Meanwhile, the training for subs occurred on Friday. This four-hour training consisted of four parts:
- Human Resources
- Technology
- Elementary Subs
- Secondary Subs
First of all, it was mentioned that while any subbing up through this week could be done from home, it's preferable for assignments starting as soon as next week to be done from the school site. This is so that if we subs have trouble with technology, someone right there at the school is there to help us.
There was mention of Zoom, Google Classroom, and PowerSchool. You might recall that we used PowerSchool at the old charter school for attendance and grades. But it was stated that PowerSchool is on its way out -- instead, there will be increased use of the Canvas platform.
There was discussion of Zoom breakout rooms -- two of my fellow subs were be Zoom experts, and so they gave us some pointers here. On the other hand, Desmos wasn't mentioned -- then again, Desmos is used mainly by math teachers, and so we expect there to be little discussion of Desmos unless we're in a forum of math teachers.
We also looked ahead at what the hybrid schedule might look like in a few weeks. Unfortunately, the schedule mentioned during the meeting contradicts the hybrid proposal published earlier by the district -- and described here on my blog.
Earlier, I stated that if we label the two cohorts A and B, then Cohort A attends school on Tuesdays and Thursdays while Cohort B is Wednesdays and Fridays. But now it's stated that Cohort A is Tues./Wed. and Cohort B is Thurs./Friday. This makes sense because it's compatible with the current block schedule, where Tues./Thurs. is odd periods while Wed./Fri. is even periods:
- Tuesday: A odd
- Wednesday: A even
- Thursday: B odd
- Friday B even
(In previous posts, I referred to this new schedule as Hybrid 1 while the old schedule is Hybrid 2. In each case, the number refers to how many days apart the two in-person days are -- so Hybrid 1 means that the two in-person days are consecutive, and Hybrid 2 means there's an at-home day in between the two in-person days. While my new district will be Hybrid 1, my old district in LA County will still be Hybrid 2.)
There's also a change regarding synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction. Mondays, the weekly "Launch Day," are always going to be synchronous for all classes. When the hybrid begins and one cohort is attending in person, what is the other cohort doing? The previously published plan stated that the other cohort would be asynchronous on whichever days Tues.-Fri. aren't in person.
But at last week's meeting, it was stated that synchronous lessons might be possible. That is, the teacher (or sub) starts a lesson in person, and at the same time, the other cohort is watching on Zoom.
Other teachers have written about this type of hybrid schedule. One of them is Jessica Strom -- she wasn't a Blaugust participant, but she did write more about her hybrid plans last month:
Strom is from Minnesota, the same state as Sara VanDerWerf -- and so she does refer to the famous teacher-blogger a few times on her own blog. But pay close attention to what she wrote about hybrid:
My school is starting with hybrid learning in the high school. I am intrigued to try it, but have a few worries about the execution. We will see.
My goal is to still have a Thinking Classroom. I will be blending much of what I do in the classroom and what I did during distance learning.
My goal is to still have a Thinking Classroom. I will be blending much of what I do in the classroom and what I did during distance learning.
On the other hand, some Florida teachers are worried about a hybrid plan in their state:
Teachers knew this year was going to be a challenge with social distancing, extra sanitizing measures, technology issues, projecting their voices through a face mask for hours on end, and juggling students both in the classroom and at home — something the district is calling concurrent learning.
Four days into the new school year, some concurrent teachers aren’t so sure the teaching model is doable long term.
Notice that this article uses the word "concurrent" to refer to this model -- where the teacher is speaking to students both in person and at home at the same time.
The original hybrid plan published by my district wasn't concurrent -- it specifically mentioned that the cohort at home during hybrid would get asynchronous instruction. It wasn't until last week when it was mentioned that concurrent is possible in my Orange County district.
Many people are split on the distance learning issue. Some believe that the coronavirus threat is so strong that any in-person instruction is just asking for the virus to be spread. Indeed, it was recently mentioned that even college students can't be trusted to wear masks at school, so how much less can we trust K-12 students to keep them on? Thus, by this line of thinking, any in-person instruction is crazy, and so the only reasonable course is full distance learning.
