The emergency remote learning experience has been initiated quickly, with teachers learning new skills rather fast. Our teachers have been sharing tips as we finish the last few weeks of school in an online environment.

HPMS seventh-grade science teacher and last year's Teacher of the Year Sylvia Bearden shares resources and tools to use when designing her lessons that are helpful for families looking for extra enrichment science activities for their middle school children:

I feel like there are so many resources that are always used, but even more so now! National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) has been helpful in providing webinars regarding topics and/or adjusting to this format; online, as well as in print. Additionally, there are always conversation on their listservs that I am a part of (through email) where I can hear how other districts/teachers are approaching their students learning. The blessing in disguise has been the ability to have more time to learn and try new things. This has been challenging for everyone, but I have appreciated this aspect of it.

Discovery Education has been a great resource, Brain Pop and Amoeba Sisters are a few that came to mind that we’ve been able to use and implement in our slides/ Nearpods or use as supplements to each week’s work. Jill Bellomy, shared some resources with the staff, and Learning 360 has been a tool where I found some new vocabulary tools/review that we’ve used in our lessons over the last few weeks!

Google Forms has been a great tool to use to provide feedback, as well as Quizziz. I’ve only used the latter as a practice/homework tool and this week we’re going to take advantage of the ability to set the number of attempts that students have as they work. We’re going to use a Quizziz as a summative assignment for the week and see how it goes!

The great thing about having many tools and resources is that it gives the students variety, as well as us. We’ve tried to give variety in the things that are shared with the students, so that they are able to access it in a way that’s useful to them.