Mrs. Ronnie Silberstein grading her Geometry students’ virtual day work.
Math teacher shares virtual day experience
Working from home is a skill many high school students will encounter later on in their lives, and the virtual days attempted to give students the opportunity to participate. But with the virtual days, was the work students received just busy work? Did it tie into what was being taught in the classrooms?
For Mrs. Ronnie Silberstein, a math teacher here at Pascack Valley, the virtual days served a purpose for all of her classes. She allowed her students to complete their assignments at their own pace and found that it was easy to give work that fit in with her lesson plan.
“It was all things that kind of go with my curriculum, and it wasn’t hard stuff or hard tasks for the students,” said Silberstein. “Canvas is very easy to use, so it was easy to make the quizzes and upload things.”
Since she teaches Geometry, Algebra II with Trigonometry, and Precalculus, Silberstein still had to create a variation of work amongst the different students since they’re all learning different concepts. For Precalculus students, she had them listen to a TED Talk and just answer a couple of questions on it.
For Algebra II with Trigonometry, she created short video of herself teaching a lesson, letting the students choose if they wanted to take notes or not. After watching the video, students were asked to take a Canvas quiz on what they just learned, taking a picture of their work as well.
Since Algebra II students had a cumulative assessment coming up the day after the virtual days, they got to post review questions and answer each other’s questions on a Canvas discussion.
In Silberstein’s Geometry classes, a test was coming up on Thursday, so during the virtual days, the students were asked to take a review quiz and do more practice problems this way, all tying into the lesson plan she would’ve created if students came to school instead of having the virtual days.
Assigning a lot of work wasn’t a requirement for the virtual days, but work that was relevant to the curriculum of the class was valued. Silberstein seemed to find this easy to do, making the virtual days of her students very successful.