sure.

Christina - Okay. That what one of our main points was just don't stress too much, do the best you can in this situation, whether you're the teacher, the parent, whichever side of this that you are on. And then the other one that we both really agree on is making math real life and also fun.

Kate - Absolutely.

Christina - And finding the learning in things that aren't necessarily school type of activities. Right? So, Kate what are some of your favorite things that you love to do with your kids when you're home?

Kate - I think measuring is one of them, measuring and estimating are one of the best things to do around the house because they're so fun, so hands on. You can do them at multiple levels. So a 1st grader and a 5th grader can both look at a big pile of cotton balls and estimate how many are there in that pile. And their strategies are going to be different. As teachers we know you could nudge the 1st grader towards making this pile of 10 and thinking about the place value. With fifth graders we might be using more sophisticated strategies. But so, measurement I think is always fun. Cooking of course is something that everybody loves to do, I think sometimes it's a little overblown as real life math activity. Certainly just the hands-on experience that's fractions and time and measurement and in the recipe that everybody loves.

Christina - Yeah, there's so much that can be hit. Just through estimating and measuring no matter what levels are. And I think there is the point, I don't mean to interrupt, but I just wanna highlight that piece there that Kate talked about, because it's so important for parents who have multiple children that are at all different grade levels, the more that we can do to give them activities that kind of span the grade levels, the easier it is for us parents to actually do those things with our kids. It's hard to sit down and do a lesson with every single one of my children and help them all at that time. But it's really nice when I can play a game or measure something, or do a baking activity and ask certain questions of each of my children because they're at different levels and such different levels.

Kate - Right.

Christina - I know that in teaching when you're in a classroom full of kids you always have different levels of kids, but in the home it's hard because they are such different levels.

Kate - Right. 1st to 6th grade in your house, it's a big span.

Christina - Yes!

Kate - Yes, and homeschoolers typically don't plan a different curriculum for their different children of different ages for every subject for that reason. A lot of subjects, like social studies or history get combined. Right now if we can combine math in some ways as well that's really helpful for parents. And I love how you talked about games, because I think games are just it's such a great fun way to do some math. It makes all those numbers meaningful. You know, like I could never sit down and ask my kids to like add up a column of two-digit numbers, just randomly, but like if it's Yahtzee, like I am in, you know. So it takes a lot of the stress out of it and like sort of the power plays that can happen when parents are doing math with their kids.

Christina - Power plays, what?

Kate - Oh no, only in my house, I know! But I think it's the other thing, I think parents are often surprised by, we think, oh we're doing school now, it'll be like I'm the teacher, but no, I'm still the parent, and all our normal parent-child stuff is still there. The good and the bad.

Christina - Absolutely. I've seen that a few times.

Christina - It's very hard to switch the hat. And I will say, I feel like it's probably a little easier for us because we do have that education background. And I feel for the parents who are like, I didn't go to school for this! It's not what I signed up for.

Kate - Mm-hmm, I do not feel equipped for that.

Christina - Yeah, just do the normal stuff, measuring, estimating, play games, those are my favorite things as well. Just find the math in the things that... A lot of times we talk about, this is something that I talk about. We think that it's obvious, like we will see the mathematics within something, but a lot of other people don't see that. And so it's just trying to pull that out, when you notice yourself seeing something. Like just the other day we were putting dinosaur chicken nuggets into the oven, that's what we were having for lunch. But I arranged them in like an array, like columns and rows, and then I asked the kids, how many do you see? And how many do you know?

Christina - And each of my kids saw it differently based upon the, you know, the 6th grader was like, that's 5 by 5, it's 25, right? Do it instantly. And he could see that array. And other were like counting or seeing these groups. So it's just any time that you can see counting activities are great, and encouraging your kids to see groupings instead of counting one by one by one. Counting is definitely a great skill and it's a foundational skill. But our upper grades kids as they progress up, we want them to start seeing groups of stuff and that helps with estimating, that is just such a powerful thing that any time that you can see the mathematics, just ask the kids what they are noticing and talk about those situations.

Kate - Right. And I think that "what if" questions are also a great way for parents to build on math. You know, what if we were making twice as many cookies? What if I gave you an extra hour of Minecraft time, when would it be over then? You know, those kinds of hypotheticals can also help stretch the math a little bit.

Christina - Exactly, good point. It does not have to be like a real situation that's happening right now, if you can pretend about that situation, it does extend the math into being able to see it in lots of different ways.

Kate - Yeah, very true.

Christina - So, okay. One of the other things that I really wanted to talk about because it's been floating around there, this comment meme, I never know how to say that word. But it's all this stuff about, all these kids been learning common core math and now the parents are just gonna teach the kid to carry the one. One of the struggles I feel like is that we sit down with the kids and the way that we maybe learned math is different than the way they're learning it. That causes some of the struggle.

Kate - Mm-hmm, for sure.

