001hi good morning this is mike morris i'm the superintendent of schools here in amherst and pelham and with me today is tim so i'll let him introduce himself hi everyone i'm tim schead and curriculum coordinator for the amherst regional public schools and we want to thank you for coming to today's session we're going to talk through the elementary remote learning schedule and plan our plan today is to talk for about 15-20 minutes going through some of the basics and some questions we've already received uh via email and then open it up for more dialogue for those of you who are here if you look at the lower right-hand corner of your screen there should be an opportunity to make comments um and so we'll try to go through our presentation then get to the q
002a but if people want to try it out just to say hi or good morning or whatever just so you know how that system works you can feel free um to do that but um really thank you coming we're really excited to share our plan we know it's a little complex and tim and i were just talking before we started that um we we tried to solve some complex problems and and there's no outcomes raised or simple solution to them there's really was the only way to do it was to create a complex schedule to meet our students needs and and that's what we'll plan to go through today but really thank you for joining us and i'm going to share my screen so go through a couple slides before we open it up for
003more interactive dialogue okay there we are and i think i'm going to take tim and i off so that people can see the shared images a little bit larger yeah i think that looks better um so again thanks for being here and we'll go through these and and then go through some questions so um really our guiding frames of how we were approaching this task is last spring the state set up a dynamic or a directive that we were really providing a menu of academic resources it was an emergency situation uh we know that was very hard for many of our families and frankly for our staff who are more used to providing instruction than resources this year it's it's not the same situation we're we're both mandated and excited to be providing explicit instruction
004for students um you know we did a survey last spring which many of you took we did a great turnout for that or response rate for that of families and staff members and some of the themes that came out is everyone wanted a predictable and reliable set of a schedule and routines throughout the day and the week there was a large focus on all parties and providing more synchronous instruction live instruction for students there was also a feeling and i think research bears this out that small group instruction really matters that 20 elementary students in a classroom that's not the best place for instruction to happen even as adults and tim and i when our leadership team is about 20 20 people on it we have meetings and everybody's on it it ends up being
005a lot of this right now a lot of monologue and that's not how we teach that's not how we think students learn best so it's really focusing on small group instruction we want to provide some of that feedback was that we wanted to provide more clarity and way finding systems so folks could gather resources and know where to go and also strong relationships between students and staff last spring we had the advantage of having six or seven months where staff and students got to know each other and built a classroom community that's not our scenario for this year so we know we need to build in some of that social emotional time and so that really led to our priorities for our schedule development a group of staff members met this spring and here's a
006summary of the priorities that they developed again you'll see a through line between the survey results uh and the priorities and one of the challenges for us is that we are not based in person and having small group instruction we try to do it as much as we can but it led to some complications of how to do that in a virtual schedule how do we provide small group instruction throughout the work day uh throughout the school day and the workday for many families and so that's why things got complex i've seen some schedules from other states and other districts that are kind of an hour for each of the core subjects all in a large group and kind of our the evidence last spring here but also the research evidence would be that that's
007not necessarily the best way to approach elementary school virtual education our teachers just finished on tuesday a week of distance learning from a virtual school international school has been around a long time and and they also reinforce that that small group instruction particularly in the core areas is critical and particularly for elementary age students and so um i think i will turn it over to tim to explain this very complicated chart we'll look at a grade level specific one in a minute that i think will help illuminate some of the um kind of what it looks like on a granular level much clearer but i'll turn it over tim thanks mike um so the reason for showing this is to get a sense of what an elementary school schedule on the broad level looks like
008so this would be the schedule for the entire school you can see kindergarten on the far left side and grade six on the far right side um and and and the need to look at the whole school is because there are staff shared across grade levels um so in fact when students have different subjects is dependent on when other grades have those subjects um you'll note in the right about the middle is a lunch block that's highlighted in blue there and that was designed so that um students who are getting school meals that are delivered out to neighborhoods that there's enough time for them to get those meals um and then for all students to have lunch and to have some time away from the computer screen um and so that is is time that
009won't be supervised by school staff online but is is time for lunch for recess at home uh for other types of play and and time away um i'll still point out on there that you'll see with each grade level except for kindergarten you see a 1a 1b 2a 2b and so on and and we'll explain a little bit more as the slides go along but each class will be split into an a group and a b group and and this goes back to what mike just mentioned about an effort to create smaller groups for teachers to work with um and just the final note on this slide is kindergarten in the remote setting will be half day so the kindergarten session prior to that lunch block is the morning session and the session after the
