1:1 Unplugged

There are many advantages to being a 1:1 classroom: students are highly engaged, there is an endless amount of information at your fingertips, and we rarely use paper.  I love everything about being a 1:1 teacher...even those days when you aren't.

Monday, I walked into the school to discover the internet was down.  Our community has withstood a major winter storm on Sunday and many homes lost power for up to 36 hours.  Many trees were affected and one tree, in particular, came down on the fiberoptic line that connects our school to the wireless network at the district office.  Of the 8 schools in our district, we were the only one without phone or internet.

I LOVE challenges like this, especially on a Monday and not just any Monday, but a Monday after a wind/snow storm, where students lost power at their homes...and now our normal routine was going to be disrupted with the lack of internet.  Thankfully, I'm an experienced teacher and am able to roll with these punches (as a first-year teacher, I may have panicked)!

Thankfully, when I left work on Friday, I did not close out my electronic plan book, and when I opened up my Chromebook, it was there and I could look at my plans for the day.  Of course, everything I planned for the day required the internet.

• Media Time - talked with the media teacher and she decided to teach the kids how to access books in the library.
• Math Intervention - normally students spend time on IXL or XtraMath to work on math skills.  Instead, I taught them a new math game called Remainders Wanted which would give them a chance to practice long division which was introduced last week.  This gave me the opportunity to pull small groups.
• Project Based Learning - I planned to have students brainstorm ideas for our community service project.  Instead of doing this using Google Docs I had to find the paper.  It took me a minute to remember where I stored lined paper for students to write on...but I found it.  I also had to reteach the class how to create a proper heading (name, date, assignment).
• Reading - thankfully, students were unaffected by this.  I, however, couldn't access my reading conference notes, but I was able to still complete a few conferences anyway.
• Writing - I planned to have students reflect on their narrative writing assessments, however, these are stored in Google.  So, I had to come up with a Plan B.  Thankfully, I kept old editions of National Geographic magazines from when I had a subscription.  I let students choose an article from the magazine to read.  I had them write, on paper, about what they learned and then partnered them up based on the article they chose.  

All in all, it was a productive day and amazingly, the students were well engaged.  They seemed excited by the change in routine and the novelty of using paper and pencil instead of computers.

On my commute Tuesday, I thought about my Plan B in case the internet was still down and by the time I got to school, I had a clear idea of what I would do, however, as I pulled into the parking lot, the power went out in our school and we closed it for the day...so I went to Plan C, spend a quiet day at home baking and reading a book!