Hybrid Learning With a Focus on In-Person Time for Labs, Hands-On Activities, and Collaboration

Overview

For students who are involved in remote learning, Hopkins Public Schools wanted to ensure that these students still had authentic learning experiences for hands-on activities and opportunities for collaboration with their peers. Remote learning made it more difficult for students to complete things such as labs or art projects, so the district chose to provide hybrid learning opportunities for remote students to complete hands-on activities.

“We've been working really hard to emphasize with our teachers of being conscientious about how you're using the in-person time and to give kids collaboration time because from all of the surveys and feedback we've gotten from students, that's what they're missing. They don't miss coming to the building to listen to their teacher talk for forty-five minutes. They miss engaging with one another and in the hands-on activities.” - Ann Ertl, Interim Director of Innovation, Design, and Learning - Hopkins Public Schools

Approach

At the middle and high schools, district leadership encouraged teachers to differentiate the use of online and in-person time for virtual students to give them opportunities to engage in authentic and collaborative in-person learning experiences. In areas like science and the arts, students learned didactic content primarily online and spent in-person learning time working on labs and hands-on projects. Looking into the future, the district will be exploring models like flipped learning to support this at greater scale.

This strategy is a part of TLA's Hop, Skip, Leapfrog release, which explores the concrete ways in which schools and systems pursued student-centered innovation during COVID-19. Explore the full guide to find additional strategies, insights, and resources.