010lunch block is the afternoon session and mike i think we can go to the next slide all right and this is this is an example class schedule so this we simply took out one grade and blew it up a little bit for better visibility here and i want to point out on the left side is the a group and on the right side is the b group so this is this is a single class this is one classroom teacher but divided into two groups and so the elementary schools have been doing classroom placement the way that they normally would and placing students into classes and then teachers will be working to divide their class into the two groups and you'll see that the subject areas are staggered in a way here so that teachers can
011be teaching small groups and can alternate between group a and group b so if i just take a few moments to start at the top you'll see that all students are together in a morning meeting and and this is a community building time a check in time for teachers to give students some information about the day it's 15 minutes it's not intended to be long um again putting 20 students together at one time on a google meet is is not as productive as smaller groups so we really want to use those times well but also keep them to a minimum then you'll see that group a goes into an independent literacy time and so there will be activities that students will be engaged in um there'll be some choices of online activities there may be
012some some activities that students will do off the computer at that time uh related to literacy skills after that um that staying with group a they go into a math mini lesson and this could be taught live or it could be a recording um and the reason it may be a recording if you note if you look over to group b group b is in a small group literacy lesson at the same time and so the classroom teacher will be engaged with group d so while there may be times that a teacher will do a live mini lesson more often than not it will probably be a recorded lesson um then group a proceeds into their math small group lesson where they now have the teacher with them and and this is again a time
013for smaller group more intensive support from the teacher and then that group has a break and then they have their mini lesson in literacy and they're with a receipt small group uh one thing you'll note is that we tried to set up these schedules um and so that the mini lessons came before the small group work and that so students have a chance to get engaged in some of the work before meeting with the teacher that's that's been identified as a as a strong practice and that was something that teachers really emphasized that would be helpful in designing the schedule um then there's the lunch block and that's the same for both groups and then if you go to the afternoon there's a win block and so win is an acronym for what i need
014and there will be multiple things happening during this block uh students who receive services from special educators uh from occupational therapists physical therapists speech and language teachers that may be occurring during this time english learner support may be happening on instrumental music lessons could happen during this time um and at times there may be some independent activities going on during the win block then group a moves into specials and so this is what you're used to art music pe computers library and the specials teachers will be teaching live lessons and then another break and then an independent choice time and most classroom teachers will probably provide like a choice board of activities where students can select from activities again some may be online resources that the district is providing some maybe offline activities related to
015their academics of the day it's been really important to all of us that kids continue to be engaged in project based learning and completing activities and doing investigations that don't involve computers all day long uh and then the final block of the day in the case of this grade is is social studies or science for the whole class and again this will be a live lesson um with some possible time where um one colleague is using the term catch and release where a teacher might set some kids off with an activity send them off to do something and then come back to the whole group and that may be used at other times during the day as well and then it ends with a closing meeting on to wrap up the day to do some
016final um social community building uh before closing the day out and you can look down the b side i won't go through all of that step by step but you can see that it's mostly staggered so the teacher can bounce back and forth between the groups i think i think we can move on mike oops sorry about that jim i think you're good that's all right um so we put here some some frequently asked questions and some of this i i explained a little bit as i went through the schedule um but it may give you a little more detail and so some ques some questions that have come up as we develop schedules is what happens during an independent literacy block and and again as i mentioned that students may be reading independently or
017engaging in on online curriculum and tools to support literacy um and there are and this this may be reading actual books that that one holds in one's hand um or one of the online resources that delivers ebooks to children um independent choice block and so as i mentioned this may be project-based learning based on the curriculum areas that are happening during the day it might be some outdoor learning um or choices so um teachers could present a menu of activities and students choose which ones they're going to engage in uh the math and literacy mini lessons again will often be pre-recorded but may sometimes be a live mini lesson and this is a mini lesson is exactly what it sounds like it's meant to be brief and this this is terminology that we use when
018we're in in school normally during a typical school year uh where a mini lesson is is the launch to um an academic blocks that students get the big idea and then teachers usually spend the time after that working with individual students or small groups to help them understand the concept that was taught and so that would be the small group blocks okay um the social studies are science block students will participate in live instruction for unit study lessons uh and social studies and science during a typical school year is is often alternated where teachers will teach a science unit uh for several weeks followed by a social studies unit for several weeks um i don't anticipate a change to that sort of structuring each grade level and teacher has their own approach to that scheduling
