 |
| This is me. I am one with the internet (and Google) now. |
Hello!
I decided to start keeping a blog to document my experiences as a high school English teacher during the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020.
It's not because I have nothing else to do to stay busy (trust me), but because I'm hoping that either my experiences with Google Classroom or just teaching online in general may be useful to people out there.
What better way to start this blog than to give a tour of how I've set up my Google Classroom for my students to use for the rest of this semester?
Today was literally my first day of teaching online, so my Google Classroom might change between now and May (when our semester ends), but if anyone is out there reading this then maybe I'll keep up with the blog and you'll see any changes that may happen.
Last week was our Spring Break and both of my Content Area Teams (CATs) figured out what lessons we would be moving forward with for this week.
To get ready, I cleared out my two practice Google Classrooms so that I could go ahead and have my assignments organized and ready to go before Day 1.
 |
| I teach two preps (American and British Literature) so I have two sample classes for me to test my assignments in before they go live to students. |
I thought it might help my students to have an agenda for the week, so I made those before I started creating the actual assignments.
American Lit is going to continue on with The Great Gatsby (a text we started before schools closed) and Brit Lit is going to be working with assignments from the textbook that we use in my county (mostly because I helped create materials using that textbook and I see no reason to reinvent the wheel when I'm driving down a road where everything is actively on fire).
I tried to be as succinct as humanly possible in my students' agendas because, let's face it, they're overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. Everyone is overwhelmed. We're in the middle of a pandemic and the time to expect them to read between the lines is nowhere near right now.
 |
| The Brit Lit agenda (with my work email covered up so I don't get hate mail for being lame and starting a blog). |
I attached this agenda to the welcome back post (labeled #00 to make them wonder how many assignments they're getting between now and May and because it looked cool). My thinking was that students would read it, then continue on to the next part of week one-- my attendance check.
My school is aiming to have some face-to-face time with students, so as of right now we're using Zoom. Not gonna lie, I'm a little anxious about Zoom because of some of the horror stories in the news, but those same horror stories have taught me a ton of useful security tips and I feel (mostly) confident for tomorrow's first Zoom with students.
Many teachers are using Zoom to check attendance, but I wanted to be sure that I could get students who can't/won't use Zoom counted present, so I decided to use a Google Form instead of calling roll on Zoom.
My attendance check is labeled as assignment #01 and is only five questions long. I made very slight changes for American Lit and Brit Lit (okay, I changed out about three words and made them have different header images) and was satisfied with my handiwork.
 |
| American Lit's says "What are your American Lit assignments" and that's the only change I made. |
For the rest of my assignments, I pulled from materials we gathered together in my American Lit CAT and Brit Lit was pulled from the resources I got together for our county.
I labeled each assignment and then scheduled to post them in order so that, when a student logs in and looks at Google Classroom, they descend in order from #00 to #04
 |
| Pictured: The cleanest any classroom of mine will ever look. |
This morning, all of my assignments posted and I learned the value of turning off the option to get emails every time scheduled assignments post. No, really, do yourself a favor and turn those off so you don't get bombarded with notifications.
And that's my Day 1 set-up in a nutshell.
I had roughly 61% of my students check-in on their attendance checks today and am hoping to see closer to 100% tomorrow (which is the day scheduled for ELA instruction).
I REALLY hope I can continue to keep my Google Classroom this organized, but mostly I hope that I can continue to be useful to my coworkers and anyone else out there who is freaking out about having to suddenly become an online teacher.
It's insane, it's weird, and it's a very difficult time to just roll with what's happening, but I am so incredibly proud of my coworkers (and myself) for getting to this point (and through this day).
Looking forward to tomorrow (my first online instruction day) and the challenges and fun it will bring.
Until next time,
K. Hanlin
Comments
Post a Comment