May 4, 2020

Corona & Tornadoes Couldn't Keep us Down

​Because we had to physically leave school on March 13, 2020 due to Corona Virus and a devastating tornado to our area Easter night, our instruction has suffered greatly. However, several things have kept me and my students constant. Because of my training with Instructure Canvas (cloud-based learning) and Instructional Technology, we’ve had a successful time with Virtual School. Because our Canvas has an app for Canvas Conferences, we haven’t missed a beat. It’s better than Zoom because ONLY MY STUDENTS can attend. No other person in the world can “crash” our classes. The students have taken Canvas quizzes, watched my embedded videos, and submitted Google Docs for their grades since March 13. 

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​Because 90% of their grade was as of March 13, and we’ve had to continue to teach and learn, we are “topping” the year off with some wonderful summaries of readings with books from Fluency Matters. No copyright infringements have been committed. I summarize the stories, the students read, then we discuss the stories with PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers). Thanks to the McKee Baking Grant I wrote last August, my students have been exposed to Brandon Brown versus Yucatan, Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro, and Llama en Lima. Both the students and I have thoroughly enjoyed these readers this spring. 

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