Remote Learning Program

Kindergarten Teacher Ms. Spring and her Associate Teacher Ms. Olivia have been maintaining their daily routine as much as possible with their students via Zoom. They have also continued an imaginative project that has become an anticipated tradition in their class. 

Each month, Ms. Spring and Ms. Olivia ask students to complete a self-portrait project. To complete these projects remotely, they put a twist on the theme. One month, the class examined how other artists portrayed themselves working at home, then reflected on how to represent their own remote work spaces. The following month, students were asked to gather materials found in nature to compile a tangible representation of themselves. 
 
"Developing a sense of identity is so important in kindergarten, and one way we do that is through our monthly self-portraits," Ms. Spring said. "We explore different ways we can present ourselves through various artistic mediums. The big takeaway was that even though we're all in different spaces and our classrooms might look different, we're all learning together."
 

Grades 4-5 Science Teacher Doc O has brought her overhead projector home so she can mirror a typical class in her beloved lab. Students engage in lectures and participate in labs on Zoom to continue pursuing this year's learning objectives.  

As part of a recent unit in civil engineering, fourth grade students used protractors to study angles of outdoor objects and slopes of roads and hills. They also collected data as they navigated homemade, tissue-box trucks down steep roads. 

Fifth grade students have also been spending time outdoors, detecting how sun shadows varied over a single day, then discovering how the pattern of these shadows varied over several days. Grades 4-5 Science Teacher Doc O said these findings led to a discussion on how explorers such as Cook and Columbus determined their latitude on earth. 

In fall 2020, Intermediate School students were issued a challenge. While some SCDS grades followed the time-honored and excellent tradition of dressing up around October 31, students in grades 4 and 5 made Rube Goldberg-like machines to dispense candy and fun, or Zoom backgrounds or screensavers to celebrate autumn. We’ve pictured a few of the offerings — including one of the “Goldbergs” in action — above.

Middle school students are also using the Zoom platform to take classes and connect with peers.

On one recent Friday, coined Friday Funday, students became the teachers for a day. They planned lessons to determine how to engage their peers in an interactive lesson on Zoom, then used their public speaking skills to present different subject areas to the class. Some student-led lessons included group drawing, musical theater, solving Rubik's cubes, baking, and mindfulness.