019but this will be done in a block during the day and may also have other parts of the day integrated so there may be reading and writing involved in science learning or social studies learning uh during the specials blocks students participate in direct instruction in the specials areas um during those morning and closing meetings this is this is a time to again build routines to have an opportunity for students and teachers to check in with each other uh and and to make sure that they continue to build community in in this remote fashion uh during the lunch block this is not supervised by school staff uh so students will have time for to have lunch to have some play time time outside away from the computer um and much like what our lunch and recess
020block would look like during a normal school day and then during the win block which is something new on this schedule the what i need block is the time for learning extensions special education services instrumental music reading or math intervention or english learner's support as well as other services that students receive that can be plugged in during the school day okay and so i'll do a couple more and i see there's a number of questions uh going um coming through the chat more than probably could keep up with at the moment so we have a couple more slides and we'll transition there um so you know the a and b groups um as you can see in the schedule that tim talked about earlier that this is the way to for our schools to get
021to small group instruction i want to clarify because i see some of the comments that it's not that pelham won't be doing it but it is a different model when you have one teacher per grade level and some of the class sizes in pelham like first grade in particular are incredibly small um so you know i think they're the focus is on small group instruction pelham there are some ways that we can get at that without an a b model because of the class size in certain grade levels other ones it's a little bit harder um but teachers are putting those together again the same way they would do typical placement you know looking at friendships as well as looking at service delivery and making sure students have peers um so i think um i
022think that'll come up more in the questions that we get as well but i wanted to address that here during asynchronous learning periods are students still logged in with the teacher available so as you saw uh when tim was going over the schedule that teachers are going back and forth they're toggling between the two groups so the asynchronous periods um they are working with the other group of students as we're trying to get small groups it's sort of the only way we were able to get it with the same number of teachers is have uh to have that model that i think the really important thing that tim in particular as well as some of the principals and assistant principals have talked about is that we've purchased a number of different online learning platforms um
023that students can do independently for families who want want their children involved in that maybe at the end tim you can talk a little bit about some of the math literacy and science programs that are self-directed that even young students um can have success working on like lexia reading and some of the other ones that uh we've done we didn't have those last spring in the same way so uh that is a really important difference from last spring to now is that it's it's not we're trying to create situations where it's not totally on the caregiver to be able to provide that there's a number of questions and i'm seeing one now about the number of transitions so in google meets so the idea is that there would not need to be a new google
024meet address for each model so if there's a mini lesson that transitions to a small group lesson it'd be in the same kind of google meet call so i think on the schedule you know and then we went back and forth on this we chose to give a much more detailed schedule to families then a lot of the places again that are just showing math happens in this hour but i also want to be really clear that it's not involving the same number of transitions that it looks like on the schedule from the student perspective we're trying to give a pretty granular amount of information to families to be really transparent about it but it's not about navigating each of those specific transitions and i think we always have this tension point we're trying to
025simulate as much as possible the kind of instruction students would get during the school day but in-person instruction requires different things than virtual instruction so you know we sort of had some decisions to make about you know do we do instrumental music do we do specials and in our opinion at the district we value those arts we value those things and they create another transition for students so at the end of the day for us is we wanted to provide uh more well-rounded uh virtual education than probably were able to pull off really last spring and that does involve more transitions and we know that's our major input has major implications for caregivers uh about being able to support particularly young students one of the things that we'll get to and that's a it's a
026great uh segway is that there are two platforms so one of the pieces of feedback we received from last spring from staff in particular is how to not necessarily use google classroom for our youngest students that it's really the interface is it requires reading we know some of our younger students aren't quite reading you know at that level yet and it doesn't didn't seem developmentally appropriate for many of our students many of our families and many of our staff so we have transitioned to seesaw which is a different program that is meant for younger students and provides a lot more ability to navigate regardless of reading skills or age level so we think that'll be more successful than google classroom is for our youngest students again um a lot more icons a lot more easily
027to use navigate it's easier to navigate i guess you could say um as it relates to there we have one more slide i think and then we'll get on to some more question um i see some comments also about the synchronous piece uh we tried really hard and across seven grade levels it wasn't possible to cluster synchronous instruction and provided small group so you know we had to make a decision of do we want to cluster synchronous instruction and keep everyone with 20 students in a class or did we want to have again a little more of a complicated schedule to navigate i want to acknowledge that point and provide smaller group instruction and we ended up going with the smaller group instruction and we think again because of the service providers there's special educators
