In the classroom

It was only a month ago that the students were at Camp Manyung on the Mornington Peninsula and the idea of them all being home three weeks before the end of term 1 would have seemed crazy.  However, the MITS classroom goal posts have moved and as a teaching team we are adapting quickly to the changes and challenges we now face.  By the way, Camp Manyung was pretty awesome!

Over the last few weeks Michael, Isabelle, Christine and myself have been working incredibly hard to develop an online learning program that will be rolled out in a range of locations across the Northern Territory and Victoria that takes into account access to technology and WiFi, support of local schools and the challenges of learning online to name a few. 

While all this work has been going on in the background within two days of the students being home we had an online classroom running through Google Classroom and WhatsApp.  This has involved among so many other things, listening to students read over the phone, students taking photos of their work and sending the images to us, teacher led fitness challenges and  Michael recording himself reading chapters of the book 'Once' for the students to listen to. The planning now is focused on continuing what is working now and building on that for term 2.

Early next week, the students laptops will be sent to them and they have now been set up with a range of online educational programs such as Google Classroom, where all their learning material will be uploaded and Zoom, which will allow us to run live lessons, answer questions and most importantly stay connected with them.

We are missing the students a great deal but the communication with families, schools and students has been so positive.  The students are telling us they can't wait to be back in Melbourne to continue the MITS journey and that is certainly driving the teaching team to create an online learning program that puts them in the best possible position to return to Melbourne, ready to tackle the remainder of the 2020 school year.

Ryan Martin