Virtual Learning for Elementary School-Description by Our Principal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since the Spring was a mess, my kid has been doing online classes for a couple hours a day over the summer. The classes are taught by college students. I’m really impressed by how the teachers keep the students engaged for 2 hours. There’s a lot of interaction. I don’t think more than 5 minutes go by without my kid getting called on to answer a question. They also do a lot of small breakout groups where the kids work on problems and the teacher moves from group to group and answer questions.

I don’t understand why FCPS is unable to put forward a reasonable plan to teach kids. What OP put forward looks wildly inadequate. No expects teachers to lecture for 6.5 hours a day, but there needs to be time for students to work on the concepts that are taught and ask questions, like in small groups. Expecting all the problems to be done offline without any assistance available is ridiculous.

What service are you using?

NP
And what age is the student?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP-there were a lot of questions in the chat while the principal was explaining this plan because it did not match up to people’s time expectations.

I'm getting confused here. Are you the OP, and are you saying that the schedule that you posted was the one proposed by the principal at Bull Run?

Yes and yes. This was the schedule he described in the coffee. I took notes. There is a sample schedule in the slide show that is very different than what he described at the coffee.

I was there yesterday, and I didn't hear any of this. What I do remember him saying is that the schedule will have to be different for younger kids, with more time in between instruction, and breaks, because they can't focus long enough to engage for hours at a time. And the schedule in his presentation, he said, was put together by a group of principals that all worked together to come up with something reasonable, not FCPS, and just a sample of what they're thinking about as a workable model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you counting the reading and math time? Sometimes it’s independent work and sometimes it’s teacher- led, but it still would count as instruction. That adds up to about 3 hours. I’m guessing that the science, social studies, and perhaps other instruction periods would include activities that could add up to a total of 3.5.

If a child logs off to do work independently while the teacher meets virtually with other
kids, then no—I would not consider what that child is doing alone to be “instructional time”. Do you? They are working alone at home.

That’s what we do during the school day. We don’t spend all the time teaching directly to the entire class.

You can’t think about virtual learning as just like your classroom, only on a computer. It’s a completely different environment. A child logging off to do homework is like a child leaving the school building in the middle of the lesson.

What happens when a child logs off for lunch? Is it the same as the kids leaving the school building? What do you think teachers do during lunch? Do you think they will be sitting on the computer watching all the kids eating lunch in front of the screen? Or do you think they log off and go eat? In the school the kids are being monitored in the lunch room by lunch aides. Who is helping these kids get lunch and eat their food at home? Also who is monitoring these kids eating lunch? Are you going to tell me that you expect the DL teacher to do it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be more likely to choose DL if i knew it was NOT up to the individual schools/principals to implement and the program was ran by a DL unit for FCPS. Our school, which is highly rated on great schools, did a terrible job with DL. Teachers did whatever they wanted and there was zero oversight. There was ONE hour of instruction a day for 4 days. No office hours. No small groups, nothing. No one was even getting pulled by specialists or even resource teachers. The principal was told and did nothing. We ended up finding resources online that other counties were posting for their students and had my child do those. We got a tutor who teaches at our school to help DURING spring DL. I'm choosing hybrid bc I can't risk that again.

I agree, and I thought that the plan was for it to be centralized (with Braband talking about online school being a separate program from in person school), and with the very clear requirements spelling out that teachers will be online teaching to the students 3.5 hours per day.

Even if FCPS didn’t care about educational quality at all, you would think they would standardize things just to avoid the thousands of complaints they will get.

This is what I had thought too. I am still on the fence unable to decide. Spring DL was not good for my kid at a 10 rated ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was a sample schedule for upper grades released by our principal, with a total listed as 4 hours of synchronous instruction.

10:00-11:15: Morning Meeting/LA
11:15-12:00 Science/Social Studies
LUNCH
12:30-1:30 Math instruction
BREAK
1:45-2:45 or 2:50-3:50 Specials

The assumption was that kids would do assignments after their synchronous time had completed as well.

OP, sounds like your school is choosing to do less than they could.

Why would online learning start at 10?

The schedule is suppoesd to match up with the real school's schedule.

[Anonymous]

OP-
These are my notes:
20 minutes-morning meeting
20 minutes-language arts
one hour: teacher meets with 1-2 reading groups, other students leave the classroom and work independently
break
15 minutes-math
20 minutes-math small group-1 per day
60 minutes-lunch
30 minutes special-1 per day
15 minutes science or social studies
teacher might have office hours but not daily

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you counting the reading and math time? Sometimes it’s independent work and sometimes it’s teacher- led, but it still would count as instruction. That adds up to about 3 hours. I’m guessing that the science, social studies, and perhaps other instruction periods would include activities that could add up to a total of 3.5.

If a child logs off to do work independently while the teacher meets virtually with other
kids, then no—I would not consider what that child is doing alone to be “instructional time”. Do you? They are working alone at home.

That’s what we do during the school day. We don’t spend all the time teaching directly to the entire class.

You can’t think about virtual learning as just like your classroom, only on a computer. It’s a completely different environment. A child logging off to do homework is like a child leaving the school building in the middle of the lesson.

What happens when a child logs off for lunch? Is it the same as the kids leaving the school building? What do you think teachers do during lunch? Do you think they will be sitting on the computer watching all the kids eating lunch in front of the screen? Or do you think they log off and go eat? In the school the kids are being monitored in the lunch room by lunch aides. Who is helping these kids get lunch and eat their food at home? Also who is monitoring these kids eating lunch? Are you going to tell me that you expect the DL teacher to do it?

