Our Remote Curriculum

August 4, 2020

We recently took on a massive overhaul of our summer/intervention curriculum.

Seattle Public Schools wanted to use it for some number of students; this being the pandemic and everything being new and unknown, no one knew what to expect. It could be for 100 students, or it could be for 20,000.

In the end, about 15,000 signed up. And while I’m still waiting for more feedback, early responses have been positive. This one in particular made me incredibly happy:

Just wanted to send you a quick note and say THANK YOU for everything you did to bring us such a wonderful math curriculum this summer. The students are loving it. I just got done with a conference and the student said at the end, “I don’t want summer school to end, this is the best summer school I’ve every been to!”

I have seen every single one of my students engage with the math games at some level, even those who were disengaged and struggling prior to school closures.

The teacher resources are so wonderfully supportive, which has led to greater equity for students as well! The PowerPoints for the student conferences make it really clear what to focus on and provide just the right amount of guidance on questioning strategies to ensure that no matter who a student is working with for their coaching session, they are having a high-quality, rigorous experience.

Working with this curriculum has helped me learn a lot about how to support students in mathematics during distance learning, which will benefit next year’s students as well! Thank you so much to the entire math team for bring us this wonderful content!

The program consists of 10 videos and accompanying packet per grade, for K – 5. Each video is 15 – 20 minutes long, and each lesson takes about an hour. (There are prompts to pause, work on your own, and then press play throughout.) I made about 20 of the videos myself. For the rest, we had a superstar team of teachers who stepped up and did some truly amazing work. It took a combination of charisma, tech savvy, and pro teacher skills to make these videos work. We were thrilled  with how they turned out.

We’ve decided to make the program available for free to individual parents and teachers. We’re in a pandemic, after all, and this seems like something that could really help.

To get the files, sign up here on our mailing list and check the box to get it. A letter with all the links for videos and packet downloads will be emailed to you. We may follow up later to ask how it went.

If you’re already on the mailing list, I’m going to send out info on how to get the curriculum today. Check your inbox.

If you use the curriculum, please let me know how it goes for you! We’re all in new territory these days. Still, I’m hopeful that we’ve made something useful. I’ll be blogging in the next few weeks to reflect on some of the ideas and choices we made in designing it. I hope that our (sometimes stressful) crash course in asynchronous learning can help others not need to start from scratch.

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John Golden
John Golden
4 years ago

It won’t let me request the remote if I’m already subscribed.

Fabrizia
Fabrizia
4 years ago

We’re using this remote summer curriculum at home during social distancing mandates because of the Covid-19 pandemic… After Kindergarten Lesson 6 my kid, aged 6, just said “I love them”. Thank you so much for your work!!

Rachel Friesen
Rachel Friesen
4 years ago

Hi Dan, I just signed up for the newsletter when I purchased the supplemental curriculum, but didn’t know about the remote curriculum. Will you please send me the way to get the remote curriculum? Many of my teachers used it in Summer School in Seattle this year, and loved it!

Linda
Linda
3 years ago

Hi, So sorry to bother you with this but, like John below, I would have received the link but my computer had an over haul and I’m starting from scratch. And so I can’t receive it because it was already sent. I’ve been looking on your website but don’t think it’s there any more. Thank you!