@Home CNS
For the 2020-2021 school year, CNS is offering a simultaneous remote option, @Home CNS. Families may opt in and out of in-person and remote opportunities. Then, when following guidelines to move the whole school to a remote format for an extended period, the learning and relationships continue to grow at CNS.
Our teachers continue working a full-day, ensuring that CNS remote learning maintains our consistent commitment to our mission to teach children in the ways that they learn best in every context.
Guided by the child development research, progressive pedagogy and educational innovation, @Home CNS learning, like CNS in-person learning, is rooted in connected, emergent and experiential learning experiences carefully facilitated by highly trained teachers.
In @Home CNS, our program combines synchronous and asynchronous opportunities to support relational constructivist learning:
- Morning Meeting including greetings, games or songs, mini-lesson and prompt or challenge for the day
- Comprehensive Play Plan including recommendations for mindfulness, movement, song, stories, materials as well as playful research and inquiry, emailed every morning
- Small Groups Lunches including emergent study groups related to longer term projects as well as read alouds, dialogue, and guided discussion
- Afternoon Home-School Extensions including additional ideas for learning beyond classroom walls in every domain as well as mini-lesson video links from our educators and specialists
- Individual Afternoon Conversations including personalized notes, prompts and projects unique to the skills and interests of each learner as well as scheduled one-on-one conferences for work share and storytelling
- Additional Opportunities including Shared Photo Journals for Documentation, Children as Experts Videos, Connected Community Ideas, Investigator Challenges, Resource Pages, Parent Coffees and more
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Unlike so much traditional online or rote learning, @Home CNS learning is true to a curriculum specifically for our unique group of children. Our minimal use of the screen, serving as springboard to foster relationships and playful invitations, directs children to hands-on, interactive, and playful learning that preserves our CNS approach to wonder, joy and inquiry.
We relish in the time together in our classroom environments and our time in communities of learners at school; however, when it is necessary to offer remote learning, we have come to appreciate that our community and pedagogy connects well beyond our physical building. CNS teachers are well positioned to bring their rich learning opportunities to children at home. Moreover, the skills that we foster at CNS translate well into the world.
Daily Schedule
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Reggio Emilia Inspired Influences: Remote CNS
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Inquiry-Based Learning and Long-Term Projects
Like at school, smaller groups are scheduled around some of the children's research studies to continue to build off observation. Just as at school, inquiry groups will begin with a question, offer some exploration, provide some teacher scaffolding, include some small zoom time and be propelled by more questions and by documentation. -
Observation and Documentation
Like our daily documentation, we have provided shared albums for video and photos to allow children and families to record and document at home. In notes home, teachers will make connections between school and home documentation to continue to support reflective responsive practice. -
Parents as Partners
In the same way that we connect at school, we continue regular virtual coffees, office hours and daily posts are available each week with teachers and directors. Teachers personally call families every other week. Additionally, regular resources and communication allow us to bridge home and school learning. -
Pedagogy of Listening/Relationship Learning
Like at school, we have morning meetings on school days. This is a chance to maintain a connected community of learners, dialogue with children and support social relationships. Even deeper and richer conversations happen in the small groups and individual correspondence. -
Personalized Emergent Curriculum
Like regular learning stories during the year, in CNS distance learning we are able to send daily notes to build on and extend each child’s particular interests, skills, and investigations. In this level of personalization, teachers can draw from previous and ongoing documentation, observations and assessments of each learner. -
Teachers as Researchers
True to CNS, teachers spend an hour of research and development for every hour that they teach. The demands of CNS distance learning are in many ways greater than in school learning because of the high level of communication and personalization. Teachers foster that level of work with daily faculty meetings, team meetings, research meeting and regular professional development to continue to support the new research that emerges from this way of teaching and learning.
Guiding Parent Articles
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From Agency for Young Children:
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From Alexandra Stockwell:
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From Defending the Early Years:
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From Janet Lansbury:
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From Peter Gray:
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From Teacher Tom:
Reflections and Gratitudes
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Week 1
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Week 2
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Week 3
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Week 4