Emily Hays Photos
Teacher Michelle Romanelli, Cherifa Ourodjeri, 9, Kayden Bush, 9, Chawnaye Battle, 9.
After a year of sitting at their computers, King/Robinson fourth graders were ready to move. Their teacher, Michelle Romanelli, realized she could harness that energy to help them learn math.
This led to one of Romanelli’s takeaways from hybrid school — cutting up worksheets makes them way more fun.
“It’s funny the little mind games we play. All I did was print out the worksheet on color paper and cut it up. When they handed in the worksheets, they were all finished,” Romanelli said. “That never happens.”
King/Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School fourth graders have had the option of in-person learning since January.
Romanelli’s class has trickled back slowly, as more and more families get vaccinated against Covid-19 and decide that school is safe again. Now, the majority of Romanelli’s students attend school in person, with only seven of 24 learning remotely.
Like other teachers in New Haven, she’s learning moves of her own — hybrid teaching moves.
Romanelli does her best to encourage family confidence. She sends pictures of her class to the parents throughout the week, showing students social distancing and having fun. She understands how much calmer that makes a parent feel; she feels that same relief when she gets photo updates from her daughter’s preschool, The Learning Experience.
When the Independent visited King/Robinson, Romanelli had started her math class with a video that both in-person and remote students could enjoy. One little boy bopped his head to the hip hop song about how to calculate area and perimeter.
Students often tell Romanelli that they get these songs stuck in their head. That’s the point, Romanelli says.
At the end of the video, Romanelli asked the students how to calculate area. One student raised his hand and recited that the formula is length multiplied by width.
Then Romanelli released online worksheets for her “friends at home” and explained the instructions for “my friends here.” She gives the remote students buddies, so they can help each other. They also know to rewatch the explainer videos before asking her questions.
Romanelli: Puts in an extra half hour on every hybrid assignment.
Romanelli had taped colorful squares to the walls three feet apart. Each of these “task cards” held a math problem.
Students had to solve for either the length, width or area of the rectangles printed on the cards. Each student wrote the answers down on their own sheet. Romanelli uses this task card method one to two times a week.
While other students darted around, 9 year-old Kayden Bush moved systematically with her clipboard from one card to the next nearest one. She is a budding artist, who is uploading her artwork to TikTok until she is old enough to sell her artwork online. Her mother owns an online makeup and beauty business, Glossology By Butter, so Bush is already thinking about how to handle the challenges of online retail.
Bush waited until a few weeks ago to switch from remote to in-person school. Romanelli can see how much happier she is and how much easier it is to submit all her work.
Bush described the excitement of returning to school to see friends.
“It’s a big school, but now I know almost everyone,” Bush said. “It’s a lot less stress. Typing hurts my fingers.”
Nearby, Cherifa Ourodjeri quietly calculated that the area for a four-by-seven rectangle was 28. Ourodjeri plays the clarinet and wants to become a musician; the school allows her to take extra time during the week for a private music lesson to encourage that dream.
As students completed their task cards, groups of four tended to clump together to look at the cards and ask each other questions. Romanelli reminded the students when they were too close for her liking. She told one student that she could see their nose above their mask. It was a good day — with only one mask reminder, the students had earned extra free time outside.
Future model and actress Chawnaye Battle.
Romanelli noticed that some students are almost different people in the classroom from their remote selves.
At home, Chawnaye Battle was quiet and had trouble staying awake during her remote classes. In her school building, she is dramatic and confident. She wants to be everything when she grows up, especially a Hollywood star. She applies her social-emotional learning lessons to her relationship with teachers, checking in on how they are doing too. During her interview, she was bursting with stories and did a twirl as she described her career dreams.
“I’m really happy to be back. It was good to have [spring] break though for a couple of days. I was tired!” Battle said.
Romanelli is tired too. It’s a challenge to teach both the 17 students in front of her and the seven remote students. Each assignment takes half an hour longer to plan for the hybrid format. She has to add text boxes to her worksheets and make sure her remote students have something to do if their internet gives out.
“I can’t wait for it to be over,” Romanelli said.
At the same time, hybrid school has given teachers a chance to get closer, she said. They eat lunch together and teach one another fun teaching tricks, like Romanelli’s worksheets-turned-task-cards.
Previous coverage of changes in public school classrooms in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic year:
These math lessons sound like a lot of fun. I once had a teacher who taught addition and subtraction by playing math games with students taking steps forward + and back -while she called out problems for us to solve.
With children age 12 and up eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, and studies being done currently on the younger age groups, school this fall should look more like normal as long as everybody who can get vaccinated does get it. Our virus infection rate is going down, and we can remove our masks if we are fully vaccinated. Keep up the good work, the end of the pandemic is in sight in CT.