Chrisina - So my biggest advice, and this is what I did when I was in school, because that's why I call myself The Recovering Traditionalist. I was a very traditional learner, give me the rules and procedures to follow I could carry the one, I could borrow like nobody's business, but I wasn't a good thinker. I didn't have the strategies and I didn't see connections through stuff. And that's really what math has been trying to build in these last few years, is getting kids to become thinkers and it's hard, when you sit down with a kid and the only way that I knew how to do it, before I started learning all this other stuff, was just the traditional way. And you hear somebody else and you like, that doesn't make any sense.

Christina - And so my biggest thing with that is, when I was teaching, when I started learning that there is different ways to think about it besides the traditional way, was I tell people, I would play dumb, so that even when I was, the kids didn't know it. So I was just always asking like, what? Kid would explain how they're thinking about it, and I would say, why did you do this? Even if I knew exactly what they were doing, I would just say, "Tell me why you would do that?" Like something as simple as 9 + 7, I just learned and memorized those facts, but nowadays kids are doing things like, 9 + 7 is kinda like 10 + 6, and that can give you 16. And instead of just going like, what? Like, tell me more about that. Like I see this as an opportunity to learn from my own kids about how they think about mathematics.

Christina - Instead of me just saying, no, no, this is the way it needs to be done. It's just to sit back and listen to the kids thinking, and see where they are starting from and see if you can kinda understand what they're doing. But even if you don't, just asking them questions.

Kate - Absolutely.

Christina - Instead of no, no, do the other way.

Kate - It's so many parents have so much anxiety about math that I think as soon as they start to see something that doesn't feel familiar, it's like old anxieties or feelings of insecurity about math start to arise. And so I just encourage parents to be kind of co-explorer of math, like you don't have to be the expert, you can just be exploring this with your child, making sense of it with your child, if it doesn't make sense to you right now. And I think it's great for teachers as they send things home to encourage that kind of attitude, you know. To say you don't have to be the expert, you don't have to teach them the certain way. Just here's three problems to talk about together. As opposed to the page of 30 long division problems or something.

Christina - Yeah. I like your term co-explorer better than my term of playing dumb.

Kate - Everybody knows what playing dumb means though, so I think it's pretty good too.

Christina - Yeah, I really like that. And that is one of the big points too of what we're trying to change in the classroom is the difference of giving kids 50 problems and instead doing 3 and exploring them deeply. Like we feel like if we aren't doing 50 problems that my kid isn't doing math. Like they're not getting enough practice. And sometimes the practice is, it's not just about practice, it's about the quality of the practice that the kids are getting. So I think you made a really good point there that it can just be 3 problems that you sit down and have a conversation about, instead of 50 problems that the kids have to work on by themselves and they don't talk about the math.

Kate - Exactly. And if teachers can provide just a little scaffolding for that, or like a parent talk, routine kind of like, let's make an estimate about what it will be about, let's make up a word problem that would go with this calculation, you know, couple of things that are open-ended that don't feel much like, I don't know the right answer, that helps take some of the pressure off. It helps parents to disengage that anxiety. Just take it down a notch.

Kate - I like to call this a permission slip. I like to put permission slips in my books to parents, like, that's okay if you divert from what I did, or if your conversation goes the different way or if you implement this a different way. The more teachers can give parents permission slips to do things in the way that's making sense for their kid and making sense for the family right now, that's really helpful.

Christina - And I think that's an awesome spot to end on, is let's give permission slips to the parents, to the teachers, always be filled with grace, knowing that everyone in this situation is out there with their best intentions trying to help everybody. And we don't want it to be seen as one more thing that piles on top, we're just helping each other but give permission slips if it's not working right.

Kate - Absolutely. We're all in this together, we're all going to make it through.

Christina - Awesome. Thank you so much, Kate. And don't forget to check out Kate's website, I've linked it in the description. Up at the top you've got the banner up there. Is that correct? That it's all about homeschool, doing math at home.

Kate - Yes, I have an article there with resources for things that parents can download if they don't have any options right now, or if they don't get a packet from school, that they can have some downloadable resources as well as some great websites that they can use if they have no time to be doing that. As well as some of my favorite articles to help parents get started teaching math.

Christina - Awesome. So really quickly, I just now remembered to look at comments. I see really quickly some people are putting some comments in there, some ideas, so if you're watching this video later, go back, look through the comments. If you guys have questions, pop them in the comments and we'll be monitoring some of those and trying to give you some advice and any other information. Again, go check out Kate's Homeschool Math, my website's buildmathminds.com and we are here to help in any of these situations, everybody's coming at it from different perspectives and different situations, so let's give each other permission slips.

Kate - Sounds good. Thank you so much, Christina.

Christina - Thank you.

