The governor issued an emergency order requiring Marylanders to limit all travel to essential purposes only. All Marylanders who do travel outside of Maryland or any individuals who do travel to Maryland must either obtain a negative COVID-19 test result or self-quarantine for 10 days.

This travel applies to all states, with the exception of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, DC. 

If you are planning to travel out of state, please read the governor’s order and the companion health directives.  This emergency order applies to all AACPS students and staff.

Yes, if you choose Virtual-Only learning for your student for second semester, your student will most likely be in classes with his second semester teachers, learning both with other virtual-only learners and hybrid learners, simultaneously.

The small group time is mandatory, synchronous time within a Google Meet set up by the teacher. The student may be in a formal help session with the teacher or working with classmates on classwork/homework, or they can use that time to work independently within the Google Meet. 

Small group time is designed to support students with allocated time to complete their work so their school workload does not become overwhelming as the semester moves forward.  NOTE:  The teacher may have more than one Google Meet session open simultaneously to support multiple small groups.

This Teacher Guidance Sheet for Small Group Time has been provided to all teachers and his noted here to support all to understand the “why” behind small group time and the process by which is should be implemented in the virtual learning model.

Community Meeting and Student Wellness are to support the social-emotional and cognitive growth of students while building community in the virtual world. This is time when students will be engaged in building a skillset to support them in their studies and for the rest of their lives. The curriculum has been built for these blocks. Teachers should be paired for Community Meeting / Student Wellness so that together they are able to offer a high-quality, engaging lesson using the materials and activities provided.  These should be informative and relaxing learning blocks where students gain valuable information while growing in their ability to communicate with one another and enjoy one another’s company in a low-stress environment.

 

Each week there is a topic or theme for Community Meeting/Student Wellness.  Lessons are provided for schools and they are also given some latitude to create their own wellness-oriented lessons as long as they fall within the given weekly topic or theme.  One lesson is mandatory as per Central Office guidance and the other can be selected from those offered or designed by the school.  Community Building Circles are used during one meeting time per week for those schools who have been trained to use the Community Building Circle technique.  During second semester, students will experience more College and Career Readiness information shared and discussed during the Wednesday Community Building/Wellness block.  We have provided schools guidance sheets regarding the Community Building/Wellness blocks.

Mandatory small group time for high school students is designed to be time adjacent to each core period where small groups of students can be invited to 1-3 Google Meets to accomplish any of the following:

• Receive some additional teaching of a challenging concept
• Continue to work to finish the classwork alone with support from peers
• Work with peers or the teacher to start homework successfully together
• Work with peers on group or collaborative assignments
• Join the teacher to work on IB essay peer reviews or AP writing assignment peer reviews
• Engage in Socratic dialogue or discussion to further content understanding
• Review problem sets sharing various strategies with teacher and peers
• Review unit content prior to quizzes or tests
• Complete redo instruction or short redo assignments/assessments

NOTE:  This is not time simply to extend the 50 minutes class time to 70 minutes for the continued teaching of new material, but rather time to support increased student understanding or time for students to receive support from the teacher and peers to complete and submit work in a timely manner. 

Many re-do assignments are short enough to be finished in 20 minutes, but others will need to be scheduled for Wednesday or during Office Hours.  In many cases, the small group time during second semester will offer a more timely slot for students to complete re-dos than in the fall semester.  The main focus of the 20 minute small group time, however, is for students to complete classwork, get additional teaching to support the understanding of difficult concepts, work on group assignments or problem sets with peers, or have time to launch their homework while the teacher is preset and able to answer questions.

Most re-dos will need to be completed in the presence of the teacher, but in some cases the re-do may be able to be something the student can finish on their own and turn in at a later date.  This will be handled on a case by case basis by each teacher. 

Yes, students’ virtual learning schedules will change in 2021.  We listened to parents, teachers, and students who voiced the need for some changes.  Please visit the “Student Schedule website” to view the changes to the virtual schedules for 2021.