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Virtual Announcements:
Vital to a vibrant online e-Learning experience BY DAN SEBRING
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typical school day as an elementary school principal at Normandy School in Bay Village finds me eagerly greeting my Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade students at the entrance each morning and then again through morning announcements over our PA system. It is both a privilege and a joy to begin the day personally welcoming students and setting the tone for a productive educational experience. When the stay at home orders were announced in March, my daily opportunity to see students and motivate them through announcements had vanished in an instant. Despite the changes, I was determined to find a way to remain daily connected to my students. Kids who typically thrive on and feel security in the structure of their daily routines, were suddenly surrounded by change in pretty much every aspect of their world. This was unsettling, confusing, and upsetting to some of our students. I needed to find a way to smooth this sudden transition and to help my students still feel connected to Normandy.
“What day is today?” Did you ever find yourself asking this question? For so many of us, the days all blurred together throughout each week because each day resembled the previous. Thematic names, wacky GIFs and funny memes became important ingredients in adding enthusiasm to our virtual morning announcements. Was it Taco Tuesday? Words Wednesday? Happy Friday?!?! I was able to capitalize on several themes that were a part of traditional morning announcements, and then add in a few along the way! This gave the students something to look forward to each day and helped them track along throughout each week. Math Monday
“I needed to find a way to smooth this sudden transition and to help my students still feel connected to Normandy.”
Having collaborated with a fellow Bay elementary principal, we both decided to create daily prerecorded video announcements in order to maintain this daily routine that the kids had been enjoying at school. We recognized an opportunity to help bridge this unexpected transition to e-learning and also to help the parents build some structure into their day at home. Once we had decided to embark on this adventure, we then had to figure out how to make this work. We created Google Slides templates to be used every day, and then used Screencastify to capture the video, and finally uploaded our announcements to our district Vimeo account. The announcements were posted to each school’s Vimeo channel and students easily accessed the announcements through their Clever student login page each day.
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Every Monday, we would celebrate the accomplishments of our school-wide progress on JiJi Math (ST Math) and acknowledge our most recent 100% JiJi Masters! Taco Tuesday
Most of my Normandy students know that I am a big fan of TACOS!!! Every Tuesday, I would play the silly song, “Raining Tacos” (if you don’t know it, look for it on YouTube), to kick off announcements. This eventually led to many families sending along pictures of Taco Night at their house, and then these pictures were shared on announcements. Such a fun way to build a sense of community! Wacky Words Wednesday Every Wednesday was already known as “Words Wednesday” where I would give an update to the whole school on how we were progressing on our reading challenge for the year. We would
