What happened to 2.5-3.5 hours of live instruction per day?

[Anonymous]

And why are there so many awkward breaks???? I just added up the hours and it is 4 hours live instruction for one child and 4.5 hours for my other child of live instruction. This does not include the MTSS. At least our school moved the family choice time to the end of the day.

I understand kids can’t sit straight through. Our school has 20-45 min breaks throughout the day from 8:30-3. Why does there have to be a closing meeting?

One kid has morning meeting, MTSS, break, specials, break, social studies, break, lunch, math, break, writing, closing meeting.
Another kid has morning meeting, reading, break, MTSS, math, break, social studies, lunch, specials, break, writing, closing meeting.

How many total live hours do your kids have?

1 hour math, 1 hour language arts, half hour specials and half hour social studies would have been just perfect.

[Anonymous]

People will complain it’s too much or too little. You’re in the former category.

[Anonymous]

I heard the state didn’t approved the plan which is a shame. We chose virtual bc of the schedule and it is VERY different than advertised.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard the state didn’t approved the plan which is a shame. We chose virtual bc of the schedule and it is VERY different than advertised.

If true, I'm actually really happy that the state is involved. If DL is going to be imposed on us, there should be actual governance over the districts so that they don't do another year of kick the can down the road.

[Anonymous]

What is MTSS?

To your actual post, I agree. The worst part is that the insistence on synchronous specials means that some kids are forced into shedules that will use up all their attention on the fluff and they will be burned out for the day by the time the actual important subjects happen. If we get a schedule like that I may pull to homeschool before that 9/30 "count day".

[Anonymous]

Are you in FCPS? The "instruction" time according to our principal will be a 10 minute lesson, and then students will go do work in google classrooms related to the lesson while the teacher meets with small groups. It is a whole day of logging on and off for very small pieces of actual instruction.

[Anonymous]

Your school teaches writing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your school teaches writing?

That’s what the schedule says. I’m not sure why there is reading and writing. Usually it is just called language arts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your school teaches writing?

Ha! They are given a “writing prompt” and then the teacher does other stuff while they write unsupervised. Then they are criticized for incorrect sentence case and punctuation. That has been our experience with “writing instruction” at our school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard the state didn’t approved the plan which is a shame. We chose virtual bc of the schedule and it is VERY different than advertised.

When did they do this?
Why would FCPS not share this information?

[Anonymous]

we have 4.5 hrs a day. We'll see how it goes. I am glad they are doing more, but I do think it will be a challenge to keep elementary kids engaged.

I do agree that there are a lot of awkward breaks. It will be a challenge to get kids to come back after 15 min and a lot of work for parents to monitor. At the same time the kids need these breaks and having them allows for more instruction. It will certainly be an interesting year. I keep wondering how kids will look back and remember this crazy time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your school teaches writing?

Ha! They are given a “writing prompt” and then the teacher does other stuff while they write unsupervised. Then they are criticized for incorrect sentence case and punctuation. That has been our experience with “writing instruction” at our school.

That would be great. Our school never bothered with writing prompts. Kids maybe wrote twice a year with no review of their writing the entire year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And why are there so many awkward breaks???? I just added up the hours and it is 4 hours live instruction for one child and 4.5 hours for my other child of live instruction. This does not include the MTSS. At least our school moved the family choice time to the end of the day.

I understand kids can’t sit straight through. Our school has 20-45 min breaks throughout the day from 8:30-3. Why does there have to be a closing meeting?

One kid has morning meeting, MTSS, break, specials, break, social studies, break, lunch, math, break, writing, closing meeting.
Another kid has morning meeting, reading, break, MTSS, math, break, social studies, lunch, specials, break, writing, closing meeting.

How many total live hours do your kids have?

1 hour math, 1 hour language arts, half hour specials and half hour social studies would have been just perfect.

In that math and LA block that includes small group time so your child won’t always have a full hour. They also won’t necessarily be needed during MTSS time either.

[Anonymous]

For elementary, our sample schedule showed 3.5 hours of synchronous learning stretched out over 7 hours. Literally longer than our regular school day. We haven’t seen the actual schedule yet; hopefully they shortened the day.
We were originally told 2.5-3.5 hour, then 4.5, then 5.5, then 7. It is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Hi, I can’t speak for all teachers of course but many that I know of in the primary grades are planning on having kids stay logged on with their cameras and mics off during the breaks. The teacher will just show a slide that tells kids when to come back on or will play music to let kids know to return when the music ends or will show a timer on the screen.