Hello friends.
Several of our family, friends, and colleagues have asked for us to share tools we created for our kiddos to keep our children learning during this time. These templates and tools have been well received so I wanted to publicly share them in the event that they are helpful to you as well. However, I have a few very strong caveats to ‘learning’ during these interesting times:
There are tremendous issues of inequity inherent in these times around access to technology, services, and supports to name just a few.
While there are three flexible templates at the bottom, I do not believe these are one size fits all templates.
Nor do I think these are tools that are perfect for everyone. So if you don’t like them, don’t use them. No worries and frankly you’re in good company!
I want to acknowledge my tremendous privilege in being able to support my kids during this time when many others are still heading to work.
And I want to give thanks to those folks bravely running TOWARDS the unknown: our healthcare workers and first responders.
You can skip to the bottom for the three templates** but below are six essential understandings that should be foundational to any learning, especially now: connections, clarity, curation, support, feedback, and flexibility:
CONNECTIONS:
As with anything in life, connections are essential before any real ‘work’ can begin. Hearts before heads, right (Portnoy, 2019)?
I’ve seen lots of teachers take photos of worksheets with their cell phones and email pictures as attachments to parents as the day’s ‘work’. To this I say: WE MUST DO BETTER.
While not everyone is as technologically savvy, I’d like to suggest we work harder to do more to connect with our kids (as teachers and parents) before shoving another worksheet down their throat. We’ll deal with the worksheet comment in a moment. First, some pointers for connecting.
Even when learning virtually, connections can happen in meaningful ways both synchronously (in real time) and asynchronously (at different times) if done well. What does it mean to do it well? You’ll see that below in CLARITY & CURATION.
Many schools are navigating issues of student privacy and have shied away from connecting online. There’s not a single perfect answer, but if your district allows it, here are some ways to CONNECT MEANINGFULLY both synchronously and asynchronously:
Synchronous: Gather together to connect in real time, ask questions, and just BE together:
Asynchronous:
FlipGrid: post a question and all your students can respond in their own time. Give them a due date (e.g., 3 p.m. today) and then ask that they respond to three of their peers by 3 p.m. tomorrow. Everyone has a face and a voice. It’s a beautiful thing.
SeeSaw: Students can safely share content with peers, teachers, and parents in an all in one platform that is super easy to use.
2. CLARITY
Funny how at work we are most frustrated when goals keep flip flopping and expectations keep getting changed. Kids are no different. All of us thrive when we have clarity of expectations. This means that while learning remotely you may need to take a step back and reconsider what is really important, and what is really expected.
My children have been receiving school work from their teachers for a few days now. Some teachers are doing a stellar job of creating meaningful learning experiences. But overall we’re finding that clarity of goals is best as a SHARED agreement.
For clarity you should consider together:
What assignments are most important? Why?
What does each assignment really teach? Is there a different/better way of doing it?
How long should your kids work on these assignments?
How will these assignments benefit your child in the future?
Clear expectations are key.
3. CURATION
You’ll notice that within this note as well as in each of the three templates there are handy links to the sites/sources where my kids will find relevant information.
In the daily schedule you’ll see that I have a general link to a few places on Khan Academy. In each of my kiddo’s schedules those links go DIRECTLY to the place where THEY need to begin.
Don’t know how to add links, no problem. Follow this link to learn how to add links to all your kids learning tools.
Trust me when I tell you that embedding links to their daily schedules will lessen their opportunity to mindlessly scroll through “the Google” (altogether: OK Boomer).
Or if you’re my youngest son it will remove the excuse for watching hours of youtubers. There’s plenty of time for that too.
TL;DR: Curate content before setting your learners loose!
As you and your kids become more comfortable with homeschooling and your kids are ready to become more autonomous in their learning, please consider engaging them in DESIGN SPRINTS to APPLY their knowledge by DESIGNING solutions. More on that in an upcoming post although you can get started here, here, and here.
The best scenario is that your children or students are engaged in co-creating knowledge. And what an incredible opportunity to invite your kids to see how to identify CREDIBLE sources. This is the ultimate teachable moment. Behold! You are officially a guide on the side, aka the ULTIMATE teacher!
4. SUPPORT
How will your kids ask for help while they’re learning? Will they email you or simply scream from the other end of the communal co-working space you’ve created?
In the classroom our kids may raise their hands, or they may walk up to the teacher. In our homes (and I’d argue even in the classroom) there are better ways for getting support when you’re stuck.
