Hey everyone! So I built a thing. While I currently spend my mornings teaching grade 8 ELA to remote learners, my afternoons are still devoted to being an instructional coach, supporting teachers as we all navigate the seemingly daily changes to our classrooms. One question that was recently asked of me was, “what is something meaningful I can give to remote learners that isn’t just a package of questions or busy work?” It is with this question in mind that I developed the Remote Learning Literacy Menu. This menu is designed to create meaningful, asynchronous literacy learning that is anchored in student choice and voice. It provides a daily guide for blocks of literacy time anchored in reading, viewing, writing & responding. It also includes a section for communicating student learning. The menu is adaptable for pretty much all grades and subject areas, you will just need to adjust the reading and viewing resources accordingly.
As it currently exists, I think the RLML could work for grade 5-9. While there’s a whole variety of contexts it could be used in, I built it with two scenarios in mind. First, a student is required to stay home for a short period of time as they are showing symptoms or awaiting test results. In this situation, the RLML could be emailed to a parent and their learners could either click on the links, or use the QR codes to redirect them the various resources. The second scenario is basically what is currently happening where I live (in Manitoba). Due to increase in cases and community transmission, schools are being placed into “orange mode” and parents in grade K-8 are being offered the opportunity to have their students learn remotely for a perhaps short(ish), indefinite time. Teachers still have students in their physical classrooms and need to juggle having learning in both realms, virtual and real. I think the the RLML could be given to remote learning students as meaningful short term instruction until longer term plans could be made. I think that the RLML could be a longer term plan, but it would really need some support, direction and feedback from a teacher via video conferencing. Also, if used for longer term planning, I’d recommend:
- adjusting the targeted literacy skills to include other strands of ELA such as speaking, listening
- updating the digital resources links
- developing RLML around general themes or topics
I built the RLML using the site Canva. It is a free site, but I bought a pro account for professional reasons. By clicking this link here, you will be redirected to Canva where you can sign up for a free account and be able to completely edit the menu as you wish. I you just want a pdf version, then click here.
I hope this resource helps ease a little bit of the pressure everyone is feeling right now. Feel free to adapt the RLML as you wish, I’d love to see what you do with it. You got this!
@MsMcLauchlan Reads 