028ell teachers all those folks who work in multiple grade levels we couldn't cluster everything and provide small group and so for us based on the feedback last year synchronous instruction was an absolute and small groups and in synchronous instruction was a small group and that really forced some decisions that our folks had to make when they were designing a schedule and so i think we've we've talked about a number of these before um i think tim you mentioned instrumental music um we met some of the online learning platforms and maybe maybe i can turn over to you to talk about a couple of those i think it is worth noting that uh for the commandantes program that schedule actually literally as we speak is being finalized by the teachers in that program and it will
029be slightly adjusted because of needing two languages uh it will likely have slightly less independent time because of the need for oral language skill development in in two languages um and so tim i don't know if you're able to describe a little bit of the online learning platforms or just even give a piece of that sure um so what this summer um we took a look at some online learning resources that are supplemental in nature so they don't reply they don't do not replace the direct instruction or the main curriculum but they provide resources for students so that they can access independently um that would complement what they're learning and so one example is lexia which is a reading platform and this is something that teachers will be able to set students up with the
030district will provide accounts for students where they log in the very same way that they log in to their district accounts and it's it's a game-like platform to practice reading skills where teachers get information about what students are doing um and where they're meeting challenges as they work through it and there's a similar version in math it's called dream box and so these these will be potential activities to use during independent times um that also should not require much in the way of support for children at home uh they're they're very visual in nature so that students who don't yet read should be able to use them without without much problems and then there are other resources that older students will be engaged in that complement the curriculum teachers last spring used a lot of
031one called newsela and this provides non-fiction reading current events passages in science and social studies areas at different reading levels and they're particularly useful at upper grades grades three through six and so teachers and students will have access to that and and then in terms of sixth grade just to mention one we found that our sixth grade math curriculum which is also used at the middle school level um has an online version and this should make instruction and teaching and learning in math a little bit more fluid and smoother than it may have been in the spring in the remote setting thank you tim so um i'm just going to scroll up because we got a number of questions so thank you for all the questions that have been coming in um so we are
032you know i think next week you'll see about the logins we are trying to kind of reduce the number of logins that students need to do again there probably will have to be a different one for a whole group lesson versus a small group lesson um because you know there'll be two groups going on simultaneously but we're trying to reduce the number of logins that folks need i'll be honest that many other districts um in other states that mandated more synchronous instruction last year worked on this and students got have got quite adept at being able to log in and out of different different um different lessons different google meets and for us it's going to be a little bit complicated because we didn't do as much of that last spring or statewide we didn't
033do as much but much of the first week or two is going to be also training caregivers whoever that is in the home but also training students to become more independent so i wouldn't expect that this schedule will be implemented on the first day of school next week with all the different kind of lessons it's really going to be around community building and building students capacity to be independent navigating an online world so i should have said that at the beginning and i apologize i didn't um it's question about feedback we will be gathering feedback throughout the year about how this is going uh and we this really came from the feedback from last spring about what was working well and not working well um you know and i think you know again i think
034one of the challenges that we had is across seven grade levels of an elementary school um how to balance that and i think even in the comments that we're seeing uh you know that there's some people who feel like this is too much synchronous instruction and some people who are feeling like this is not enough synchronous instruction and and i think that's the world we live in you know when we try to cut it down the middle there definitely our districts that are trying to do four or five hours on google meets you know for us and all the training we've done from virtual schools they don't try to do four or five hours five hours of virtual time in google meets every day we're also trying to also balance that we need to do
035a lot more than we did last spring and i see those comments about breakout rooms really that's what the small group pieces uh are is that they're they're sort of an opportunity for a breakup room to happen um and i know with the middle school high school is moving a lot uh moving towards that a lot as well um um see so yeah there's a lot of conversation going on with staff about populating a calendar with appropriate links and creating digital calendars see some examples of that and that's some of the training that we teachers had last week was specifically on wayfinding how do we support caregivers and students around around that process and again help to for students to be much more independent um let me see um just scrolling back up because i
036don't want to google me actually none of the programs allow for breakout room so zoom which we don't use for a whole host of reasons breakout rooms don't work on chromebooks if you go to zoom's website you'll see that google meet does have that program coming out that will work on chromebooks starting next month there are i think it's google chrome has extensions that allow for that so some of our students um are providing that um they can do that now but it could be much more integrated about a month from now um so there's a question about in-person school you know i'll be candid that we're you know we're moving forward and progressing with negotiations with the bargaining unit um and when there's an update to give we'll be happy to give it uh
