With a heavy heart, Mr. Best announced to the parents, children and community on March 24 that Heartland Community Schools would be closed indefinitely, likely extending through the end of the current school year. This followed communication with the State Health Department, the Commissioner of Education and the Nebraska State Governor.
Because Heartland had been closed for part of the week prior, teachers had a chance to begin thinking of what online learning would look like for a week or possibly longer, which ended up being the case.
In these next few weeks we will be highlighting the awesome things teachers at Heartland are doing for and with their students via the distance-learning environment. Many teachers are using an online platform called Zoom, which allows for teachers and students to communicate via video with each other. A group can communicate and see one another to go over a project, check in and just have a chance to see and talk to one another.
Today’s Spotlight: Mrs. Maltsberger (fifth grade) and Mrs. Anne Regier (Family Consumer Science)
Mrs. Maltsberger: Mrs. Maltsberger is one of two fifth grade teachers. The other fifth grade teacher is Mr. Sundberg. The fifth and sixth grade classes move between two to four teachers for different subjects such as Math, Science and Reading. They also attend Choir, Art and PE during the week as well.
The dining room table is now my workspace.
I’m reading aloud every day to the kids and posting the recording on YouTube and my website.
Learning menu of activities:
Sharing pictures of what the kids are doing:
Zoom meetings galore! With the students and the parents!
Continuing our social/emotional learning curriculum:
Flipgrid is a place kids can share their daily journal entries. They read what they’ve written for the day, or just share what they’ve been up to through a video and it’s stored for everyone to see!
Mrs. Anne Regier: I would love to highlight what some of my students are up to in the area of Family & Consumer Science! I will be sending home a choice board each week. Students can choose to do an activity from it and send me comments or pics of what they did. Our first choice board was on the topic of Cleaning: your bedroom, closet, study area etc…
I will also be sharing with my students what I have been doing on the choice boards as well. Like photos of me cleaning out my fridge, baking bread etc… I plan to also share videos of myself doing a “What’s in my fridge” or What’s in my kitchen cupboards.”
We are communicating via email as of now. I send out a group email each week. I ask they let me know what they are up to, if they are checking in with their other teachers, making up late work, how they are feeling, etc… They respond with some short answers…”I’m alive” or longer answers!
Watch Heartland Beat for more images to come!
