Doesn’t feel like we are teaching in the Upside Down?

I loved the Netflix series “Stranger Things” but admit it- it is so strange to try and carry on as teachers during this pandemic. It’s been about 3-4 weeks for me and I feel like the new normal is just now setting in. In the first few weeks, we were hopeful that this wouldn’t last long and that we’d get to return to school. Then, with every passing day it became more and more evident that we would never return to this group of kids as their teacher. I cried. I cried hard. It was even worse because they last day that my school was in session, I had an appointment and they had a guest teacher.

Devastated. I mean, their last day in school was with a guest teacher. How could this be happening?

But we are teachers and like we always do, we rise to the occasion. We mobilized with military precision all over the nation creating, sharing, broadcasting, Facebook and Instagram live-ing without a hiccup.

We are a charming profession.

So, what’s the point of this post? Well, I have been dabbling in creating some digital products and I wanted to share a free one as I’m feeling all of this out. Then, I’d love to share a few resources that I’ve found helpful during this time of trying to reach out to students virtually.

Digital learning is new to me.

We use Seesaw, but mostly for parent communication. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past few weeks trying to familiarize myself with creating and adding assignments that I know my students could use. If you need a quick tutorial on how to get an assignment in, click here! 

We left off with some intense instruction around CVC words, so I wanted to start there. I created this activity that asks them to drag and drop the letters to spell the words- and then write the word. It even read it out loud to them so that their caretakers (who are likely working from home) won’t need to be interrupted so much to answer, “what’s this picture of?” questions over and over. There are a total of 30 CVC words. If that is too many, feel free to delete some, assign it, and then you can reassign it and delete the slides you’d assigned before.