Maintaining a sense of school community during Lockdown!

MS Teams has been an ideal tool both for use within the classroom but also for the whole school. This morning our Assistant Principal ran the full school assembly (years 3-12) from the school. For those students who were at school (children of essential workers, or students at risk), they were able to log in as could all the staff and the students teaching and learning from home.

A screenshot of the live school assembly

Here is what it looked like:

an announcement (an option in Teams) was made in the School Assembly Team, alerting all students to the Assembly, commencing at 9am. This meant that the post had an actual heading, was larger and more prominent than text posts and could be coloured!
general announcements were made
Ms Regan, our talented art teacher had been teaching year 7 how to create lego style avatars. She had been sharing her creations with staff who were delighted with her resulst. She expertly shared her screen to show staff avatars. Students could then guess which staff member they represented either by using the chat, or their microphones. This was a really interactive excercise.
Our Principal introduced us to two new students to the school. We were able to see them and learn what year levels they were in.

The challenges:-

the text chat was fast and furious and very difficult to keep up with
ensuring every student, including the new ones were members of the Team
WIth our experience in previous lockdowns, technical issues were minimal and leading staff were confident in running the Assembly.

The Highlights

All students remote and at school could all participate
At one stage there were more than 91 individual logins
The content was engaging
Hearing even little things like our school bell in the background brought some comfort.
The internet and bandwidth seemed to hold for all – although most remote students turned off their cameras.
Every student could interact in the chat.
Seeing many of our students and staff at home, when web cameras were on.