If you like what you have been hearing there are a few ways I would love for you to let me know. The first way is to subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening in iTunes make sure to hit that subscribe button. Also in iTunes I would love for you to leave a review and let me know if you are enjoying the podcast which types of episodes are your favorite. Really just anything to get me feedback about the show and lastly if you are on Instagram or Twitter I would love for you to share when you listen to an episode that you love. Make sure you tag me @buildmathminds and all of those are the ways to let me know that there are actually people out there listening. Thank you so much for letting me be a small part of your math journey.

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Christina - Today's podcast is actually from a Facebook Live I did recently with Kate Snow from Kate's Homeschool Math . We wanted to do a video that helps parents and teachers think about what Teaching Math at Home right now looks like.

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The coronavirus outbreak is changing our lives by the moment, but one constant is true: You're unsure how to manage several weeks of closed schools and social isolation with your children, who happen to have ADHD.

Pick specific times for waking up, getting started on studying and going to bed.

Make a time to talk with your kids about their ideas for organizing their days. Brainstorm together how to co-create a structure that makes sense for everyone. When kids, especially those with ADHD, are included in the process of figuring things out, they are far more likely to cooperate.

Now lay out a sample weekly schedule based on the tips below. Each day should have designated blocks of time geared toward school and learning, household chores, and various fun activities. Once you've got a draft, post it around the house and plan to meet again in 4 days to check in and make necessary adjustments.

[Learning at Home: Sample Schedule & Resources for Elementary School Students with ADHD ]

Plan to scaffold: Set up work periods using incentives that matter to your child or teen,timed breaks with appropriate activities, and earned rewards when the period is over or
the task is completed. Plan to work alongside your child in what I call Family Work Time.
You'll do some of your stuff while they are doing theirs. Plus you'll be there to help them
stay on task or answer any possible questions. This sends a message that everyone is
taking this plan seriously and it's time to settle down.

Choose chores they can tackle: Keep chores for your kids simple and manageable. If they weren't doing them before, this isn't the time to add something new. Instead, link the completion of their chores to some of the incentives as well. Talk about how many reminders they need and in what form. Prepare to supervise them if necessary and notice when they do what they are asked with positivity.

Budget quiet into the schedule: If you are working from home , decide when you want privacy and allow your kids to have some of their screen time then. This keeps them occupied when you need to work.

Remember that kids are struggling right now and may neither fully understand the severity of the situation nor be able to articulate how they feel. Share relevant facts without scaring them and be careful of what you are saying on the phone to friends and family that's within earshot of your youngster.

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Daily Schedule for ADHD Families: Remote Learning in The Time of Coronavirus

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The coronavirus outbreak is changing our lives by the moment, but one constant is true: You're unsure how to manage several weeks of closed schools and social isolation with your children, who happen to have ADHD. Pick specific times for waking up, getting started on studying and going to bed.

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Storybird: Illustrations provided - you write the story.

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Storybird: Illustrations provided - you write the story.

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Storybird - Read, write, discover, and share the books you'll always remember.

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Create videos that engage and impress. Animoto's drag-and-drop editing tools and visual effects make it easy. No training or experience necessary.

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Create a topic - have students respond with one word answers and create an  ANSWERGARDEN

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Create a topic - have students respond with one word answers and create an  ANSWERGARDEN

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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Answerpad: FREE assessment tool for any device

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2019 recordings available now

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ILA 2019 Replay

The theme of our ILA 2019 Conference-Creating a Culture of Literacy-focused largely on how to infuse literacy throughout every aspect of the school day and students' lives.

When literacy is embedded in every aspect of education, it creates the environment students need to reach their full potential in the classroom and throughout their lives. These ILA 2019 featured sessions demonstrate the importance of working collaboratively to build and sustain a culture that extends beyond the school setting.

For a limited time (April 1-April 30), ILA is offering these recorded sessions at no charge.

REGISTER NOW

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Creating a Culture of Literacy - 2019 Highlight Replay

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ILA 2019 Replay The theme of our ILA 2019 Conference-Creating a Culture of Literacy-focused largely on how to infuse literacy throughout every aspect of the school day and students' lives. When literacy is embedded in every aspect of education, it creates the environment students need to reach their full potential in the classroom and throughout their lives.

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Online Learning; Locale Memory

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Online Learning; Performance Feedback

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Nurture a Love of Reading and Learning

Read and Learn on Epic! Anytime. Anywhere.

"Amazing!" ~ Kara, Mom of 2

"All my favorite books!" ~ Emily, Age 8

"My students LOVE Epic!" ~ Mrs. MCoy, 2nd Grade

Includes up to 4 reader profiles for no additional cost

Kids explore their interests in a fun, safe, kid-friendly environment

See what your kids are reading and learning on Epic!

"All my favorite books!" ~ Emily, Age 8

Epic! is Free for Elementary School Teachers and Librarians!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Instantly access 40,000 high-quality books for kids

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The leading digital library for kids offering unlimited access to 40,000 of the best children's books of all time. Sign up for a free 30 day trial to instantly access high-quality online books for kids, ebooks, audio books, quizzes, videos, and more.