The lunch break and other breaks are not included in the required 3.5 hours of instructional time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was a sample schedule for upper grades released by our principal, with a total listed as 4 hours of synchronous instruction.

10:00-11:15: Morning Meeting/LA
11:15-12:00 Science/Social Studies
LUNCH
12:30-1:30 Math instruction
BREAK
1:45-2:45 or 2:50-3:50 Specials

The assumption was that kids would do assignments after their synchronous time had completed as well.

OP, sounds like your school is choosing to do less than they could.

Why would online learning start at 10?

The schedule is suppoesd to match up with the real school's schedule.

So the middle school virtual classes are going to start at 7 am?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP-
These are my notes:
20 minutes-morning meeting
20 minutes-language arts
one hour: teacher meets with 1-2 reading groups, other students leave the classroom and work independently
break
15 minutes-math
20 minutes-math small group-1 per day
60 minutes-lunch
30 minutes special-1 per day
15 minutes science or social studies
teacher might have office hours but not daily

That is not even close to the amount of instruction promised by the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was a sample schedule for upper grades released by our principal, with a total listed as 4 hours of synchronous instruction.

10:00-11:15: Morning Meeting/LA
11:15-12:00 Science/Social Studies
LUNCH
12:30-1:30 Math instruction
BREAK
1:45-2:45 or 2:50-3:50 Specials

The assumption was that kids would do assignments after their synchronous time had completed as well.

OP, sounds like your school is choosing to do less than they could.

Why would online learning start at 10?

The schedule is suppoesd to match up with the real school's schedule.

So the middle school virtual classes are going to start at 7 am?

Sadly yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP-
These are my notes:
20 minutes-morning meeting
20 minutes-language arts
one hour: teacher meets with 1-2 reading groups, other students leave the classroom and work independently
break
15 minutes-math
20 minutes-math small group-1 per day
60 minutes-lunch
30 minutes special-1 per day
15 minutes science or social studies
teacher might have office hours but not daily

Did you write to the principal to ask about the discrepancy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you counting the reading and math time? Sometimes it’s independent work and sometimes it’s teacher- led, but it still would count as instruction. That adds up to about 3 hours. I’m guessing that the science, social studies, and perhaps other instruction periods would include activities that could add up to a total of 3.5.

If a child logs off to do work independently while the teacher meets virtually with other
kids, then no—I would not consider what that child is doing alone to be “instructional time”. Do you? They are working alone at home.

That’s what we do during the school day. We don’t spend all the time teaching directly to the entire class.

You can’t think about virtual learning as just like your classroom, only on a computer. It’s a completely different environment. A child logging off to do homework is like a child leaving the school building in the middle of the lesson.

What happens when a child logs off for lunch? Is it the same as the kids leaving the school building? What do you think teachers do during lunch? Do you think they will be sitting on the computer watching all the kids eating lunch in front of the screen? Or do you think they log off and go eat? In the school the kids are being monitored in the lunch room by lunch aides. Who is helping these kids get lunch and eat their food at home? Also who is monitoring these kids eating lunch? Are you going to tell me that you expect the DL teacher to do it?

The lunch break and other breaks are not included in the required 3.5 hours of instructional time.

The previous poster claimed that logging off to do HW is the same as leaving the school building, which is what I was responding to. And yet logging off to do lunch is not considered leaving the school building?

They can say they don't consider logging off to do independent work to be instruction, which is an argument I can see. But to claim that it is like leaving the school building in the middle of a lesson is absurd. There's also the "breaks" too where I assume the teacher is actually taking a break by logging off and not just sitting there staring at the kids while doing nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was a sample schedule for upper grades released by our principal, with a total listed as 4 hours of synchronous instruction.

10:00-11:15: Morning Meeting/LA
11:15-12:00 Science/Social Studies
LUNCH
12:30-1:30 Math instruction
BREAK
1:45-2:45 or 2:50-3:50 Specials

The assumption was that kids would do assignments after their synchronous time had completed as well.

OP, sounds like your school is choosing to do less than they could.

Our kids might be at the same ES. During the meeting, he said that this is the sort of schedule that a group of principals had gotten together and developed (as a rough outline), so maybe there will be a bunch of ES with similar schedules.

May I ask which elementary school this is? This looks like a good schedule for DL. I didn't hear anything from our principal. No meeting or emails

Bull Run ES. Our principal was very engaged with the kids and parents during the Spring DL, and has remained engaged over summer. We have been getting weekly emails. He held a townhall of sorts yesterday, scheduled from 6:30 - 8:00, but stayed to answer questions until 8:30-ish.

First quoted PP here. We are at Canterbury Woods ES, and our principal has been the same. It hasn't been perfect, but I think it's been about as good as it could get in FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Wait, am I dumb? Why do the online schedules have to match up to the in-person schedules if they are two completely different systems with no crossover.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was a sample schedule for upper grades released by our principal, with a total listed as 4 hours of synchronous instruction.

10:00-11:15: Morning Meeting/LA
11:15-12:00 Science/Social Studies
LUNCH
12:30-1:30 Math instruction
BREAK
1:45-2:45 or 2:50-3:50 Specials

The assumption was that kids would do assignments after their synchronous time had completed as well.

OP, sounds like your school is choosing to do less than they could.

Why would online learning start at 10?

The schedule is suppoesd to match up with the real school's schedule.

So the middle school virtual classes are going to start at 7 am?

Sadly yes.

They’d get more online learners if it was at a reasonable time.