Teaching and learning resumes – remotely, on Monday
Administrator | Apr 05, 2020 | Comments 0
Hastings Prince Edward District School Board students and teachers are back to class Monday – remotely.
Over the past few weeks, educators have been preparing the possibility of remote learning pending provincial school closures being extended beyond the original date of April 5. With the provincial announcement last week that schools will now be closed to students until May 4, 2020, plans are ready to roll out Monday through a phased-in approach.
Phase 1 covers the period April 6-17, 2020. During that time, the focus will be on meeting Ministry of Education-designated hours of work per student, per week, as well as developing learning tasks to meet students’ needs.
JK-Grade 6 students will be provided with five hours of work per student, per week;
Grades 7-8 will be provided with 10 hours of work per student, per week; and
Grades 9-12 will be provided with three hours per course, per student, per week.
Teachers will maintain weekly, two-way communication with students and families.
Learning tasks/plans will be available to families by Monday afternoons.
Teachers will check in on the progress of student learning and support students and families through unanticipated challenges.
This can be done by the teacher posting to an already established online learning platform that students and families are familiar with; or if a teacher is new to the digital/remote learning platform, they may connect with families through email, a phone call or text.
School administrators will communicate individually with families by selecting a different sample of families each week. This will enable administrators to support the connections and learning experiences; gain a school-based awareness of successes associated with this remote teaching approach; and find out about unanticipated challenges families are experiencing when accessing learning tasks provided by teachers.
In preparation for remote learning, this week educators had access to online refresher training through an HPEDSB-specially-designed website.
They could participate in online training sessions, book a meeting with a trainer, participate in peer-to-peer collaboration sessions, access online versions of textbooks and other resources that would normally be used in the classroom, or watch tutorials and videos.
HPEDSB is also supporting students and families with educator curated and created at-home learning activities in two ways:
– access to more than 250 online resources for anyone with access to technology and the Internet; and
– access to 150 no-tech activities that can be done without screen time.
While both are available through the HPEDSB Learning at Home website, they are also distributed through the free, weekly community newspapers (and online here), featuring a full-page, colour advertisement with a series of language and mathematics activities for K-12. The newspaper ads will continue until such time as they are not needed.
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