VLLA Book Study, Week 4, March 31st-April 6th

Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance Book Study: Week #4 March 31st-April 6th:



Pam and Jen have laid the foundation for my response to this prompt. The IVS Assignment Pace Chart (representing the ideal completion pace) is a great baseline to facilitate time management for students. I recommend that students print it out and keep it near the computer where they work on class. I also encourage them to cross off assignments as they complete them. And as Jen noted, these schedules can be individualized, too.

The key to making them work is early contact with students who are falling behind. If you can catch the students and find out why they are not posting on due dates (illness, tech issues, procrastination, confusion, etc.), you can put your heads together to overcome the obstacles.



As has been stated, snow day plans are moot for online classes. Schools with 1:1 laptops likely have the full curriculum online, too.



The laboratory schools where I worked had the concept of "Drop-in Units" for Teacher Ed clinical field students, and they also worked for emergency sub plans. They were basically 3-day units that involve topics that can be introduced, practiced, and assessed within three days. Back when Photostory was an operational Microsoft tool, a topic could be researched and shared within such a 3-day window. It could be a mini unit on under-represented female poets from a given time period; in March it might have been Irish poets. This kind of approach could be used on snow days (which could run as long as three days) or introduced online and finished back in school.