Week 7 – May 4 to May 8:
School Closure Planning
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Recap of week 6:
Happy Star Wars Day! During week 6 I devoted quite a bit of my time to contact families that I haven’t from in a while. I texted 17 parents from whom I have not heard on Bloomz and whose kids have either not checked or responded to me on Classcraft, or they have checked in on Classcraft but have turned in no work. I used Google Voice and heard back from 13 of them! I contacted six more via email and heard back from three. I messaged nine more parents on Bloomz and heard back from six of them. So of the 32 families that I needed to check in with after not hearing from them, I got through to 22 of them and have still not heard back from 10. Together with the rest of my team, the ELA teacher, the Math teacher, and our school counselor, we called and got through all but four. We are hoping that they are okay and are just too overwhelmed with life to focus on school.
Kids Taking Advantage 🙂
After contacting parents I started seeing work come in from students who hadn’t been doing anything for Science. Turns out that quite a few of the kids who have not been working were not being completely honest with their parents. Some told their parents they were working when in fact they weren’t. A couple of kids even told their parents that they didn’t have any Science work because I wasn’t assigning any. That one perplexed me because I can’t imagine anyone believing that. Either way, some families were saddened because they thought they could trust their 6th graders and now know that they are going to have to monitor their kids more closely. One more thing to do. ?
Since my course branches out based on what students complete, sometimes they get a choice of what to do next. So the assignments that are getting done tell me that students must prefer those. It’s no mystery to me that students who are starting to catch up are choosing to start with a Kahoot or a Pear Deck or a Google Form check-in survey. Those are small, engaging bites of work compared to the projects that require more work.
So currently, in order of most popular based on student completion I have my Week 3 Pear Deck check-in is still on top with 31 students, number 2 with 29 students completing is a brand new Advice Google Form Survey, in 3rd with 25 students completed is my Hydro Dynamics Challenge Check-in (now an old one), in 4th place with 19 students completed is my Earth Day Pear Deck, tied for 5th with 18 students completing each are my Water Pollution Kahoot and COVID-19 Escape Room, tied for 6th place with 15 students completing each are the HYDRO DYNAMICS CHALLENGE and a Physics Gimkit game that we created through a Pear Deck vocabulary activity, and in 7th place with 13 students completed is my Scientific Thinking activity that launched the Climate Change project (which of the 13 that completed the Scientific Thinking activity, four have completed the Climate Change research phase!). The only shocker for me is how few students are even interested in playing games from my Legends of Learning playlist. Many might not even be aware it’s there depending on where they are on the above image showing the branching of activities. And some just know they don’t like “educational” games.
Macros Zoom a Success
Last week’s Science Zoom Meeting with the guest presenter was a hit, kids loved it. About 24 kids joined, which was still not as much as ELA and Math are getting. I’m not sure why but they are getting 30 to 33 kids and I’m not.
eSports Still Under Development
Our eSports Minecraft program is still evolving. I introduced this amazing new challenge to my team, well, the seven who responded, and only one showed even the slightest interest! So I narrowed down their preferences and though I still have five to hear from four are mostly interested in playing PVP (Player vs Player) type games using the Java Edition and competing on the CompMC and Club Minecraft UK servers and three are mostly interested in playing cooperative building/creating using Minecraft Education Edition. This week I hope to follow through with that a help the kids organize themselves and have some fun playing and creating together.
Week 7 Plan
This week I need to hear from all of my eSports kids so that I can figure out which kids will play PVP and which kids will work on some Building/Creating challenges. I’ve also surveyed all my 6th graders about using Minecraft Education Edition for some Science Projects and 24 out of 29 responded that they both want to and can use Minecraft:EE! (That still means that 37 kids have not taken the survey but having 29 respond ties that survey for 2nd place of the most completed activities I’ve assigned while learning from home). This weekend I tried hosting some games from school because my home Wifi is too weak and I wasn’t able to connect to those worlds from home so I have a tech request in to see if it’s an issue with the ports being blocked by the school’s firewall. I hope that’s the problem or else I’ll need a plan B!
Wednesday I’ll be leading a follow-up tech training just for the elementary staff so I have to get together with the teachers who volunteered to lead small, breakout room sessions. Teachers filled a survey sharing their successes and needs with distance/online learning, which will help guide what we offer.
I am sharing this week’s plan with parents on all fronts, Bloomz, email, and text messages. I’m also sharing the plan with students on Classcraft! I’ve got a fun activity going this week as we participate in the Survive the Sound salmon migration race! It’s a great way to learn about salmon migration and have some fun together. We’ve got 23 members on our team tracking 23 salmon as they make their way up Puget Sound, it just started today.
I’m also thinking that this week I’ll record myself going down to our creek and collecting dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, turbidity, conductivity, and flow rate data for students. It’s not the same as having them collect the data themselves as 6th graders have been doing for the past 17 years but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances. If I record the prior to my Thursday Science Zoom Meeting I don’t want to share the video over a Zoom stream because it comes out choppy and laggy so I need to figure out what to do on Thursday. Maybe I’ll lead students through a deep dive into the data like I would have were we still in school. We’ll see!
Have a great Star Wars Day and a great week everyone!
