Students will now “Learn at Home” after being out of the classroom since March Break, due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
With at home learning comes a new set of expectations which Bluewater District School Board Director of Education, Alana Murray says will be met at an appropriate pace for both students and teachers and will be “extremely flexible”.
Starting today (April 6) the Bluewater Board will begin training all of its educators how to use the Ontario Virtual Learning website; and teachers have already begun reaching out to students and parents to have conversations about the next steps and limitations that students might have; whether its technology related or lack of Internet access or lack of time for learning.
“There's not going to be a lot of high stakes assessment done, it's going to be linked to the work that they have already completed prior to COVID-19… I'm trying to keep my staff calm and focused and that these are tasks will breakdown into multiple chunks, so they can go at a pace that's appropriate,” says Murray.
Weekly time expectations are as follows:
Kindergarten-Grade 3: five hours of work per student/week (focus on literacy and math)
Grades 4-6: five hours of work per student/week (focus on literacy, math, science and social studies)
Grades 7-8: 10 hours of work per student/week (focus on math, literacy, science and social studies)
Grades 9-12: three hours of work per course per week for semestered students; 1.5 hours of work per course per week for non-semestered students (focus on achieving credits/completion/graduation)
Murray says there will be a Bluewater plan that meets the needs of staff and student “well-being.” She goes onto say staff will be working outside of their normal hours to accommodate their students and their own home situations during this period.
Murray states graduating students are top of mind.
“The Government of Ontario and the Ministry of Education is working really closely with Post-Secondary Colleges and Universities around admission requirements. They (graduates) should really not worry about what the next steps are, there's a lot of adjusting and a lot of flexibility,” says Murray.
For students in Elementary and Secondary grades Murray says “every student is going to progress, as appropriate.”
Murray notes that these are extraordinary times, which have been taken into account…and unless there is a real evidence of a student struggling prior to the pandemic, students will progress.
Students will be issued a final Report Card. For Elementary students it will touch on how the students progressed so far. Murray notes they're still working through the details on Secondary students.
More educational site provided by the Province can be found here.