May I suggest a few strategies for support that may supercede screaming or frantically jumping up and down while you attempt to engage in a department wide video call?
Move On For Now: Write down your question in your daily activities page (template below) and move on for now.
Ask Me: If your question prevents you from moving on, send a text to me and I’ll come over and help when I can
Use Your Resources: Encourage your kids to access one of these child-friendly websites:
Here’s a great opportunity to help your kids develop essential skills that will boost executive functioning skills (regular people speak: solve problems on your own!). Using the language that feels right for your kiddos, consider adopting these strategies when your kids get stuck:
Is this something that is available in my notes?
Is this something that is available to see if I go back through the learning I’ve done?
Is this something I can ask my sibling about? Can I FaceTime a friend (yes, this reeks of privilege.)
Establishing ways your kids can ask for support increases CLARITY about this new process and also ensures that they are developing awesome and hugely important skills for becoming more self-reliant learners. It may prevent us from ever seeing something as amazing as this again but us work from home folks (mainly women) may not mind that so much. So...perhaps proceed with caution?
5. FEEDBACK
This probably should have been number one, but I think all of these should be number one so this is now number five.
This one is simple: If you’re going to give your kids stuff to do, please be sure you look at it and give them feedback.
But what feedback should I give? I’m so glad you asked. Here are some helpful prompts:
I was really excited to see your work doing … today, I wonder if you can see a connection between what you’ve learned and ….
It looks like you spent a lot of time on ….do you have any questions about this work or why it’s important to know?
What is something about …. that most surprised you?
What is something you’d like to spend more time learning about tomorrow?
If you are giving them busywork and it has no inherent purpose, please consider NOT giving it at all. In fact, please let them go play instead.
Want to learn about how during play our kids are often learning far more than they are in the classroom? Read more here, here, and here.
6. FLEXIBILITY
Perhaps the most solid piece of advice anyone could give is not advice at all but knowledge that we are together in solidarity in this experience. The reality is that life without schooling as we know it could go on indefinitely and our kids would be okay. Read that last sentence over again.
This virus has turned us all into homeschoolers. And we are not alone. In fact, we’re in pretty good company.
What we’ve known for decades is that the way we’ve done school, broken up into discrete segments, is not working. Yes, I’m aware that I’m saying that while also giving you templates for how to recreate this broken system in your own home. Old habits die hard. It’s a process that we have to unlearn together.
What we’ll soon see is that NOT administering the inane yearly standardized tests is NOT the end of the world.
In fact, we will likely see that the mental health of our students improves and the opportunity to learn rich content increases if we are not tethered to standardized tests.
Removing sanctions from learning sets us free to learn because as humans we are innately curious creatures.
During this time I invite you to reach out for support, be flexible with yourself and your kids, and if we’re intentional, this could actually be an opportunity to innovate on the way that we’ve always done school to make it better and more meaningful for all of us.
THREE TEMPLATES FOR TODAY, NOT FOREVER
These are the three templates that we’ve already iterated upon a zillion times to swap out different learning experiences. I’ve stuck with the initial links to Khan Academy because we think their content is stellar and it's a simple and seamless way to begin.
As an author and educator my work is my currency and directly tied to my credibility. As such I invite you to use my work with attribution**:
Daily Activities: Your mileage may vary. Use this as a flexible template to add the work that your kids are doing in their schools or the content that they are most excited to learn about.
Morning Reflection: This is a flexible template that will provide opportunities to reflect on the things that brought your children joy, the questions they still have, or the areas they may still wish to explore. I cannot state enough how much this piece is MAGICAL! Here is where you can guide your kids to create their own design thinking experiences around the content that THEY want to learn most about in the world.
Today I Learned: Another flexible template that is a final reflection at the end of the day that is a GREAT place to start for providing FEEDBACK and seeing where your kids need SUPPORT. This is also a stellar way to build design thinking experiences into future learning as your kids learn to rely more on themselves as active co-creators and not passive consumers of knowledge. This is the ultimate goal of learning (IMO).
**A surefire way to avoid plagiarism? Cite your sources! Learn more about plagiarism here.
Yes, even when you’ve removed quotations or think you are paraphrasing what you have learned from another you must still cite the author. Hard stop. Otherwise you are engaged in plagiarism and that’s not cool.
Speaking of attribution, I want to give a shout out to Kasey Bell who taught me how to make my google documents available for anyone to copy while not altering the original form. Score!
