Snow Day Resources: Remote Learning and Virtual Snow Day Activities

Just as you begin to feel the winter months couldn’t get grayer, colder, and longer, you suddenly get a snow day. It can feel like a true godsend. You and your students get a breather. It is one of the perks of teaching and being a student. Who doesn’t want a surprise day off?

But things may have changed for you on the snow-day front. Your school may have invested in many new virtual learning tools, and now there are recent proclamations for something called a “virtual snow day.” How do you follow these new rules while still balancing the joy of a snow day?

Will schools still have snow days?

That’s hard to say, but we see more and more school leaders consider canceling the traditional snow day. In fact, 39% of district leaders say they have turned snow days into remote learning days, and 32% consider doing the same. So snow days, as we know them, are changing.

Digital snow days are the new norm.

Schools are, instead, turning to digital snow days. Digital snow days mean that students will participate in virtual learning when snow takes them away from home. This means you will need some snow day activity in your back pocket for surprise snow days.

Don’t wait until the night before or the day of a snow day to develop a snow day activity for your students. Plan and get your digital classroom ready for upcoming snow days. Think of these like sub plans, and always have a couple waiting for when you need them.

Tips for remote learning on a virtual snow day

The key to navigating these new virtual snow days is to balance what your school wants with what your students need. So make sure your assignment checks all the necessary boxes, but keep it fun because your students will still want it to feel like a snow day. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Create virtual snow day activities

Your students are excited by the mere mention of snow. So why not plan an activity about snow? For ELA classes, this may mean a digital lesson on snow-themed poetry. For science classes, you can provide a recipe for ice cream made from the snow. A few guided questions to get them to connect the recipe and the science can go far with your students. In a foreign language class, you could include snow-day vocabulary with some cultural information on how a country in your language area handles the snow. The options are endless. But keeping on the theme will keep the spirit of the snow day intact while satisfying virtual snow day requirements.

Dig deeper with video and questions

Is there a topic where you wished you could have gone deeper in class, but you just didn’t have the time? A snow day can be perfect for this. You can assign a video with questions for your students to answer. With TeacherMade, this process is easy. You can create a quick worksheet with an attached video. Students can watch and then answer questions. They submit the assignment to you. You can even set up self-grading capabilities.

Encourage creativity

Sometimes it can feel like you’re driving full speed ahead, and you can’t do many activities that require true thinking and creativity. A snow day can be the perfect time to do this. Take a moment to assign something artistic and creative. It can be the ideal time to assign free writing or poetry to your class. Have the students create something and keep it open-ended. You will be shocked about what they come up with when given the time.

Prep for standardized tests

Or you could go the opposite direction with your snow day and use this time to prep for standardized tests that are looming. This plan of action can work well for the person who likes to have a plan. Because standardized test prep can sometimes be out of sync with everyday classroom activities, you can easily do it whenever you have a snow day.

Besides, it’s easy to digitize standardized test practice to have in your back pocket for moments like this. Just take the activity you want to use, and load it into TeacherMade. Take the PDF or image file of the assignment, and then add online questions anywhere to the assignment. From there, you can add the answer key. You and your students will have instant feedback. It works well for a snow day assignment because it is 100% digital, and it doesn’t disrupt your lessons when you return.

Maintain an online classroom

Online classrooms allow you to jump seamlessly into virtual learning. TeacherMade integrates with Google Classroom and enables you to create online digital worksheets to use with your students. It’s the best way to handle remote learning situations.

Use TeacherMade for online worksheets and assignments During Your Next Snow Day.

TeacherMade is the intuitive tool you have been looking for when converting your worksheets into online interactive assignments. TeacherMade takes your handouts and turns them into the background of your new online digital worksheets. From there, you can add questions anywhere to the document (similar to a Powerpoint!). You can add in an answer key to make all assignments self-scoring, or you can give students your own personal feedback. Snow days are the perfect time to try something new in your digital classroom!