Monthly Archives: May 2020

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Science Meeting 5/26

Submitted by: Kelly O’Shea

We discussed some ideas about next year’s focus, including a book club (focusing on scientific racism and then transitioning into anti-bias work for our classes) and examining computational thinking to determine what we are doing and whether we should or should not be trying to integrate it into science. Other ideas brought up included finding labs to do together or planning for ways to bring science classes together with kids from different divisions.

We will keep it in the back of our minds this summer with the understanding that the departmental meeting structure could (and maybe should) change depending on what the fall schedule and structure looks like.

We talked about what science-specific needs we have for the uncertainty of the fall, and the main concern across all grade levels is how we can make and distribute kits of supplies to students with basic things that will allow them to do more science activities at home in our fall classes.

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World Language 4/28

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

This was the first time our full school department met together after moving to online teaching. We used the time to catch up, discuss our challenges, and share best practices, websites, and resources.

It was anecdotal and uplifting and most of us left feeling better about our experiences and how we could incorporate new ideas into our practice.

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World Language 2/25

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

We used this meeting time to continue to work on our documentation of how we teach oral skills across the divisions and listened to a presentation from lower school teachers Lizbeth and Paola.

We also talked about our continued efforts to to weave diversity into our lessons and classrooms and talked about how fortunate we are to have a content area which is by definition “diverse” and reflects diversity every day through the stories we read, language we speak and people we study.

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Ed Tech LREI@ Home

Submitted by: Clair Segal

-What does September hold for us:

-Training wise

-LS

-Celeste is trying to set up Drive accounts for the 3rd grade right now

-How young do we go and with what software? 

-Drive for 1st and 2nd? 

-Google Classroom? 

-MS

-Connect and Email set up

-Jumprope set up/norming

-Zoom training

-I can do that via Loom explanations/one on one work via Zoom if necessary

-HS

-Teacher training

-Two new English teachers

 

-Device/Set Up wise

-What devices do we have/can we give for which grades next year? 

-What is our file installation system? Are we still using File Wave for next year? And if so how do we get those things on our devices for next year

 

-LS

-What’s the plan for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th graders? 

-could we get the 2nd graders 4th-grade iPads? 

-could we get a set of the Chromebooks for the 3rd and 4th grades? 

-11 4th graders are leaving→ how can we retrieve their devices? 

-MS

-Mark and Jacob had discussed new 5th grade Chromebooks→ 

-5th->6th->7th->8th with devices moving up with kids each year

-HS Laptops for 9th grade

Filewave solution

External mouse also?

-Could this go on a supply list as something we ask the kids to buy? 

 

-Overall Integration Work

-LS

-Teachers are feeling much better about their tech usage

-Things are finally starting to quiet down/feel balanced for them 

-MS

-Teachers are being great, super willing to dig into things

-Since Zoom isn’t super reliable, it’s actually encouraging different models of teaching that they’re looking for tools to support

-HS

-Teachers have a lot of young kids, so they’re juggling at the same time as teaching

-We need to push them to innovate more→ everyone is rolling with it, but they’re also  not going far beyond their comfort zones/trying to recreate traditional teaching via Zoom

 

Happy Hour

-Every other week is working for us as a schedule

-Joy will host the next one on the 7th 

-Celeste will do the 21st 

-What’s our general theme for the next one? 

-Synchronous tools? Since we did asynchronous last time? 

– how are you engaging students over zoom?

 

-Question for the Group: 

-End of year events/plans. What do those look like? What do we need to support? What standards are we setting?