Virtual Learning for Elementary School-Description by Our Principal

[Anonymous]

The schools that half-assed and gave the most pathetic and listless DL instruction in the spring will be allowed to do that again in the fall. This is all principal-driven. If your principal was OK with two 30 minute class meetings of show and tell in the spring, your principal will put out a schedule like this in the fall. It's completely unfair and inequitable but it's the truth. I bet Willow Springs will have an amazing DL schedule, based on what they apparently did in the spring. CHOOSE WISELY.

[Anonymous]

It would be so interesting to compare how happy parents were with DL at a school in the spring with percentages of parents at that school choosing DL in the fall.

Our school had a bad virtual spring and I only know one family doing DL in the fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They only promised 2.5 hours for ES. It was 3.5 only for students who needed extra services like ESL or special ed.

Btw, thanks for sharing the schedule, it helps me compare the two options better. At least the DL teacher doesn't have to waste time repeatedly telling the K-2 age kids to keep their masks on or not fiddle with it.

Yes, they only said 2.5-3.5 hours. Also really love this schedule - consistently every day from Monday to Thursday (or Tue. to Friday since they said Monday used for a planning day?) I personally think this is much better than the hybrid one!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:“Teachers provide” 3.5 hours of instruction to include small groups. Not every kid will receive small groups on the same day apparently. This is what happened in the spring to us. NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I would push back on your principal. This seems wrong.

I am in agreement that kids should be getting more than 2.5 or 3.5 hours of instruction, although I do think it will be hard for kids to attend to computer instruction for much longer—giving choice boards and independent work gives them a chance to do some work on their own without having to try to engage constantly. Additionally, kids NEED to do work on their own; I am not just dumping knowledge in their heads, I am teaching them to apply it, so they need application opportunities. I would rather see the independent work time bracketed by lessons so they return to the teacher and can be a little more accountable.


Of course kids won’t get small groups on the same day; they don’t in the classroom, either. If I have 60 minutes for guided reading and do 20-minute groups, I can only fit in 3. The other kids have independent reading work I have assigned. Kids also need that independent time—they have to practice reading on their own to get better at it, and not just for homework.

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I think 3.5 hours of live instruction is more than enough, but that’s not what the schedule posted by OP provides. It’s much less! I also agree there needs to be practice time, but that work needs to be reviewed by a teacher in small group time. That didn’t happen last year and it was awful to make our kid do all fo the assignments but never get any feedback. We don’t want to grade his work! He hates us as teachers lol. That’s your job, we are too mean.

PP- laughing at everyone here. I agree the kids need feedback on their work, they will get that with DL as work will be graded. They do NOT need to have the teaching looking at them while doing the work. I honestly wonder if most of the posters here went to school. Do you not remember working on work at your desk? That doesn’t need to be done on a camera. If your child needs that much face time with a teacher in the 6th grade, you should be looking at an IEP. Your 6th grader is either in middle school or headed there and needs to take charge of their own learning. They absolutely should be able to get directions from the teacher, attempt to follow up and be able to email the teacher or ask questions during office hours. IF they can’t, you should be concerned about middle school.

I didn’t say the work needs to be done on camera. I said it needs to be reviewed, preferable in small groups so the child actually gets feedback on areas where they might struggle. Also we are talking about elementary school, not middle school. At least in my case, 3rd grade. 3.5 hours is plenty, like I said. 3 is okay, I’m assuming the office hours make up the extra 30 in the sample. I don’t think it’s a bad schedule if each kid gets one small group and access to office hours every day.

This is way less than 3 hours though?

Is it, looks like about 3 including 1.5 hours of specials, one small group (either math or reading), and 30 minutes of office hours. Did I miss something?

Office hours are not going to be every day. Your child is not going to get small group time every day. It will probably be once per week per subject. If its not his day, it's 50 minutes of instruction with the teacher. That's it.

