Fellow Teachers: Distance Learning for PreK, K and grade 1

[Anonymous]

Did they choose to go summer school PP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been teaching ESY this summer and it has been such a great experience! I have a mixture of students in my self contained k-2 class. DCPS has really enforced teachers using one platform teams. The things that have been the most useful has been having a morning meeting every morning followed by a read aloud. For morning meeting I use PowerPoint, starfall(calendar)and GoNoodle. For read aloud I have been using Vooks along with YouTube along with PowerPoint slides that I have created with questions and visuals -for responses. I try to have objectives posted on each slide and keep the questions similar each week so the students get used to structure. I hope to change it over time. Morning meeting and read aloud can go for 30-45 minutes.

I have been meeting with each of my students for 30 minutes one on one at the same time everyday.Families can get overwhelmed with different work times each day. Two days for ELA and 2 days Math. I send the PowerPoint lesson for ELA and Math before the lesson in case parents want to print it out. Downtown has also been printing out work for the students and mailing it to their house. I also send ELA and Math independent work at the beginning of the week to be completed throughout the week. Boom cards have been great to use to help students work on specific goals and then I can send the parents the link to the cards if they want to work on it later with their child.

During the school year I had only 50 percent of the students participating in online learning and now I have 87 percent.

I'm learning so much! Thank you PP!

I just checked out Starfall Calendar. Really useful! Do you show it on your screen and have the students talk about it or do you assign it to them and have them do the interactive activity?

Love GoNoodle -- looks like a great source of 5 minute active songs and brain breaks.

How do you do a read aloud with Vooks and Power Point?

So Morning meeting is 45 minutes daily, and after that you meet with students individually for half an hour twice a week? Once for math and once for language arts? How many students do you have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell me more about Boom cards!

I've been looking at them. Do they require students to have their own log in and password to use? Can you post a link to the cards on Google Classroom? Did your district pay for an account for you to use?

[Anonymous]

Parent of a rising first grader here. My son's K teacher didn't do a morning meeting, but I wish she had. It would have been a nice way to set a routine and help with the transition into "school time". I agree with others that small groups where the teacher calls on each student worked well. My son didn't really participate if it was up to him to raise his hand in Blackboard (though he would have in a real classroom). But he was happy to share something he had written down or drawn if she called on each student one by one. When the students were given a few minutes to work on something on their own during a live session, she played music. I thought that was a nice touch. The kids knew that when the music stopped it was time to stop working and share what they had done.

I also think videos filmed by the teacher are better than ones pulled off YouTube, etc. Some third party videos are fine, but a big part of successful online courses is teacher presence. My son liked watching videos filmed by the teachers in his grade, but got bored of Jack Hartman, Go Noodle, etc. His K teacher relied too heavily on those. The videos don't need to be high tech as long as the lighting and audio are good.

[Anonymous]

My kids school had an excellent DL programming last spring but it did require substantial parent oversight. My kids were in PreK and 1st at the same school. Here are some of the things that worked really well:

-All classes were live and instruction was everyday. They had 2-3 classes a day.

- PreK classes were 30 minutes; 1st grade classes were 45 minutes long. Specials were 30 minutes for every grade.

- Classes were divided into groups and there were never more than 8-9 kids in any group.

- PreK had 2 small group sessions (4-5 kids) a week that focused on either reading or math skills. These groups were based upon ability so the teacher could offer differentiation. The other 3 days were "morning meeting". The teachers introduced new letters each week, focused on the calendar, and whatever the lesson was for the day.

-1st grade had an additional small group once a week (in addition to their everyday class with their teacher) with 3-4 kids that served as a reading work shop based upon ability. Math was a separate class once a week for 45 minutes.

- Every kid had a 1on1 meeting with their teacher each week to show them work completed through the week. For 1st grade, this was the teacher's opportunity to give feedback on my son's writing assignments. For PreK, I usually participated and could explain to the teachers what she was willing to do from the week's assignments, what was hard, what was easy, etc. My daughter did not like zoom calls so the 1 on 1 was a FaceTime call that allowed us to show the teachers some of her work and they could get a better understanding of what she was learning and understanding.

- Our school did theme weeks to make it fun for kids to show up on Zoom. We had silly hat day, pajama day, bring your pet or favorite stuffed animal day, favorite superhero or princess day, etc.

-Show and tell days were critical for PreK. That was one of the few ways my daughter was willing to participate.

- 1st grade did a week of virtual field trips and each day was a surprise. The kids loved it! They virtually toured the Crayola crayon factory, went to the San Diego zoo, visited a coral reef in the Caymen Islands. They had to answers questions about their visit as part of their writing assignments.

- 1st grade did a lot of writing and editing assignments. The teacher used Zoom breakout sessions to have 2-3 kids work together and give feedback and ideas to each other on their writing.


