That time of year is almost upon us! While your mind might drift to the excitement and joy of the holiday season, we are actually talking about the dreaded flu season! Finding ways for students to make up a Walking Classroom lesson doesn’t have to be complicated! Here are a few of our suggestions of things you can do to make sure your students don’t miss a podcast:
Listening Center
One solution is to allow students to hear a missed podcast in a listening center during your literacy block or some other point in the day. Students can sit and listen to the podcast on their own and then can be held accountable for their learning through a follow-up activity. Students could complete the comprehension quiz, respond to a writing prompt (you could use one of the discussion questions), or write a summary of the podcast. This sheet was created by 5th grade teacher and Walking Classroom adopter, Stephanie Moorman, and is one of many ways that students can record their learning.
Make-Up Day
If you have a large number of students that need to make up a podcast, have a Make-Up Day where students listen to a podcast that they have missed. If you have students that have not missed any walks, they can simply choose a favorite to listen to again. It might be helpful to plan a Make-Up Day once each quarter to make sure students always get a chance to catch up.
Check It Out
Depending on your comfort level, you can allow students to “checkout” the WalkKit for a day and take it home to walk, listen, and learn. You may want to put some procedures in place prior to sending the device home (return date, parental consent, etc.) but this is an easy way to let allow a student to catch up. If you want to hold students accountable for their learning at home, consider having them fill out a Home Walking Log.
Record Your Walk
One of your class jobs could be to have a student record the main points of the podcast after every walk. his sheet can be kept in a folder orbinder and shared with students that miss a walk. This sheet, also created by Stephanie Moorman, would take a student just a few minutes to fill in and it allows students that were absent to quickly see which podcast they missed and read a quick overview of the contents.
What do you do when a student misses a walk? Share your ideas below!
To read more about how Stephanie Moorman uses the worksheets included in this post in her own classroom, click here!
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