037immediately we're not at that place just yet good question but attendance attendance will be taking in that that morning meeting um and you know uh that's the same way it is during in-person school at the elementary level and this is not wildly different from the schedule that was emailed out a couple weeks ago in an update um you know we refined it we got a lot of feedback from staff members that happen there's a question tim that you might be able to answer about social studies science a live session or on the computer or a combination um so the intention is that social studies and science instruction would be live um and and i think probably the way i described it was was a little confusing when i was talking about it in the schedule
038because i mentioned the possibility that that teachers may engage in live instruction and then give students something to do and then pull them back to finalize that um my intent was not to say it would not be live it will be live instruction but i think during any live instruction group there may be a time where teachers say to students to complete some piece of the activity as they're thinking they would still be live on the screen and then re-engage with the group so a couple questions attendance according to our state is required like it would be for in-person school um so i want to clarify that one um there's an email about for grades two to six families we we did not ask for binding uh decisions on in-person verse virtual because it's quite
039a ways away and we know people may change their minds as a result we may have to flex the classroom placements when we move to in person because folks you know invariably will change their minds some people will feel more comfortable being in person and some people will be more comfortable or you know decide to go the other way um and so that's that's sort of where we are with that um and um i think if you have concerns about that please share them with me um and um you know we'll certainly we present this at a public meeting at school committee we got some feedback from families and uh you know we continue to move forward there's a question about specials being uh one each of the specials one times a week that's actually
040something that uh you know in the virtual environment you know could make sense but as we move to in-person schooling we're thinking much more of a residency model and that's really so the specialists don't see 20 classes a week from a public health perspective we don't want our our staff members and that that's not advisable from our from the health perspective so we'll feel look a little bit different as we transition to in-person school but the idea is that students would still have access to a special a day and they would still have access to all five specials and receive the instruction in all five areas over the course of the year um our cast is about 20 students right now i think all classes are either at or under 20 students there may be
041one or two that i'm missing that are slightly over but yes the student the classes actually will be smaller this year especially as we move to in-person schooling because when we mix those two in classes in person classes have to be at smaller but for the virtual classes i think you'll see a very similar class size if not smaller than what people are used to um see sorry i'm scrolling up and down there's a lot of good comments um at this point you know we're still in negotiations so there's a lot of questions about in-person and again there's more to share but we would not there's no feeling of everything being pushed back in terms of what the school committee voted it's just really that that first phase wouldn't start till october 1st and we
042have more of an update um we will be able to share it um [Music] so yeah great question about first grader um and engagement and i think one of the things that we realized is last spring uh we weren't able to provide the level of training for our staff as what we would have liked and i think everyone did incredibly strong efforts to try to make this work but what we've learned you know really from some of the training we did over summer but particularly in the last couple of weeks are different ways to build relationships in an online setting so i do think people will see not just that there's more synchronous instruction but actually the pedagogy will look different than what it did last spring last spring i think our teachers our staff
043are doing the best they could to try to integrate in-person learning into a virtual environment without the training and now that people have had much more training i think people will families and students will see much more engaging content because we're supporting our teachers much better than we could of last year and there's a question most of the first part of september is trying to feel our way through the processes i think to charis brown's question absolutely that we're not starting with okay open up everyday math books as if nothing happened on the first day of school it's really trying to work through where students are as they go so i think the wind block there's a couple questions about that tim that you might be able to respond to that if teachers aren't engaged
044with a teacher during that time are they given some choices about what to do during that time yeah and the short answer is yes so this would be a time that if students are not engaged with with another um educator in some way which and and which in some cases is maybe para educators as well uh there will be a choice board of activities a list of assignments things like that that teachers will provide for students to engage in during that block um so it will not just be free time there will be some activities and some of them again may choose to be off screen and some so for some families the on-screen options that tim talked about earlier uh may be really good options during that time that are more self-directed for reading
045services um special ed or title one services that students receive that will continue that students will still receive their if students have an iep or 504 plan that have services or if they receive services from a reading specialist based on their title one supports their services um get the screen off actually um that that is um those will continue often during the wind block or other blocks of time and the special educators or title one teachers will reach out um reach out for those folks and the wind block again for instrument upper grade students who take an instrument uh one of the things the instrumental teachers uh it's great for their scheduling which they're never able to do is they can teach teachers some students from fort river and some students from wildwood simultaneously if