-Use online books and share your screen to read books to the class. There is nothing worse than a teacher attempting to read a physical book over video. You will lose their attention in minutes.

[Anonymous]

One thing my son's teacher did that went over really well was a scavenger hunt "find something that starts with T" or something like that. The kids really loved it as a closing activity. I'm going to try it with my students this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been teaching ESY this summer and it has been such a great experience! I have a mixture of students in my self contained k-2 class. DCPS has really enforced teachers using one platform teams. The things that have been the most useful has been having a morning meeting every morning followed by a read aloud. For morning meeting I use PowerPoint, starfall(calendar)and GoNoodle. For read aloud I have been using Vooks along with YouTube along with PowerPoint slides that I have created with questions and visuals -for responses. I try to have objectives posted on each slide and keep the questions similar each week so the students get used to structure. I hope to change it over time. Morning meeting and read aloud can go for 30-45 minutes.

I have been meeting with each of my students for 30 minutes one on one at the same time everyday.Families can get overwhelmed with different work times each day. Two days for ELA and 2 days Math. I send the PowerPoint lesson for ELA and Math before the lesson in case parents want to print it out. Downtown has also been printing out work for the students and mailing it to their house. I also send ELA and Math independent work at the beginning of the week to be completed throughout the week. Boom cards have been great to use to help students work on specific goals and then I can send the parents the link to the cards if they want to work on it later with their child.

During the school year I had only 50 percent of the students participating in online learning and now I have 87 percent.

I'm learning so much! Thank you PP!

I just checked out Starfall Calendar. Really useful! Do you show it on your screen and have the students talk about it or do you assign it to them and have them do the interactive activity?

Love GoNoodle -- looks like a great source of 5 minute active songs and brain breaks.

How do you do a read aloud with Vooks and Power Point?

So Morning meeting is 45 minutes daily, and after that you meet with students individually for half an hour twice a week? Once for math and once for language arts? How many students do you have?

I share my screen when going over the calendar on star fall each day and we talk about upcoming dates and holidays. I will also look up the National day Website. One day this week was the National day of gummy worms and then we discussed if they like that item using visuals.

I will play the vooks books and pause and show PowerPoint slides with the question and visuals of possible answers. I will also save questions for the end to review as a class. We will complete a writing activity at the end of the lesson and then I will post it so they can complete it as an extension.

I meet with them for 30 minutes 4 times a week( 2 days math and 2 days ELA). I have 8 students that vary in ability from 6 months to on grade level. I would imagine that in a gen ed class with would be small group rather than individual sessions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell me more about Boom cards!

I've been looking at them. Do they require students to have their own log in and password to use? Can you post a link to the cards on Google Classroom? Did your district pay for an account for you to use?

The student doesn’t need a log in or password . You can click on fast play and send the hyperlink to your students and they can access the activity for up to two weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell me more about Boom cards!

I've been looking at them. Do they require students to have their own log in and password to use? Can you post a link to the cards on Google Classroom? Did your district pay for an account for you to use?

The student doesn’t need a log in or password . You can click on fast play and send the hyperlink to your students and they can access the activity for up to two weeks.

That is so great to hear! I will check it out. I've been watching some videos online with suggestions on how to use Boom cards and they look great for this age.

[Anonymous]

For a while our first grade math teacher posted a pre recorded video each day. 10 minute max. She went over the answers for the worksheet from the day before and explained the next one. My daughter would watch the video, check her answers, and immediately do the rest of her assignment.

For reading, small groups were best. 30 minutes top

Morning meetings ended up being show and share. It was a lot and hard to keep her focused for the full 30 minutes.

[Anonymous]

OP again.

THANK YOU to the person who told me about Boom cards! I made an account and have started making decks. I even paid for the most expensive version so I can add sound recordings--- GAME changer! I am so excited about this, although I don't know yet if my district will allow us to link student Google accounts to Boom.

Can people share examples of games they played with young students that had a lot of interaction? I'm not quite sure how that would work. One posted mentioned games with paper and pencil?

A friend of mine shared something she read online: Have young kids each have a small pack of playdough that they keep just for class time, and have the kids make something according to your directions or suggestions (I teach ESOL and this would be a great activity for my beginner students.)

Also: give kids a couple emoji faces on a popsicle stick

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Emoji-Feelings-4249337?gclid=CjwKCAjw4MP5BRBtEiwASfwALwqd4n4U5lso1_g5pM9a-EtH6f4Ktagj9unDhI4jo0fdhatAzZpgJBoCraoQAvD_BwE

and have them choose one to talk about how they are feeling that day -- good for oral communication activities.

I'm thinking of making up a small bag of ESOL Class Activities to send home to each student for the first quarter, and hopefully they can keep those items just for our class time together. I know that might not happen but it might!