Virtual Announcements

Virtual Announcements: Vital to a vibrant online e-Learning experience

BY DAN SEBRING

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

“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.”

celebrate our new schoolwide word count total and then cheer on all the students who had achieved 50,000 words and 500,000 words through our Accelerated Reader program. To bring more excitement to the week, we began ‘Wacky Wednesdays’ (think Crazy Hair Day, etc .).

Happy Friday

We all love to celebrate Fridays! Every Friday on announcements, I would play the song, “Happy”, by Pharell Williams, and encourage the students to dance at home!

PBIS Messages

At the end of every announcement, I always gave a brief message to motivate our students to live out our core values, also known as “Normandy’s Big 3”, at home during e-learning.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

While e-learning at home, we discovered that our students loved to see themselves on morning announcements! Not only were they proud to show off their work at home, but seeing pictures of other students allowed them to feel connected to their schoolmates.

Student and Staff Birthdays

We enjoyed the daily celebration with those students/staff who had a birthday that day. When I began creating virtual announcements each day for the students to view as they began their school day at home, I had no idea the impact that it would have on the students and families! We routinely had notes of appreciation from our families, indicating that morning announcements were often a family event that truly helped the students to have a routine to their day and to still feel connected to the school at large.

At Normandy, we have 530 students. We maintained a steady rate of daily views, ranging from 238 - 517, and repeatedly heard that many Normandy students enjoyed kicking off each day of e-learning at home with our virtual morning announcements! Virtual morning announcements proved to be a vital component for creating a vibrant e-learning experience! (Enjoy a few of my morning announcements at https://bit.ly/MornAnnounc)

Dan Sebring is the Principal and Lead Learner at Normandy Elementary School in Bay Village City Schools, 15 miles west of Cleveland, Ohio. He received his Master’s Degree and Principal’s License from Ursuline College and eventually earned his spot as a Principal in Painesville City Local Schools. After his seven-year career as a Principal there and achieving the Excellent rating for the final two years, Mr. Sebring then accepted the job in Bay Village, where he was offered a tremendous opportunity to transform this Kindergarten through 2nd grade learning community (now in 7th year in Bay). Dan firmly believes that effective communication, listening, support, shared decision making, and the balanced integration of technology (for both students & staff) are essential elements necessary for the transformation of school cultures. He can be contacted at dan.sebring@bayschoolsohio.org or followed on Twitter @BayNormandy.