That’s not what the schedule says though? I mean you can say this, but it’s not true. Looks like teacher will do math and reading groups daily, and the kids will get one of the two each day. So 2 reading group days and 2 math days. Plus 1.5 hours of specials. Plus morning meeting, office hours, and 50 mins of instruction in math, language arts, and social studies. I get that you want to feel good about sending your kid In person but this DL schedule is not as bad as you are making it out to be.

it depends on the size of small groups- if there are 30 kids in a class and small means 5 kids, you aren't getting small group time daily (maybe even weekly). If small means 10, then you have a better shot, but that's not really a small group anymore. If you have a kid who does well and isn't a squeaky wheel who knows how much office hours time they'll get compared to those that need extra help. If they could have even pushed it to 4 hours a day, we'd be doing DL, but a minimum guarantee of 2.5 hours a day plus how badly our school botched DL in the Spring is why 97% of our school has chosen hybrid so far

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The schools that half-assed and gave the most pathetic and listless DL instruction in the spring will be allowed to do that again in the fall. This is all principal-driven. If your principal was OK with two 30 minute class meetings of show and tell in the spring, your principal will put out a schedule like this in the fall. It's completely unfair and inequitable but it's the truth. I bet Willow Springs will have an amazing DL schedule, based on what they apparently did in the spring. CHOOSE WISELY.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They only promised 2.5 hours for ES. It was 3.5 only for students who needed extra services like ESL or special ed.

Btw, thanks for sharing the schedule, it helps me compare the two options better. At least the DL teacher doesn't have to waste time repeatedly telling the K-2 age kids to keep their masks on or not fiddle with it.

Yes, they only said 2.5-3.5 hours. Also really love this schedule - consistently every day from Monday to Thursday (or Tue. to Friday since they said Monday used for a planning day?) I personally think this is much better than the hybrid one!

I don't understand your perspective. This schedule isn't even 2.5 hours of instruction. How old is your child?

[Anonymous]

So if a kid does not have math or ELA group on a day then they would get only 50 minutes total live instruction from the teacher on that day? Is this how it is in a regular day at school also? If it is then it is eye opening. I moved from a different country so it is shocking to see this schedule.

[Anonymous]

They said the DL classes could be larger than the normal class size, right? So there could be 30-40 kids. Which means many small groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if a kid does not have math or ELA group on a day then they would get only 50 minutes total live instruction from the teacher on that day? Is this how it is in a regular day at school also? If it is then it is eye opening. I moved from a different country so it is shocking to see this schedule.

Yes. Four days a week, 50 minutes instructional time from the classroom teacher + 20 minutes of "morning meeting" (not instructional time) + 30 minutes with a specials teacher (live presumably but who knows). And some small amount of small group ELA/math time per week that is uncertain due to class size, teacher motivation, etc.

[Anonymous]

I would like FCPS to weigh in on whether this is actually what they had in mind with the virtual learning before I choose what we are doing! This is nowhere near the 3.5 hours of instruction promised for the upper grades.

OP, did you ask anyone in FCPS admin about this?

[Anonymous]

I think the main issue with this schedule is the principal was trying to duplicate virtually what happens in an ES classroom during the day, instead of re-imagine what a virtual classroom could and should look like. Kids in the ES classroom are working in groups, moving around, doing stations, conferring with the teacher, socializing, etc. This schedule keeps the bare-bones nature of the direct instruction in the modern classroom, but just deletes all the other stuff without trying to do something new and different to replace it.

[Anonymous]

This actually sounds about right. People who thinks it is a straight 2.5 or 3.5 hours don't know how the kids are learning in school. Most of the time is spent doing independent/center work while the teacher works with different groups on different things. HS will look different because of their schedules and kids are already split based on specific classes. But ES has always been like this in regular times when kids were in school. Independent work is considered instruction time in the school, regardless of how you feel about it. Yeah, teachers could give feedback in the "small group" days that your child gets, but that also takes time. I mean, your kid is not the only kid in the class. The teacher can go over the activities in the small group and give all student feedback, but all this does is ensure that your particular small group will be seen maybe once a week, possibly once every 2 weeks depending on how many kids are in the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They said the DL classes could be larger than the normal class size, right? So there could be 30-40 kids. Which means many small groups.

And the small groups won't be all that small in classes that big. Over 4 days, you could have 10 kids in a "small group". In 30 minutes, how much individual attention is any one kid going to get?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The schools that half-assed and gave the most pathetic and listless DL instruction in the spring will be allowed to do that again in the fall. This is all principal-driven. If your principal was OK with two 30 minute class meetings of show and tell in the spring, your principal will put out a schedule like this in the fall. It's completely unfair and inequitable but it's the truth. I bet Willow Springs will have an amazing DL schedule, based on what they apparently did in the spring. CHOOSE WISELY.

I 100% agree which is why we are choosing hybrid. Spring was a total disappointment.

[Anonymous]

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.