The most common question I encounter about school this year is: Will we end up distance learning again this year?
The simple answer is yes. Until science provides a widely available vaccine and people accept the vaccine, there will be distance schooling for almost all children at some point in the school year. What this will look like for your child will vary depending on where you live.
The most common and basic distance learning a child will need to be prepared for is when they get sick. I’m not talking about contracting Covid-19, but just your basic flu, cold, or severe seasonal allergies.
Previously, schools were annoyed when children were sent in with mild symptoms, but they learned to keep tissues around and tried to encourage everyone to cover their sneezes. Now, symptoms will draw a stronger response and the child will be sent home and you will need to keep them at home until the symptoms clear. And even with the better sanitary practices everyone has, I expect kids will continue to get run-of-the-mill colds (though we should see a drop in their spread). The time home for these low-level illnesses will extend longer than usual, so kids will be expected to do some distance learning while they recover (children should not be expected to do school work while actively sick, let them rest and heal).
Some children will have to take two weeks off if their class experiences an acute exposure (someone in the room with a positive current coronavirus test). The rules for this kind of small group quarantine will vary from school district to school district, but it will be common enough that you should prepare for it. During this time, the children will most likely be expected to continue with regular school work unless they become actively ill.
In communities with high infection rates, the possibility of an entire school or school district closing again exists. No one wants this, so it is a good reason for people to follow guidelines to help keep the general community rates down. Hopefully, if this happens in your school everyone will be more prepared than we were for the shut down in the spring. But, even if you feel the distance teaching doesn’t keep your child on track for learning gains, there are simple things you can do to help them.
The most general support you can give your child in learning means ensuring they have access to books for level appropriate reading. Hopefully, level-appropriate changes during the school year, so I encourage parents to pick something you think might be just beyond their child’s reach. If the book proves too challenging you can always read it with them or save it to come back to later. And encouraging reading can happen even if they just stay home with a cold; they may not be getting the class-specific material, but they will still be keeping their learning skills developing.
Now, everyone has probably heard the advice to keep kids reading before (doesn’t make it less true). But, the other easy support gets brought up less often. Encourage the basic math skills (I’ll go into more detail in another post about the research behind this). Many people think practicing math means doing whatever math concept the child is currently learning. But, parents often struggle with keeping up with what concept they are learning and then tailoring their methods to mirroring the classroom. So, keep it simple.
Most parents can engage their child in doing the basic math skills: addition, subtraction, and regrouping for little children and multiplication; division, decimals, and fractions for older children. And it doesn’t need to be worksheets only, you can give your child any group of small objects (I like legos or crayons) and ask them to sort them into equal groups and then have them resort into different equal groups. You can ask your older child to add up an old receipt or measure and calculate how much space their different toys take.
The more children practice these basic math skills, the more confident they become with them making all math easier. Just understanding these skills doesn’t provide enough math competency for children to feel comfortable doing them while they are learning new math and science skills. I have to have my middle and high school students drill these concepts at the beginning of school, because when they don’t use them for a few weeks they begin making basic math mistakes and confuse those mistakes with not understanding the new skills.
I’ll continue providing tips for helping your child with distance learning, but getting a plan to support these basics will ensure that you don’t panic when your child begins distance learning this year. Even, if they can’t do everything the school expects, they will continue doing activities that encourage and support learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment