
Distance Learning
At Letovo, just like at all Russian schools, the fourth term of the 2019/20 academic year did not start as usual — the holidays were over, but students did not come back to school. The shortly introduced lockdown made teachers work from home, too. However, the teaching process was not interrupted in our school even for a single day: the test week was followed by the full-fledged studies — and in some respects, the learning process became even more intense and exciting.
Totals in Figures
~16650
learning sessions were held online
100%
readiness of Letovo for online work
~50
academic days in the distance learning mode
Management of classes

The academic workload was retained in full scope: by combining all kinds of individual and group work, we have managed to complete the program and deliver all final papers in due time. Even full-fledged classes of music and physical education were delivered online. The schedule was developed considering the time zones of our students, academic load, and the children’s physiology. The lessons were reduced to 30 minutes (retaining the double class principle, when two academic hours are devoted to one subject), but the teachers used this time with maximized efficiency. All this allowed Letovo students to keep pace and successfully complete the academic year: over 40 % of our students have 6 and 7 grades, which corresponds to the “excellent” mark according to the five-grade scale.
Lessons

For teachers, distance learning turned out to be a real professional challenge: they had to invent, innovate, and research for the lessons to correspond to the program and be engaging.
Online findings

Due to the confident use of the online toolkit, the academic team has managed to successfully build relations with students and retain students’ interest in acquiring new knowledge and overcoming difficulties. Just like for many other schools, Zoom was Letovo’s central platform where lectures, discussions, and group work could be arranged. In addition, teachers actively used the internal platform Canvas, Google services (documents, presentations, maps), interactive online boards (Padlet, Whiteboard), and other online tools. Judicious approaches to lesson management and scope of home tasks, active use of play-based teaching technologies, self-assessment tools, creative innovations — all this helped make distance learning efficient and, at the same time, preserve energy, health, and efforts of students.