A Zoom Open House is in the books, and it did not go poorly! We just finished the third week of the school year and it was a time to connect/meet with parents, introduce ourselves and our courses and share how we are planning to support them and their children's needs as we continue with online learning. As far as things stand where I am, this will go through the end of September, at least.
During Open House, we were given 10 minutes to meet with each class via Zoom. Ten minutes to a high school student is an eternity. Ten minutes will make a middle schooler sweat in forensics competitions (I know, because that was me). Ten minutes for a teacher to introduce yourself to parents, assure them you know what you're doing, and you care about their child's success and well-being....... what information do I need to prioritize?! That's the same question I am asking myself with curriculum, having 20 minutes less per block and the disadvantage of not being a homework hawk. My goal for this school year is concentrate as much information into the materials I generate, be able to be consumed within the capacity of human attention and produce a clear, desired outcome.
To introduce myself to parents, I decided to accomplish this within my email signature. I literally introduced myself to them by dissecting my email signature with attached links and explanations, all by designing this Google Drawing.
I believe this was a highly effective way to introduce myself and open up avenues for communication and collaboration. When we provide something new to students, what do we do? Walk through how a material is organized, review the information and instructions, and show how it works. In ten minutes, I was able to cover the entire signature as well as direct parents to information relevant to them for to stay informed about what their children are learning. I accidentally went over by five minutes in the first session (probably alright, because I think the same happened with all the other teachers, too); thankfully, I have the experience to change a presentation on the fly, and I had this infographic to stay focused and find shortcuts.
Here's the general outline of how I organized the ten minutes. Feel free to read on after for some deeper reflection on this novel, awkward and energizing experience.
- I began with a general introduction of myself.
- This included directing parents to the video I used to introduce myself to students this year (about 6 minutes long),
- and a survey for them to introduce themselves to me, and address and concerns and questions they have about the course their child is taking. This is important for me, too, with having an AP course
- I established my active contact hours for parents and students, and my office hours.
- I use Hangouts/G-Chat as a replacement for when a student had questions in the physical classroom, and I would clarify for them.
- I use email for attendance and more formal matters, or those that require more decision-making.
- Finally, I did a crash course of my website, which includes: a calendar + assignment/assessment dates; a daily agenda containing the minutiae of steps; and my syllabus.
- This gave me the opportunity to quick go over how I will be assessing students. They will be receiving completion grades, only, in addition to descriptive feedback. If parents want to know how their child is doing, ask them to read the feedback.
- I showed parents a sample of my personal gradebook for this year. I informed them that I will be in contact with them if a student falls two assignments behind, so seeing my system helped them understand how I will know.
After the first presentation, and using this as my template for the second on, I got all that information out in seven minutes flat with time for questions!
Let me know, below! Does your school plan to hold Open House this year? How do they plan to hold the event? Parents, what are things on the top of your minds? Teachers, how do you think you would use time you are given?
One of the materials I shared with parents my course webpage. Students use that to access all the course materials and receive more detailed instructions on how to complete the lessons independently. On the course main page, I added a calendar widget and syllabus for parents to know how I plan to use synchronous and asynchronous learning times, maintain communication with students and parents, and how I plan to grade work.
Because I know that grades matter, not necessarily what they are but how they were determined or reached, I also shared a sample of my gradebook to allow parents understand what I am grading and how their children will know how they are doing. My current school practices Standards Based Grading, so I believe this not only helped calm parents' worries about this year but helped educate the community about this educational practice, too. I duplicated some entries from how I am organizing my gradebook this current year. I am not wasting time determining anything more than IF a formative assessment is completed or not. This way I can focus more of my time into providing timely, descriptive, criterion-based feedback. I will be sharing more how I have designed my feedback plan for assessments. During the Open House, I encouraged parents to ask to see their children's feedback as a measure of how they are doing. I also shared that if a student falls two or more formative assessments behind in their work, I will be getting in contact with the parents to help students be accountable for meeting the course requirements.
My personal gradebook is purely for visual analysis. The color code helps be see things at a glance and see general trends with students and assignments, and the symbols in those cells help to do automatic conditional formatting to those cells with these colors. I included other fields to inform me what kinds of skills or lenses they were learning through. Truthfully, this iteration of my gradebook offers a wealth of data to mine and analyze. Here is the key I use for the assignments:
- O: Did not attempt the formative by the time I began grading it
- / : Attempted the formative and had varying success but needs practice
- X: Has completed the formative assessment to an acceptable level and no area for concern with progress
- Ø: Did not attempt the formative the first time, and worked on it after it was returned. There is practice and improvement needed in one area, at least
- ⨂: Did not attempt the formative the first time, and worked on it after it was returned. It was completed to an acceptable level and no areas of concern.
The cell adjacent to the completion indicator is copy/paste feedback I provided to that student for the particular formative. This provides me quick access to student data without having to navigate through pages on Google Classroom. I am hoping it can help me with better identifying skills that need to be retaught, too.
I still can't believe how much information I was able to cover in such a short amount of time. I rehearsed the presentation ahead, but not timed. Having the materials prepared ahead of time allowed me to edit the presentation instantaneously and maintain the same message. After Open House was over, I emailed my email signature image, with a signature containing active links at the bottom. This very well may be my indefinite Open House template 😁
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