The best and most honest answer to this question is, I don’t know.

What I do know is that TAG classes will continue with the remote format at least through January. Students will continue getting and turning in their assignments on Schoology and receiving about an hour of “live” lesson time via WebEx. This is regardless of whether the student is at home or in the school building.

This decision was made at the board level and is true for all TAG classes in Jefferson County. It was made for many reasons, not least of which is that TAG classes pull students from multiple classes across each school. This makes in-person TAG classes potential transmission points that could spread exposure throughout a grade level or even across grade levels. Also, there are a limited number of TAG teachers in each school and our curriculum is unique and complex. Our schedules and caseloads can not support both traditional and remote format classes.

If you have questions about how remote TAG classes work, please see THIS POST.

If you have questions about the remote TAG schedule (it has changed several times as the situation develops and may continue to need updating) please see our SCHEDULE.

TAG Students will be receiving 45 min to 1 hours of live class time on WebEx with their TAG teacher. You can see when that will be and who their teacher will be HERE. The other 2 hours students would normally spend in the TAG classroom will be spent working independently on Schoology. If they have any problems, question or just want a quick chat, they can sign up for an Office Hour slot. The information on Office Hours are HERE.

We know Schoology can be confusing, so we have tried to make our courses as easy and intuitive to use as possible. There are friendly graphics and linked buttons throughout our courses. You can see a walk through and explanation HERE.

Your TAG student should be a member of a course on Schoology called Gifted Cougars and the year their group started the program (2018 for 5th grade, 2019 for 4th, and 2020 for 3rd). At the top of that course is a banner with Ms. Cantley and my bitmojis.

Under the banner is a series of 5 buttons which form an interactive header. The buttons are labeled This Week, Previous Weeks, Class WebEx, Contact Teacher, and Bonus Extra More Stuff. Each of these buttons is important, but the first, middle and last ones are the most essential.

This Week takes you to a folder of that name and is the core of the TAG curriculum. The This Week folder will always only contain one week’s worth of work. The lessons, activities, and assessments in this folder are the required work for that week in TAG. Students have exactly a week to complete them from the time they go live. You can check the due date on one of the assignments if you are in doubt about when something is due. After the week is up those lessons, activities and assessments will be moved to the Previous Weeks folder and new work published to the This Week folder.

The This Week folder contain a link to the Schedule where students can find links to their WebEx meetings, a Brainteaser, an Affective Needs lesson, and a Concept-Based Curriculum lesson. There will also sometimes be a lesson called Start Here.

If there’s a Start Here lesson, start there. The Brainteaser is always meant to be done independently. For students who need a refresher, there is a button that takes you to a video tutorial for that brainteaser and a How To PDF. Affective Needs and Concept-Based Curriculum lessons are usually going to be tied to a live WebEx lesson with the teacher. Any lesson that absolutely can not be done without first experiencing a live lesson with the teacher will say so. You can find out more about what to do if your student misses one of those lessons HERE.

Class WebEx will take you to the Schedule here on our class website. The schedule not only tells you when classes have their TAG times, but also provides you with the WebEx links for each of those times. There is also a link to information about TAG office hours and how to sign up for them.

Extra Stuff takes you to a folder of that name. The Extra Stuff folder contains a folder for each week we have been in TAG. These weekly folders contain a link to Duolingo, a bonus Brainteaser, a Challenge Question, and a Further Exploration activity. None of this work is required but it will all earn students more TAG money.

The work in the Extra Stuff folder does not have a due date. Students can go in there and do any activity at any time. It’s meant to supplement their educational experience and life outside the TAG class time. Extra Stuff is fun, challenging work to keep students engaged no matter where they are.

Previous Weeks takes you to a folder of that name. After their week in the This Week folder is over lessons, activities and assessments are moved to the Previous Weeks folder. While all this is past its due date, it can still be done. Students turning in late work without an excuse approved by Ms. Chunn or Ms. Cantley will be penalized points. Students will still earn money on it, they will just earn less.

Contact Teacher takes you to a page with several linked buttons. These buttons take you directly to various pages on this website where the helpful information listed on the button is posted.

While it is always best for students to be present and able to participate during the live lessons, we all understand that things happen occasionally to make that impossible. We have tried to set our TAG Schoology courses up so that even if they can’t be present with us, whether that’s in person or virtually, they will miss as little as possible of the TAG educational experience. To that end, we will be recording all of our live lessons (in a format that will not show students faces and preserves as much student privacy as possible).

The recorded lessons will be posted to Schoology for students who missed them or just want a review. It can take WebEx up to 24 hours to make the recordings available to us. And if we need to make edits for student privacy reasons, that will take even more time. So it could potentially take up to 48 hours to upload the recordings. Please be patient with this process.

The recording will either be linked in the lesson description, if possible. But if there is already a video linked in the description, used as a part of the lesson, the recording will precede the lesson in that content area folder.

There are two folders on Schoology with work in them for students to do, This Week and Extra Stuff. New work is added to both of these folders each week. While the work in the This Week folder is required and due after one week, the work in the Extra Stuff folder is just that – extra.

The Extra Stuff folder is where you can find the Challenge Question for the week.  In the past it was posted in the classroom, here on the class website, and on Edmodo. It is now ONLY found in the Extra Stuff Folder.

Edmodo also used to have bonus brainteasers for students to complete for extra money. Those are now in the Extra Stuff folder, as well as a link to Duolingo and and additional activity related to our Concept-Based Curriculum unit. This additional Concept-Based Curriculum activity, called Further Exploration, is a cool or interesting video or resource that we won’t have time to cover in class.

So, none of the work in the Extra Stuff folder is required. But students will earn money for all of it.