Teamwork makes the dream work.
Divide and conquer.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Though these quotes may seem cliché, the sentiment underlying them couldn’t be more accurate— when we work together and pool our collective resources, we stand a much greater chance of reaching our goals and retaining what we learn along the way.
To say it has been “quite the year” would be an understatement.
From the COVID-19 pandemic to the movements for racial justice and the turmoil of the election, the country has dealt with issues of an unprecedented magnitude during the last year. The field of education has had its own challenges, most notably a sudden pivot to remote and virtual learning.
Stephanie Heath Nash is a classroom teacher with more than 20 years of experience teaching everything from kindergarten through eighth grade, with the majority of her time spent in grades K–2. In addition to her classroom experience, Stephanie also played a key role in the writing and development of the Kendall Hunt Religious Publishing Division’s revised Pathways2.0 curriculum for grades 1 and 2.
Several months into remote or hybrid learning, you might be looking for ways to shake things up a bit, especially those of you who teach the youngest (and most wiggly) students. Even if you’ve heard them before, a little reminder could spark a new idea, so here are four tips for teaching kindergarten in a hybrid/remote setting, plus notes on how our Kindergarten Stepping Stones program can help!
Take advantage of location
Accurately and ethically measuring student knowledge was already a challenge before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the educational world upside down. From concerns about the inherent biases of standardized tests to the question of how to differentiate assessments for students’ learning styles, the issue of testing is complex … and trying to do it through a computer screen in a remote or hybrid learning environment makes it infinitely more complicated.
As the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools in March of 2020, the focus of many parents, teachers, and administrators was on how students would make up the academic content they were going to miss. How would we ensure that students hit the educational milestones necessary to keep them on track?
But even as members of the educational community were focusing on these important academic issues, many were also voicing concerns about the social-emotional well-being of the students. How would we support them as people—not just students, but people—through this crisis?
