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Tyrrell County Schools submitted its Remote Instruction Plan to the state Department of Public Instruction on July 20.

It was distributed to interested persons within the county (in English and Spanish) on July 15 for review and comment.

The highly detailed 22-page document spells out how the local school system faculty and administration intend to provide remote instruction to students in all grade levels.

Printed below is just one section of the report. It sets out the process for student submission of completed work:

Schools will identify the student’s online/offline accessibility for remote learning. This information will be listed in the PowerSchool system for each student. The school administrator will identify the status of each student and teacher prior to the first day of school.

Teachers and staff are required to connect with the students through a Learning Management System (LMS) (Seesaw, Google Classroom, or Canvas). Feedback will be provided in a timely and in a manner that students and parents can understand. Each school will distribute a schedule with the classroom expectations for remote instruction activities to help students and parents plan their work.

Instructional feedback should be delivered in language and at a level that the student can understand. Instructional staff is expected to have at least weekly virtual or verbal (phone, audio) communication with the student to discuss the student performance and document the encounter.

Teachers of students who are non-English speaking will be assigned a Pocket Talk device to assist in communicating with the students and their families.

Each student will have a digital portfolio of work to document their performance during the entire school year inclusive of online and offline assignments that are aligned with the NCSCS standards. The portfolio will include standards based work samples, videos, audio recordings, photos, projects, etc. The student work will be representative of the teacher’s lesson plans for remote learning.

The student work will be uploaded to the LMS regularly. Each school will identify the primary method of student work submission which includes graded assignments. The portfolio will be reflective of the grades evident in PowerSchool and report card grades. Each grade span will identify the LMS platform for the digital portfolio with principal approval. The expectation is that all students of a particular grade span will use the same digital portfolio LMS platform.

The principal will make the final selection for the digital portfolio for the students. The district recommendation is as follows: PK-K: Teaching Strategies Gold; 1-2: Seesaw; 3-5: Google Classroom; 6-8: Google Classroom; 9-12: Canvas. Frequent feedback will be provided to students for online and paper packets.

The required digital learning and assessment platform available for all students (K-12) will be Schoolnet. This platform will be used for classroom tests and benchmark assessments.

For students who are unable to complete online assignments or assessments, the offline instructional resource available will be available through pre-loaded flash drives assigned to each student. In this case, the student will submit the flash drive to the teacher within 1 week of completing the assignment for grading. The school principal will identify the approved offline resource that is available for the students.

All stakeholders will be informed of the use of these platforms. The stakeholders will be informed of the expectations through a school sponsored virtual meeting inclusive of a question/answer period as well as written notification to staff and staff meetings.

The district will use technology tools and programs that were used within the district last school year, which will decrease anxiety for staff and students to learn new products. The district will provide video tutorials as a resource located in an identified location on the district website that stakeholders can have easy access when a refresher is needed under a Professional Development Link Tab in the Staff tab. Parent tutorials will be provided on the district website under the Parents tab in the Resources and Useful information link. Student tutorials will be available in the Student tab under a Useful Information tab.

Technology platforms and tools will be monitored by the Technology team. Data analysis for school and district improvement will be based on data collected in the primary platforms. Each school will have a primary platform for:

• Student progress monitoring (classroom and benchmark assessments)
• Student work submission
• Teacher professional development
• Family Engagement and Input
• Community Information

School staff will not be allowed to deviate from the use of the primary platform unless approved by the Superintendent.