But with social distance orders still very strict here in the Bay Area, the possibility of getting together is definitely out of the question. So that leaves us teachers with the task of doing some creative thinking to make sure our kiddos still feel honored and excited at the end of this school year. Here are some creative ideas that my co-teacher and I have been working on for our 2020 first grade final celebration:

Zoom Party

We decided to have a Zoom party for our last day of first grade. We'll invite students and their families to join us for an hour online to celebrate the end of the year. We'll start off with of our favorite class songs that we've learned throughout the year. Then we'll play some fun Zoom games, such as swingman, howdy neighbor, or MadLibs. Then we'll use breakout rooms to put families together in small groups to share their final fiction stories that they published!

Slideshow

I'm starting to compile a slideshow using pictures of different places in our school and our classroom. I also have a lot of pictures of the students learning playing together in our classroom from earlier in the year, so I'll put those in too. Finally, I am going to reach out to families and see if they have any pictures of their children with classmates. Then I'll put them all together into a slideshow with some of our school songs in the background. We'll play it at the end of our Zoom celebration on the last day of school to celebrate our year together.

Dress-Up Themes

Every morning in our Zoom circle time meetings during the last week of school, we have a dress-up theme! We are thinking of including pajamas and stuffies day (although some of them are always in their pajamas!), crazy hair day, fancy day, and costumes day. It will be optional, but I think a lot of kids will get really excited about the idea of dressing up!

Drive-By Pick Up

We have a lot of art materials, projects that never made it home, and some fun goodies we want to give to our students. To give families the opportunity for an in-person wave and chat with the teachers, we are organizing a drive-by pick up for our students. We'll have a two-hour window for families to come by and get their goodie bags. Their bags have their projects from art class, materials for a few more art projects to do at home, gift books, and their class T-shirts. We're so excited for the opportunity to see our students, hand off their bags, and say hello (from a safe six feet away of course)!

Class T-Shirts

One item going into their drive-by goodie bags is a class T-shirt. We designed a shirt that says “First Grade Room 9, 2019-2020” on the front. On the back it says “Growing together, even when we're apart” and then it lists all of the students' first names. We always paint class T-shirts at the end of each year, and we usually have the kids all sign each other's shirts. So we decided to continue the tradition, but this time we printed all the names for the kids. But we still left a big blank area for painting the shirt, and we included 4 colors of fabric paint in their bags.

Group Photo Message

We decided to hop on the group photo message trend! First I created a message that is 22 words long (the number of students we have in our class). Then I assigned each student a word. Their instructions were to write the word in big bubble letters and decorate it, then photograph themselves holding it up. Then I took all of their photos and put them together in the right order and make it into a single image. They won't know what the whole message is going to be we show them the final picture during our Zoom party on the last day of school!

We're really excited to make this end of the year special for our students, and to celebrate the amazing ways they've risen to the challenge of these extraordinary circumstances!

What are your plans for celebrating the end of the school year?
xoxo
Laura

The post End Of Year Celebrations… Distance Learning Style! appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

The decisions that teachers have to make about year-end assessments will probably be driven in large part by their school. My school is encouraging us to do whatever assessing we can, but letting each teacher use her own judgement about how to do it sensitively. I've decided to rely on informal assessments, and I decided it was important to be clear with myself what the goals of these assessments would be. I'm not trying to hold the students to the usual academic standards, as that wouldn't be fair, but instead focusing on gathering information to pass on to families and next year's teachers. This information will also help to inform my own distance learning strategies should we have to continue this in the fall or winter.

So we got creative and reimagined our assessments, for a Zoom platform. Our goal is to not have the students know they are being assessed, but to keep it a natural part of the activities with what we've already been doing with them during Zoom lessons. Here's a breakdown of the assessments we are giving, and how we're doing them.

• Running Records: Running records actually seem like one of the easiest assessments to do over Zoom. I'm already running small group reading sessions over Zoom every week, so instead of having kids use the books I was screen-sharing from Epic or Raz-Kids, I can just have them read the PDF of the leveled texts. The leveled texts are even available here for download. It can even be done with a small group. I can just have students switch off reading between books (for lower levels) or after several pages (for higher levels).
• Math Assessments: Math is honestly the subject I feel the most out of touch with. It's hard for me to get a sense of how much help they're getting from parents. I'm used to getting immediate feedback from students about what they understand or don't understand and adjusting my pacing based on that. So without that, I have felt a bit in the dark about where they're at. My plan with math is to use one of small group zoom meetings to do a “math review”. I'll give them a problem, have them solve it on their paper, and then we'll all share out the answer. This will give me some much-needed insight into how they are solving word problems and double-digit addition problems with no adult help. It's certainly not a complete assessment, but it will give me some information about math concepts and skills and how successful the lessons were.
• Writing Assessment: My co-teacher leads the writing small group sessions. Instead of doing her normal routine of having students share their work and comment on each other's writing, she's planning on having them write in response to a prompt. Our students have done writing prompts like this in the classroom, so it will be familiar to them. After writing about a page, they'll have their parents take a picture of it and email it to us. Again, this will help us determine what their writing is like without adult help, since it's so hard to determine the amount of support a child is receiving from family members.

How are you doing your class assessments with distance learning 
this spring?
xoxo
Laura

The post Assessing Over Zoom: Ideas and Tips appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

I have definitely been enjoying being able to wear leggings and sweatpants every day while working at home. I’ll throw on a nice blouse for Zoom meetings, and make sure my hair and makeup is done. I can hear some people asking: Hair and makeup? Why bother? Well, I did my hair and makeup every day when I was teaching in the classroom, and if my appearance is one teeny tiny thing that I can make consistent for my students during this crazy time, then it’s worth it. Here are some Zoom shots of some typical outfits I’ve been wearing. (Just picture leggings or sweatpants on the bottom half!)

With warmer weather starting up, I’ve also been pulling out some of my summer dresses. Turns out this is a super comfy option that looks professional on top with no extra effort! Here are some of the dress styles I’m loving for days with stacked Zoom meetings.

What has your workwear style been like lately?
xoxo
Laura

The post Zoom Tops and Blouses: The New Workwear appeared first on Love Grows Learning.