On the other side are the zero percenters would believe that the coronavirus threat is so low that the chance of anyone under the age of 75 catching the virus is close to 0%. Therefore the only correct path moving forward is to have all students in class five days per week, just as in 2019. In-person instruction, to these people, is most effective for the students' academic and emotional well-being.
On this blog, I've promoted a hybrid schedule as the best of both worlds. By reducing the number of students in the classroom, social distancing becomes much easier. But those in the classroom can get help from the teacher more easily those days than on the days when they're at home.
But unfortunately, this concurrent plan sounds more like the worst of both worlds. Teachers can't fully pay attention to the classroom because they must watch the students who are on Zoom -- and vice versa. One fear is that most of the period would be spent making sure the students in class are wearing masks and the students at home are paying attention (not to mention taking attendance for both groups) rather than instruction. And this is even more so now that the length of class, originally 80 minutes in the old plan, is now suddenly only 55-60 minutes.
Notice that no hybrid plan has actually been adopted yet. Nothing is official until that same board meeting later this week, when a date for hybrid is expected to be announced. (In particular, the original hybrid plan that was asynchronous rather than concurrent was non-binding.)
I admit that I'm not looking forward to the concurrent plan, if that's indeed what's coming. Yes, this plan will be more difficult.
But here's the thing -- if a task is more difficult, then fewer people are willing to do it, thus leaving more opportunities for those who are willing to do it. Indeed, the announcement that subbing will be in person next week (even before hybrid) worried some other subs who, for various reasons, are less willing to travel. So far, when subs are able to work from home, I haven't gotten any calls yet (while it appears that some of the other subs have gotten calls). But next week, subs who don't wish to travel won't pick up jobs, thereby leaving more jobs for me. The same is true for concurrent -- if it's so difficult that teachers feel more of a need to take days off, then that's even more opportunities for me to pick up work.
I'll have more to say about this after the board meeting later this week.
It's time for Geometry. This is what I wrote last year about today's lesson:
Lesson 1-5 of the U of Chicago text is called "Drawing in Perspective." In the modern edition of the text, perspective doesn't appear until Lesson 9-4. This is more logical, as Chapter 9 in both editions is the chapter on three-dimensional figures.
Perspective appeared as Lesson 0.8 in Michael Serra's Discovering Geometry, which we already covered nearly two weeks ago on Day 8. This time, I'll reblog the old Lesson 1-5 post from last year.
Indeed, Lesson 1-5 is the other worksheet I taught in middle school four years ago as part of my opening week activities. This is what I wrote about it:
Speaking of class, today I gave the last of the opening week activities previously posted on the blog -- Designing Buildings. This is what I wrote earlier about this activity:
And as it turns out, Nguyen covered something similar to this in her class as well:
http://fawnnguyen.com/designing-buildings/
Nguyen's lesson takes a different approach to drawing three-dimensional figures. For one, the focus on this lesson is on buildings. Her lesson begins by having some buildings already drawn and the students counting the "rooms" and "windows." (As it turns out, one "room" is one cubic unit of volume, and one "window" is one square unit of lateral area.)
I like the way that Nguyen's lesson begins. Unlike the bridge problem, where I wanted to avoid beginning the school year with a problem that's impossible to solve, here we begin with a very solvable problem. The only issue I have is with the second question, because it requires materials. I work from the assumption that most classrooms don't have the blocks and isometric dot paper that Nguyen's classroom has.
(As an aside, notice that cubes drawn on isometric dot paper are definitely not in perspective. This is because, while edges perpendicular on the cube intersect at 120 degrees on the iso dot paper, edges parallel on the cube remain parallel on the paper. Therefore there are no vanishing points.)
Then again, my worksheet is very similar to Nguyen's. On the front side, I gave the same example as she did and the three buildings for the students also come from the Ventura County teacher. I used two of her easier buildings -- A and B -- and the more challenging Building F.
The back side of my worksheet differs slightly from Nguyen's, though. Her worksheet specified the number of rooms and windows and asked the students to draw the buildings. Mine, on the other hand, simply has the students draw four different buildings with eight rooms and then asks them to count the number of windows in each one.
