So like most teachers in Australia I spent the week before school holidays preparing material for teaching online.  Here in South Australia we were told that students who came to school would be on the same online program as those who were being kept home.  We were also told what that should look like – an hour of literacy, an hour of maths, an hour of other curriculum areas and two half hour physical activity sessions.  The hope was that parents wouldn’t get too overwhelmed.

Now, I’ve always been quite good at using technology in my classroom and was already using Google Classroom with my students, so for me it was around finding the balance between meaningful work for my students and making sure that it was something they could do online with just a couple of Google Meet check-ins with me a day keeping in mind the group included students with a reading ability from year 2-year 8.  However, I needed to be able to do this while also keeping an eye on the 16 students whose parents said they would be attending next term.

I am part of a pretty good team of teachers in my building and everyone had been saving ideas for weeks about what could be included in their program so we had a lot to choose from.  If you haven’t already checked out Readworks.org (always free!) I highly recommend it – it’s got a lot of American content but once you sift through that it’s amazing.  It offers the same text with different reading levels, it will read it to them if it’s still to hard and they can follow along, students can highlight the text and annotate, there’s vocabulary support for more difficult words and there’s multiple choice and short answer questions on the reading – and it even marks the multiple choice ones for you!  Besides the question sets I’m also going to have my students highlight certain aspects of the text that tie in with my mini lessons on writing.  For example, we’re doing narrative writing this term so I might ask them to re-read the introduction and highlight the setting and the words that describe it in orange, the characters in blue and the grabber lead in purple.

For maths I’ve decided to use Khan Academy (also always free!) Monday and Tuesday and give them tasks through Google Classroom for Wednesday-Friday.  Khan Academy is great in that it has video explanations, hints and explanations to support the students if they are struggling with a question and most importantly, I can decide what content I want them to do and set it for them.  You can set some students questions at a year 2 level and others at 3/4/5/6 level.  The rest of the week they will be doing questions in a Google Slide format -some which they drag the correct answer to the question, some they fill in the answer on their keyboard.  This way I have something I can keep to show their learning and they aren’t doing the same thing every day.

For the two fitness blocks I’ve decided to leave it fairly open so families can choose what suits them (and the weather).  I’ve given families the YouTube link to PE with Joe and Aerokids Australia who are both doing free online sessions that are geared towards kids, a list of outside activities like ride a bike, scooter, go for a walk, skip rope, shoot hoops etc.  Our PE teacher has also given them some things to do.

So that left me with the one hour of other curriculum areas.  Science, Italian and Music were going to be provided by our specialist teachers at school so I decided to cover HASS for the other two hours.  HASS seemed like the obvious choice for online learning as it normally goes hand-in-hand with a project and/or research of some kind.  The problem was to find ways to provide students with the information and explicit teaching they would normally get from me before the project/research got underway.  I also wanted something that kept the small group/partner/whole class dynamic going as I really wanted a way for those students at home to continue to feel part of the class.  So this is where I was at when school holidays started.

Cue South Australian Corona Virus numbers.  Here in South Australia we have managed to really clamp down on our numbers quite quickly.  For once it has paid off being a sleepy little country town – it’s not a huge tourist attraction, it’s not a jumping off point for international flights (we need to go to Melbourne, Sydney or Perth before going pretty much anywhere), and we’re not a cruise ship docking point.  So the past week has seen consistent numbers of zero-two new cases per day.  Now, this is fantastic news – people are listening and staying home and we are on top of the outbreak here.  For teachers though this comes with a knowledge that it most likely won’t be 16 in my class next term after all.  So I will be supervising almost a full class and trying to support those at home at the same time.  It’s also quite possible that the State Government will now turn around and say full classes resume and send your child back unless they or a family member are high risk.  Now, like most teachers I do the bulk of my planning and prep during school holidays each term for the following term, because there’s just no time during the term for marking, feedback, adjusting lessons and for planning new units.  So, now my HASS unit also needed to be able to morph between an online unit of work and a regular classroom unit of work as needed.  Oh – and did I mention I have a student teacher for the first six weeks of this term – yup I do.

So after a lot of stopping and starting I’ve developed a unit of work on Child Convicts and the First Fleet.  I decided to incorporate using Padlet (again free) for the students to share vocabulary to start the unit, mind maps on Google Slides for them to write their learning into as they watch short video clips and read kid friendly articles (I even found one that the site will read it to them if needed – winning), questions to answer, impact information poster on one of the impacts the new arrivals had on the Aboriginal population,  research shown in a formatted police report and a biography template, designing their own convict coin on paper and sending it to a peer for specific feedback and changes and an online 3D design of their convict coin using Tinkercad (also free).  I’m hoping to be able to have their coins 3D printed as well if the Makers Centre in the city reopens.  If we end up classroom as usual I can teach my students how to properly write a biography and they can use their mind map as their plan and teach a bit more on the impact (and continuing impact) that the arrival of the First Fleet had on the Aboriginal people.

Now that that is finished I got back to thinking about my maths.  I said that I’ve always used a fair bit of technology in my classroom, but this is the first time I’ve tried using Google Classroom for maths.  It’s got me thinking, how could I set up some of their usual games and centre-type activities to be used on their Chromebooks (we have BYO)?  So I created a multiplication Bingo that they can use their Bingo card on their computer and I can video chat with those at home the game so we can still all play it together (and most importantly – Harry Potter themed of course).  My next challenge is to try and create my maths sorts into something they can do through Google Slides as well.  I’ll keep you posted as to how that goes!

A couple of these are available in my TPT store if you’re interested.