Creating Remote Learning Plans for PreK-8th Grade at Charles River School

As a PreK-8 school, our first move was to set some parameters for our teachers to focus their early work. We decided to make use of Zoom, Screencastify, Seesaw, and Google Classroom – and basically tried to ignore the barrage of information coming at us from every direction. We also set some daily time expectations, beginning with 1-1.5 hours of work for PreK-3, 2-3 hours for 4-6, and 3-4 hours for 7-8. Our overall goals to start were to connect with each student face to face at least once in the first three days and to provide a number of “anytime” activities for students. As soon as teachers began creating activities, we sent them out to a small group of parents who volunteered to be “beta testers” and received some important feedback, which resulted in “Week at a Glance” schedules like the example attached. We gave suggestions for scheduling the day with only a few time-specific events to start. We are now in our second week and have added additional face-to-face morning meetings and zoom classes while being mindful of screen time and the variety of support that children may or may not have at home.