Now that I'm giving this activity in an actual classroom, I don't have any interlocking cubes (which I can only assume means "Lego bricks"), but I did find some small manipulative cubes. There weren't enough for me to give every group eight cubes (as specified in the assignment) -- instead I gave five to each group of sixth graders and seven to each group of seventh graders. (Half the seventh graders were absent because they hadn't satisfied California's 7th grade vaccination requirement.) The eighth grade groups did receive the full set of eight cubes. I believe that having actual blocks certainly helped the students visualize the three-dimensional buildings.
By the way, here are the rules the middle school classes came up with as part of the Rules Posters. At last I'm done discussing the rules here on the blog:
1. Raise your hand
Lesson 1-5 of the U of Chicago text is called "Drawing in Perspective." In the modern edition of the text, perspective doesn't appear until Lesson 9-4. This is more logical, as Chapter 9 in both editions is the chapter on three-dimensional figures.
Perspective appeared as Lesson 0.8 in Michael Serra's Discovering Geometry, which we already covered nearly two weeks ago on Day 8. This time, I'll reblog the old Lesson 1-5 post from last year.
Indeed, Lesson 1-5 is the other worksheet I taught in middle school four years ago as part of my opening week activities. This is what I wrote about it:
Speaking of class, today I gave the last of the opening week activities previously posted on the blog -- Designing Buildings. This is what I wrote earlier about this activity:
And as it turns out, Nguyen covered something similar to this in her class as well:
http://fawnnguyen.com/designing-buildings/
Nguyen's lesson takes a different approach to drawing three-dimensional figures. For one, the focus on this lesson is on buildings. Her lesson begins by having some buildings already drawn and the students counting the "rooms" and "windows." (As it turns out, one "room" is one cubic unit of volume, and one "window" is one square unit of lateral area.)
I like the way that Nguyen's lesson begins. Unlike the bridge problem, where I wanted to avoid beginning the school year with a problem that's impossible to solve, here we begin with a very solvable problem. The only issue I have is with the second question, because it requires materials. I work from the assumption that most classrooms don't have the blocks and isometric dot paper that Nguyen's classroom has.
(As an aside, notice that cubes drawn on isometric dot paper are definitely not in perspective. This is because, while edges perpendicular on the cube intersect at 120 degrees on the iso dot paper, edges parallel on the cube remain parallel on the paper. Therefore there are no vanishing points.)
Then again, my worksheet is very similar to Nguyen's. On the front side, I gave the same example as she did and the three buildings for the students also come from the Ventura County teacher. I used two of her easier buildings -- A and B -- and the more challenging Building F.
The back side of my worksheet differs slightly from Nguyen's, though. Her worksheet specified the number of rooms and windows and asked the students to draw the buildings. Mine, on the other hand, simply has the students draw four different buildings with eight rooms and then asks them to count the number of windows in each one.
Now that I'm giving this activity in an actual classroom, I don't have any interlocking cubes (which I can only assume means "Lego bricks"), but I did find some small manipulative cubes. There weren't enough for me to give every group eight cubes (as specified in the assignment) -- instead I gave five to each group of sixth graders and seven to each group of seventh graders. (Half the seventh graders were absent because they hadn't satisfied California's 7th grade vaccination requirement.) The eighth grade groups did receive the full set of eight cubes. I believe that having actual blocks certainly helped the students visualize the three-dimensional buildings.
By the way, here are the rules the middle school classes came up with as part of the Rules Posters. At last I'm done discussing the rules here on the blog:
1. Raise your hand
2. Be silent and listen when it's someone else's turn to speak
3. Stay in your seat
4. Keep your hands to yourself
5. Keep the desks free of drawing
6. Treat the books, papers, and any other resources like you would treat your own items
7. Keep your voice at a conversational level
8. Allow the speaker to finish before you raise your hand
9. Speak in a respectful manner
10. Stay on task, work hard, and do your best!
Returning to 2020, let me end the cutting-and-pasting right here. Last year when I wrote this, I used this as an excuse to bring up classroom management from four years ago yet again.
(I then also started writing about students following and breaking rules regarding the use of technology -- as in playing non-academic games on Chromebooks or phones, during class time. But due to the coronavirus, these rules are difficult and awkward to enforce. Thus I'll cut out this part of the discussion from last year.)
Here is the worksheet for today:
Here is the worksheet for today:
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