046they're at the same level playing violin and so actually this is the one of the weird silver linings is from a scheduling perspective we'll be able to kind of link similar student and especially for students who play low incidence for black or better phrase low incidence instruments uh like jello or some of the other instruments they'll actually have a group to be able to practice with that sometimes they don't in the school setting um so when independent choice are the same depending on the student i think that that's accurate having a chromebook offer advantages compared to any other computer no um there's there's not a particular advantage i think using google chrome as a browser is an advantage with google classroom um but any device that can have that would work for our youngest students
047we're like we're getting ipads uh which will work well in terms of a touch screen for preschool and kindergarten um but if you have a machine at home that you're comfortable with there's there's no advantage to using a chromebook versus one of those in terms of paper material distributed students that that'll be like a fort river i know tomorrow they're having a pickup day and that'll be organized in advance by either the school or the district um and assuming kids can do off-screen assumes they have a caregiver to help support that i don't think this is a fair assumption right so i want to be really clear that this is not we are not able to provide what we would think of as typical coverage or child care in a virtual environment that that we
048know that this is an imposition on families that we have because of the pandemic so i do want to address that i don't think there's a way that we could maintain and really provide child care in the same way in an online setting that we can in a virtual setting that we can in person so people people can disagree with that statement and that's fine but from our perspective our focus is on education and you know we're trying to do the best that we can with the resources we can to educate kids at the highest level and uh we're trying to do that as well as we can knowing that some families won't have one parents won't be both parents won't be in the home it will be an older sibling he's an eighth grade
049student and that's really the first couple weeks of building that classroom community and also supporting students to be much more independent about navigating this um we're always amazed at what our students do like reading and tim tim and i both used to be elementary student teachers and tim was a primary grade teacher so he can speak to this better uh better than i can and our teachers teach our students learn how to read which is magical i taught fifth and sixth grade and i was fortunate that most of my students were in pretty good shape with that when they got to me and so as opposed to looking at that we're really going to have to teach our students how to navigate an online world and much like teaching reading or something like that there's
050a code to it and that's really the focus of the first few weeks is to help our students be much more independent in doing that we understand that that it's not possible for all families to be home with their students or they may have multiple students navigating that one of the great ideas that we got at one of the um in-person town halls that we did about a month ago was to have headphones so we do have some headphones available and some of the pickups for chromebooks we're going to have those available particularly for income eligible families because they have multiple children on devices in multiple classes simultaneously in a small house small apartment we want to make sure that folks can be able to manage that and be able to not have the you
051know calculus class in one room uh intersecting with the fourth grade class in the same room because that's where both students are working so you know i think that that is our focus um and and that's what we're trying to do the best we can um i think um for the question about standardized testing uh i've got an update on this from the commissioner our current secretary of education in washington d.c has indicated that there are no waivers coming in terms of statewide standardized testing this spring we'll see if that person's still in that role when we get to the spring or not and that's not a political statement it's just there's an election and we don't know what will happen i'll leave it there um so the state doesn't have the ability to suspend
052standardized testing would need a waiver from the federal government and so it's uh it's sort of wait and see on that for us we are doing some assessment at the beginning of the school year and we will do some in the virtual context because we know that it's been a long time since students were in school in person and we want to get a better read on where they're at so this is not high stakes testing it's really helping us instructionally understand where we are um and and what we how we can support our students um yeah there's a good one about inner student interactions outside of academics um so we're trying to provide as much as we can during the school day um google meet for education has some really thick boundaries and actually
053school from a safety and security perspective we don't typically allow students to be in unsupervised spaces in school and the same thing sort of operates more or less in virtual spaces for elementary students so we don't necessarily have a way to facilitate that um but i do think our pgos do a fabulous job of running events and i know they'll be thinking about how to do this in a virtual context and how to provide kind of emails and other ways through facetime or other resources that families can connect off the school day but we would have the same supervision concerns about students being together you know in school in a virtual context that we do in a in school context as well if people still have chromebooks maybe a deb if you could put in
054jerry champagne's address email address he would love to know that i think at this point it will need to eventually be returned and get refreshed and that happened it was a busy summer and and emails sometimes don't always go to the right place and might have gotten to junk about the reminders around that that's not a problem at all but you know as about 2000 devices are being given out starting yesterday and going through tuesday it may take a little while for us to collect that and and refresh it um but if deb can put jerry champagne's director of is's email address in there that that'd be the place to go um i think window would operate similar to mcas that is a required test from the state um but that's a really good question
