Construct Learning

As Covid19 invades our lives, we are required to make major adjustments. Some of you are home an alone with a great deal of ‘me’ time, but many of you are adjusting to more family time and wondering how to fill the hours with your children. Many workers are learning to do their jobs from home and this is now true of educators. While many educators have already learned to teach online and feel right at home in this environment, most educators are finding themselves thrust into and a brand new world.

State education departments and school districts are scrambling to put together resources to keep their students learning and on track for the next school year. Many parents are looking for resources to help their children learn and keep them busy during each day.

When the weather is nice, exploring the outdoors, while keeping a good distance from neighbors, is usually a welcome activity, what to do when it is raining or storming outside might be more challenging. Many of our nation‘s businesses are stepping up and offering resources for free. Many of these resources are ones you would normally have to pay for and many of them are new resources being put together to help parents and teachers make the best of this time at home.

I’ve been retired from public education for almost 6 years now, so I’m not in the thick of it anymore. I sill care about educators and students and love supporting you. I’m working on a list of resources that are being offered for FREE (most of them) that I hope you will check out.

I will be adding more, as I come across them. I hope you find this resource useful. If you know of other resources, please let me know.

TeachFromHome
https://teachfromhome.google/intl/en/
A temporary hub of information and tools to help teachers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis offered by Google. Educators can find resources and instructions on how to teach remotely, how to conduct video conferences, set up your room for remote teaching and conduct live Q&A sessions. There are instructions on how to engage students, create an online quiz, provide feedback on documents, livestream your lessons, and more. Thanks Google!

LearnFromHome
https://learnathome.withyoutube.com.
A YouTube.com resource for families with children of different ages & areas of interest.

YouTube wants to ensure that learning together continues. So they’re partnering with learning creators to bring parents & families resources and activities. These resources are not meant to replace homework assigned by teachers, but meant to complement that work.
Thanks YouTube!

WideOpenSchool
http://wideopenschool.org
Wide Open School is a free collection of the best online learning experiences for kids in grades K-12 curated by the editors at Common Sense. There is so much good happening, and they are gathering great stuff and organizing it so teachers and families can easily find it and plan each day. Most of their resources don’t even require a login. Take a look at all the partners they are working with.
Thanks Common Sense!

Arkansas AMI on Arkansas PBS
https://www.myarkansaspbs.org/arkansasami
Public Broadcast Systems in other states are probably offering similar resources correlated to the specific local learning objectives, but here is information for ours in Arkansas.

Arkansas PBS, in partnership with Arkansas Department of Education’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), is working to keep students learning from home in response to COVID-19 with “Arkansas AMI”.

Arkansas PBS will broadcast streamlined, curriculum-based programming for the state’s pre-K through 8th grade students in response to mandatory school closures due to the new coronavirus. Utilizing the power of television, broadcast content will be specifically targeted to children enrolled in pre-K through the 8th grade.
Thanks Arkansas PBS!

Distance Learning Resources from the Smithsonian
https://learninglab.si.edu/distancelearning
The Smithsonian is committed to supporting teachers and their students around the globe as they face unprecedented new learning challenges. On the Learning Lab, teachers have access to millions of digital resources from across the Smithsonian’s museums, research centers, libraries, archives, and more. You will also find pre-packaged collections that contain lessons, activities, and recommended resources made by Smithsonian museum educators as well as thousands of classroom teachers like you. 

English Lessons With Holly
https://www.facebook.com/englishwithhollytutoring/
Tune in to Holly’s English lessons each day. She is an English teacher in the UK who is teaching from home where she takes care of her two young children. She amassed a vast following since she started teaching on Facebook during the global shutdown.

Distance Learning Solutions by UNESCO
https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions
This curated list of educational applications, platforms and resources aims to help parents, teachers, schools and school administrators facilitate student learning and provide psychosocial support during periods of school closure. Most of the solutions are free and many cater to multiple languages. They tend to have a wide reach, a strong user-base and evidence of impact. They are categorized based on distance learning needs, but most of them offer functionalities across multiple categories. The section at the end of the page links to external repositories of digital solutions, often with a national or regional focus. 

Thoughtful Learning – Teach Writing Online for Free
https://k12.thoughtfullearning.com/resources/units?utm_source=SBCampaign20_April&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=textAd
To help you teach from a distance, they’re providing free access to all of their online writing units during this crisis. Choose from all 3-5 units, all 6-8 units, and all 9-12 units. At checkout, you don’t need to enter a credit card, and your cost will be $0. 

Amplify- Free Literacy Learning
https://go.info.amplify.com/fy20_amplifyreading_readingsupplementalsforall_national_remotelearning_getintouch_getintouch?utm_campaign=20200403_FY20_AmplifyReading_readingsupplementalsforall_National_remotelearning_getintouch_National&utm_medium=newsletterad&utm_source=smartbrief-ascd
Amplify is offering educators and their students free access to a remote learning version of Amplify Reading through the end of the school year.

TCEA Remote Learning Resource Videos
https://tcea.org/remote-learning/
Check out the daily short-form video mini-sessions for bite-sized professional development, tips, and tricks for teaching online. Scroll through the videos, below, or filter them by your role.

Arkansas Democratic Gazette Parent Resources
https://www.arkansasonline.com/families/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=covid-04-08-20&utm_content=covid-04-08-20+CID_90e6d1cc2658858050971550cfa2662d&utm_source=Email%20Marketing%20Platform&utm_term=Check%20out%20the%20new%20ADG%20Families%20page%20for%20remote%20learning%20cooped-up%20crafts%20reading%20ideas%20and%20much%20more
Free resources for parents and children during the Covid19 crisis.

HomeBoundHub
http://bit.ly/homeboundhub
My good friend and former co-worker, Kim Estes, had the same idea that I had, but has a ton more resources. Please check out her page.

Content from Local Museums
Most museums are working hard to provide learning content and virtual visits to their museum. Look up the webpage of a museum in your area. I used to work in the planetarium of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and they are offering daily videos of a featured math or science lesson. Below is a math lesson from my friend Anne. Your upper elementary kids will love it. You will find it fascinating.