Today we have a guest blogger, Paige McLaughlin, our instructional coach at Giant Steps Day School. Paige and Erin (Senior Facilitator for Curriculum & Assessment) have worked hard to support our teaching department in locating resources that helped adapt their materials for remote learning.
When I first joined Giant Steps as a teacher, my supervisor always told me to “think outside the box”. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would need to apply that saying to teaching our students through Zoom thanks to a pandemic.
Our goal as the Instructional Team was to make this bizarre transition from what we traditional teaching to remote teaching as smooth as possible. All the way back in March 2020, when COVID started to hit our area, (you know, when we thought that COVID was just going to give us a bonus week of Spring Break), we started to figure out how we can still teach our students through the computer. Our go to curriculum was Unique Learning System (ULS). They give topic lessons, resources, and materials for all subject matter by grade band. For example, this month in the Middle School grade band, the focus is Health and Life Science. All ELA, math, functional living skills, and daily living skills lessons all focus on that main topic. Another great thing about ULS is that they offer all materials and resources digitally, which our teachers are very familiar with. We encouraged our teaching department to rely on ULS for the “week” of remote learning they were about to do.
We quickly learned that we were not just getting a bonus week of Spring Break, but that we were going to need to do remote learning long term. We started to look into more digital platforms that would speak to our teachers’ strengths, but also push and support them in digital instruction. Some initial platforms we found were BoomCards and LiveWorksheets, which our teachers are still using heavily today.
As we continued to find platforms, we started to host Tech Trainings not just for our teaching department, but for the whole school. Teachers, therapists, and program assistants joined wanting to know what we have found to help them help their students. We record these training sessions and upload them to our Google Drive so that our staff can access them whenever they need the material. Tech Trainings focused on new platforms (e.g., BoomCards, LiveWorksheets, JamBoard, EdPuzzle, etc.) and also looked back at some of our already well-loved resources with a shift of how to use them remotely (e.g., Flocabulary, ULS, GoogleSlides).
We continue to send out weekly emails showcasing an Instructional Resource of the Week and how to use the resource both in person and remotely. In addition, we continue to host Tech Trainings on a monthly basis, still open to any staff who would like to learn more. This month we are showcasing Prowise, a digital whiteboard with a lot of cool features, and BoardMaker 7, the new and improved BoardMaker.
As insane as it was to transition into remote teaching as quickly as we did, what we have learned as the Instructional Team is that there is a great and supportive community of teachers in the world who all came together to tackle the beast of remote learning. Speaking for myself, I have never been more proud to be part of this community. Even teaching remotely and losing almost a year of face to face time with our students, they have still made progress on IEP goals, improved social skills, and increased independent living skills. With the support of our community and our families, we have proved that even in unprecedented times, our students can still grow and reach any challenge they face. What a fantastic time to be a Gator!
We hope everyone has a relaxing and enjoyable Spring Break and look forward to what the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year brings!
Did you know that March is Music Therapy Month? Currently our Music Therapy team members are licensed at the national level however there is a bill in the Illinois State Senate that will protect the licensing process of Music Therapists in Illinois as well as provide easier access to music therapy services for residents! Here is additional information!
