Here's the link to sign up for "Dr. Jean's Toolkit for the Virtual Classroom."
We've added two new sessions for next week.
Wednesday, August 5 10-12
Thursday, August 6 4-6
Last week I was invited to be a "Zoom guest" with the Reading Corner in Tampa, Florida. I could not believe how attentive and engaged all of their children were!! WOW! They must have put a spell on those kids because it was magic! I asked Karen Roque if she would share her experiences and give us some tips for making connections with their students.
Here is a little explanation about why The Reading Corner started virtual school:
We were so thrilled to offer virtual classes during the quarantine to connect our kids to their teachers during an uncertain time. Going forward, we are excited to launch our fall virtual classes for preschool and kindergarten. Our goal is to keep kids engaged while at the same time teaching them foundational skills to help them be successful and lifelong learners.
A few things we do while teaching:
1. Unmuting the kids to have them participate with the activity. We also ask questions about to get to know them to feel included and special.
2. Large posters of the activity to be more visible for the kids when they don’t have the activity printed at home.
3. Activities we will be using are accessible beforehand from our website.
4. Calling the kids names. We ask the parents to put their name and where they live on their zoom video screen for us to see. We have kids from all over- New York, Virginia, Chicago, California, Canada and lots of locals too.
5. Lots of Dr. Jean cheers, brain breaks and dance parties: anything to get the kids moving.
6. Only doing half of an activity during our teaching time to:
- Keep the kids attention
- Give them activities to finish independently
7. Changing teachers to keep it fresh. Each teacher is on from 10-30 minutes.
8. Making most of the activities hands-on by having a lot of them cut (previously) and then pasting along with the teaching.
9. Playing games like "beat the teacher", “jumping jellybean game” when doing letter sounds and timed activities.
As teachers , we are enthusiastic, excited and grateful to have this opportunity to teach online. We throw glitter and kisses and high 5’s.
Karen Green is the owner of The Reading Corner, the creator and guiding force behind https://www.readingcorneronline.com/virtualschool/ which has become the platform for our TRCVirtual online classroom. Her dream for our school has given us so many opportunities to shine. We all love what we do!
Laura Bounadonna gave me this shirt. This is how she said you can get one:
"If they go to Etsy and then put in Glorious Apparel it will come up."
