Parent Letter – Second Week of Online Learning

by BIS / 2020.02.24 Monday / Published in news & event

Special Notice

With current epidemic situation and safety conditions, our school is still waiting for official notices from local authorities in order to arrange reopening date. In the meantime, to ensure the safety of our students and the entire school community, if you or your family members have been away from Wuxi and just came back recently from elsewhere, please make sure you have completed the 14 days quarantine and is healthy before going back to school. Thank you very much for your understanding.

Message from Academic Principal

Dear Parents:

Boston International School hopes that this message finds all of you well as we begin the third week of online classes. We have received very good feedback from parents so far, and we look forward to implementing new and creative ways to continue delivering online content to students. We have also heard from many parents about their desire for more interaction with teachers, and we hope to update everyone later in the week about this request.

Today, Monday 24th you will be receiving an email via managebac with a link to your child’s semester 1 report. By clicking on the link you can view their reports from the class teachers. This is for PKG to Grade 12 only students. The early years will be holding a conference meeting with the homeroom teacher and parents once school resumes. They will share the child’s progress through this conference and the child’s portfolio of work.

As a way to continue keeping students and parents knowledgeable about current offerings at BIS, we have asked some of our teachers to share a bit about their experiences so far this semester with our online learning platforms. Please see the attached messages about how teachers are preparing lessons, providing feedback, and other general thoughts about what is happening at this time.

As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to BIS if you have questions or feedback. We look forward to continuing the journey with all of you!

Sincerely,

Brian Rotunno

Academic Principal

Secondary Teacher

I have designed my online lessons to emulate a classroom experience as much as I possibly can. Every week, I record hours of Video-Lessons with PowerPoints, Assignments, and links to other educational resources. Here are a few screenshots so that you may gain an understanding of what some of these Online Video Lessons are like:

Each lesson splits the screen between myself narrating the lesson, and the PPT which the students also have access to:

Students may have access to all of the materials via my website or on Managebac. Each lesson is categorized by a weekly Essential Question (EQ) so that they can easily locate the correct lesson:

At the start of every lesson, I refer to our unit calendar so that our students know which Essential Question we are currently studying. This is also available on my website and on Managebac:

The PPTs are very image heavy so that students are immersed into the historical time period that we are studying:

Some PPTs are more text heavy, especially for the Grade 9 and Grade 10 IGCSE classes. They also have links to additional videos within the PPT but these videos are also embedded into the Online Lessons incase students do not have access to YouTube:

Many PPTs use special colour-coding to help students compartmentalize academic questions:

Some key terminologies are translated into Mandarin and Korean to help students build their academic language in their native tongue:

Each week students are assigned a weekly formative assessment to answer the weekly Essential Question. The rubrics are colour coded and explained within the videos so students are informed of all of their expectations. Many of the assignments that students have to complete involve a video/audio recording so that they may continue to practice their verbal skills. In addition, a Summative Project is embedded throughout the entire unit. These Projects emphasize research, creativity, and student choice. For example, the Grade 8 I&S class were given 54 options to choose from and I am currently creating individualized rubrics for each student:

Primary Teacher

Reason and purpose of assignment

We have been doing some learning directly linked to our new unit of ‘science and technology’. Students have been learning to code using a website called Scratch. The first they had a chance to played around make a short clip of whatever they wanted. Week 2, students were given a script and instructions to follow and created a story.

Outcome

To learn the basics of coding and design.

Feedback

Students’ response is really positive so far. The students really enjoyed the task and have created some amazing stories through code.

Challenge

The greatest challenge is not being able to directly monitor, assist and help the students. Most students were able to create a video through code that showed they followed the instructions and task. Others found it challenging and that is when I would have jumped in class and helped them.

It was amazing to video call all the students last week and have a conversation with them individually. From talking to students in America, China, Thailand or wherever it was just a great chance to talk and catch up. It made the online teaching process real.

Parent Letter – Second Week of Online Learning

Parent Letter – Second Week of Online Learning

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