055and i i'm not i don't know if tim's confident about a response to that one as opposed to mcas that's a that's a good one yeah it's a great question and and i i have not heard updated rules around the widow yet yeah um so we'll get back to you on that one um excusable access absence kind of functions the same way according to the state as if it was in in school you know illness you know family illness things like that um the state has set up attendance guidelines that mira in person school or virtual school uh thanks deb for putting jerry's email address in there um we're looking at first grades getting chromebooks um and so i think at first grade we're feeling like uh if they were in school they'd be using
056the desktop computers during computer class so again having a chromebook and getting some support on its use we feel like's appropriate and i think it's a good question and certainly if some first graders if they have ipads at home and feel more comfortable on them you know ipads get to be limiting as students learn typing skills and are able to communicate that way you know for many students for myself included typing on an ipad uh is more challenging than typing in a keyboard but i i see lots of people better than me at that routinely so i think if that's that's a family choice but there are chromebooks will be available for first grade um oh great thank you phoebe for that uh chromebook piece about at this point we'll hold on to them and
057i think if there's uh a fix up time it'll come after you know the the 2000 have gone out and if there's a problem in touch with us and we'll work that out um i know i missed some because they were coming in really quickly so i'm going to scroll up or get near the end of our time period i think there's a question at the bottom um so it's a phoebe excuse me it's a danielle asks a good question about it's a pelham specific question so it looks to us based on the initial read that we'll have two to three virtual classrooms across our two districts clash union 26 which is the emerson pelham at the grade level as pelham only has one teacher per grade level their pelham's teachers can't do the virtual
058school plus the in-person school it's not possible to do both um so for upper grade students when students come in in person and students transition to virtual there will be one teacher that is assigned or more than one but a teacher will be assigned to that virtual classroom as the majority of teachers go to in-person instruction um and so it's um i think there will be that transition um and we can definitely communicate that for pelham it's a unique perspective because there's not another teacher but the same is true there may not be a virtual teacher from crocker farm for a certain grade level maybe a teacher from fort river or from wildwood um and so uh we're doing the best we can i'll be honest that there's there's many um thanks laura uh there
059there's many um schools that are just using um and i shouldn't say just but are using um online companies to do their virtual in other words they're putting all their teachers um in the in-person learning and using like ingenuity or the florida virtuals charter school we've decided in this district we're trying to support both uh we're trying to support both the in-persons uh students with teachers from our districts as well as the remote and so there comes some there comes with challenges with that but some of the neighboring districts have sort of avoided that problem but for us we wanted our teachers in front of our students whether in person or virtual um you know i think the pelham specific update came from the principal i think she's emailed that but i would i would
060go to lee who's incredibly responsive on that if you don't need a chromebook provided i think you're all set because there was an email just asking for who needed it will the kindergartners be doing more screens and video calls they're they'll have access to those some of those online programs but especially as those kindergarten students have never been in our schools before if they have it was the crocker farm preschool we we're trying to keep the screen time lower and that's why they have half days to be more realistic about it but it wouldn't be that they don't have access to the online programs i'm looking at tim to make sure i'm correct that they would have the same access to some of the early childhood or early reading online yeah yeah um so danielle's
061question it would be a mixed group pelham and amherst kids it might be a mixed group between market and fort river kids for that online option um to explain the chromebooks uh anyone who needs a chromebook can get a chromebook uh there was an email multiple emails that went out asking for who is interested in chromebooks and those pickups are organized by school on your principal uh has emailed those out and if if that's something that you haven't gotten i would i would get in touch with your principal uh but that's sort of uh in in effect but no one needs to get a chromebook because we don't uh if you have a device at home that you feel like you'd like to use or you feel uh is sufficient that's great particularly as a
062nationwide chromebook shortage based on some things going on on the other side of the world um but i think if you're in a grade my advice would be if if you have a student in grades one through six having some kind of laptop or chromebook is probably advisable um for some people the ipad may be sufficient um at least at the beginning of the year and it may trend maybe people may want to transition later um and um if it's a foreigner i see a four river specific question if people can't pick up supplies i would get in touch with with miss chamberlain um to see what other options are available uh the ipads are unrude they've been saying they've been shipped for a while um and as soon as we get them we're gonna
063provide them um but like many technology devices these days uh the back orders on them is is is a real challenge um so we're doing we're scrambling as best we can to provide uh the resources as best as best we can um so um there's a question of phase two students stay online how might they get a teacher from another school how does it work with principals and directors related to each school so at the time that students go in person at any phase they may get a teacher from another school because the it's going to be a district-wide approach to who the virtual teachers are again our choices where district-wide approach or a virtual school you know like florida virtual schools the one that most people around here are using are ingenuity so that
