Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

I have to always remember who I teach. I work with teens that want nothing more than to spend time with peers. That, of course, is something that has fallen to the wayside most of this calendar year, and almost all of this school year.  Building community has been a focal point of my classes before 2020, now it's imperative but quite challenging. Students will talk to one another, but mostly stay quiet and prefer to work in small groups, or alone. Being at home tends to make them feel more reluctant to share and speak up, unfortunately. My Social Studies colleagues introduced me to Gimkit last year. Gimkit is a gamified review that my students have really enjoyed. The company has come out with a version similar to an incredibly popular computer game and we played this version in class last week, as a review of the Constitution, Three Branches of Government, and the Bill of Rights. My students loved it and they came alive during our classes. I was overjoyed to hear them hollering (a...

Surreal, to say the least. One week ago today school communities in Michigan found out that they would be closing for the foreseeable future due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This highly contagious disease would cause schools to shift to online learning for the next three weeks (that would coincide with our Spring Break so we will be out of school for four weeks). Families in the state are highly encouraged to stay at home, self-isolate, and stay 6 or more feet away from anyone not in our immediate households (known as social distancing). Our staff gathered last Friday to start the transition to online learning. The district technology teams and administration greatly helped us make this shift. We are adjusting to a new normal. This past week has been unprecedented. Thank goodness we've been a 1:1 iPad school for years now. The technology piece isn't completely new for us. Finding the balance between a typical lesson and online lessons from home is taking some getting us...