Remote Learning during Covid lockdown

At the end of the academic school session 2019-20, when the teachers were finalizing progress reports and preparing to welcome the students for the new session, suddenly the spread of COVID19 caused the closure of the schools in Lucknow and rest of India.

During this lockdown, it is important for students to continue to have a routine, and learning and development must continue. As they say, the show must go on, or the school must go on! The school’s management and staff quickly prepared a complete plan to continue student learning,  with teachers working from home, using the school’s Parent Engagement App – Lernio, and Zoom video calls. 

The lockdown happened at such a time that most parents did not even get the opportunity to buy the next class’ books for their children. But fortunately being an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School,  in fact, the only IB school in Lucknow, the curriculum and learning is not dependent on books. The IB’s learning methods focus on real-world contextual learning and inquiries. Teacher-guided and independent research, organizing findings, and presenting them to co-construct learning with their peers and the teacher is the hallmark of the IB classes at Modern School. The school runs the IB program from Nursery to Grade 5 and the ICSE+IB program in Grades 6 to 8 and the ICSE & ISC in Grades 9 to 12.

Using the Lernio app teachers are uploading daily time table of the students with a mix of a healthy routine, worksheets, inquiry learning tasks, learning videos, and website links. The teachers are working from home with full enthusiasm, and sticking to their daily routine of collaborative lesson planning. 

The teachers were even more enthused when after just three days of online learning messages of thanks started started pouring in from the parents. Here are a few:

1. “Want to thank the school for the great initiative of online classes. Today children had an interactive session..Very nice session….. Wonderful experience… they are feeling energetic and enthusiastic to see their friends and teacher..they are excited to attend more of such meetings…feeling positive… in the current situation it is the best way to channelize the energy of children with maintaining the social distancing.” –  Divya Negi, mother of Ishan Singh Negi, Grade 5.

     2. “I  want to appreciate your method of engaging children when things are difficult nowadays due to panas well as revise his/her course. A big thank you to Mr. Kapoor and the teachers for their continuous efforts and concern.” – Dr. Divya Kakkar, mother of Divisha Kakkar, UKG Blue.

3. “We, the parents of Ishita Bahl, class UKG Blue, appreciate the initiative taken by the school to conduct online classes in today’s epidemic when there is a complete lockdown across India. This will help the students make up for the lost time and keep them in regular touch with the studies. We look forward eagerly that the community conditions improve and the school opens soon.”

The online video classes are facilitating  student learning and helping students stay in touch with their peers and teachers. Its a welcome session from the gloom of isolation. Children cant wait for  their online video classes to start. Special online video sessions are also being rolled out to train parents to better support their children at home.  

Modern School continues to deliver 21st Century education using 21st Century technology. During these days of Cornovirus lockdown, instead of using up their time in unsupervised games and chatting, the kids are participating in productive learning activities.