064transition will happen when we ask for binding surveys which will be a couple weeks before that phase starts and it'll be communicated who that teacher is ahead of time um and so there's a question about in-person versus independent work versus special education services and that's really dependent on what the special education service is so that's going to be individual student dependent um so for kindergarten we would be giving an ipad not a chromebook anyway that's correct um and i think for kindergartners to start with that at this point is really just a device that they can access and meet their teacher i think it's much less important what device it is um this is the beginning of kindergarten uh really it's around building relationships uh it'll be about orienting so i think for for five-year-olds
065i wouldn't stress which device it is at the moment because we're not going to be asking tremendous amounts of homework or work to be done it's really going to be much more teacher directed and orientation focused at the beginning of the year than it is going to be sort of getting to the curriculum in a very fast way we know that these children are five years old we know they're entering kindergarten a very unusual circumstance and we know particularly for the students who are coming in person assuming that we wrap up negotiations effectively they're going to be starting in-person school pretty soon so that online interface is really going to be about supporting students about how does how does kindergarten work and supporting their re-entry into school a couple weeks later so i that's not
066one i would stress you know one of the nice things about google meets right now is if people have google chromecast i think it's called people can also stream from any device onto their television which is a really nice feature for you thinking about young kids and and screen sizes and so um that that's what i'd say about kindergarten and teachers can conduct classes from the classroom virtually they also can do it from their home setting and that's the choice that teachers are making um [Music] i think probably the last question we have time for is most students want to participate in the same specials in the same day so the special schedule will rotate by different grade levels so it would be that it's not so much a choice perspective it's that the class
067the the group would go together to those specials [Music] yeah and so it's 9 20 we're about five minutes over uh but that that's okay because there's a lot of good questions if are continuing questions i'd encourage you to follow up with either your child's teacher which you'll find out in the next day i think almost all the placement information at all the schools is going out today or tomorrow so that'll come soon or certainly can reach out to the principal for some school school school specific questions um i know our teachers are well equipped to be able to manage this they're really focused on orienting all of your children as well as all of you into what this school year looks like i know it's a really odd thing and we really appreciate your
068patience that we're in trying to reinvent what we do in school and i feel much much more confident in where we are than i did last spring because we've had a summer of incredible work done by our teachers and tim was one of the people who organized this around we organized multiple sessions of live instruction for our special education students for title 1 students for ell students and we learned a tremendous amount about what works and what doesn't in a non-emergency setting in the summer so we're really taking what we know didn't work in the spring as well as what did what worked much better in the summer and really trying to apply it and we know it's complex but what i guarantee you is your teachers will walk you through this and they're not
069going to no student's going to be lost on day one with getting oh i i'm on page 74 already of my of the book that i'm supposed to be reading it's really going to be a soft entry into this is what this year is going to look like uh this is what um kind of this is how this is going to work this is how we're going to support you as children as caregivers to make the best out of this experience and so i want to reassure people that we've showed a schedule that's not going to exist on day one that schedule on day one is much more focused on that orientation that's going to last for a couple days because we want people to um to feel comfortable and confident everything that's in this
070slide deck is will be on our website on the fall 2020 website later this morning the actual schedules that tim went through was emailed out a couple days ago i think tim i'm trying to think um yeah yeah maybe yeah um and in terms of the a and b blocks your classroom teacher of the school will be sharing that before the school year starts so you have that and so we we know uh imperfect situation and perfect solution we feel much better about this solution than where we were last spring and much better about offering live direct teaching every single day in all of the primary content areas and small groups to your children so with that i appreciate all the feedback and comments keep them coming to either myself tim or the principals maybe
071deb can put mine and tim's email addresses in here the principal's email asks you email addresses i think you'll have for those of you who couldn't come on couldn't come to this this youtube link will stay live and active so if someone wants to watch this the same youtube link that you're all accessing right now you can email to people and say oh this was good you can send it we'll also send it in the newsletter that that's coming tomorrow um and in terms of day one you're you will hear from your teachers in your school about the logins before then that'll be individually that'll be individual so you know tim and i don't have the master list to send you at the moment we did from a security perspective uh we wouldn't put it
072in a public space anyway uh because we're very conscious of that so again we really appreciate the 150 or so people who logged in today to have this hopefully more people get to see it and we really appreciate all the questions and feedback and we'll continue to do these kind of sessions moving forward have a great have a great morning and look forward i'm sure everyone's anxious to get their placement information the next day so i know you'll be at your mailboxes looking out for that and thanks again