Great Hearts Online provides the same high-quality curriculum and pedagogy as Great Hearts brick-and-mortar schools, but going to school from your home is a different experience!

Students will spend the majority of their time in Live Learning classes and completing Independent Practice. There are several ways that parents can work with their children to ensure that scholars will thrive in an online academic environment.

Scholarly Preparation

A great academic experience starts with preparation. Just as our teachers carefully plan lessons and assignments before each week starts, families can help make sure their scholars are prepared for the week, too! Preparing scholarly workspaces, materials, and a daily/weekly schedule are all crucial to help ensure a smooth week of learning.

GHO believes that we are partners with parents in educating their children, and, especially in an online academy, parental involvement is expected. Each family will need to determine their own optimal setup for workspaces, schedules, and adult involvement throughout the scholar's school day.

Parents/guardians will need to determine how much assistance their child needs depending on age-appropriate and individual factors. However, families should plan to assist scholars more than they might typically need to at a brick-and-mortar school, given that scholars will have less direct supervision from teachers throughout the day.

Setting Up a Designated Scholarly Workspace

An example of a great workspace: quiet, neat, well-lit, necessary materials are nearby, and a plain, uncluttered background for classes

In a brick-and-mortar school, you wouldn't want your child's classroom to be a messy, disorganized, dark, and distracting space. Who can think and learn in such a place? Instead, you would hope that their classroom would be organized, bright, and have all the necessary materials for engaging learning experiences.

At GHO, scholars' workspaces should mimic what we would want to see in a brick-and-mortar classroom. Below are some necessary elements to consider when families and scholars are setting up a scholar's workspace.

Scholar Workspaces

Designated just for work
Quiet
Not visually distracting (a plain background would be best when attending class)
Good lighting (we want lighting to be in front of scholars' faces, not behind, so that their faces can easily be seen on Zoom during class)
All necessary physical materials are nearby and organized (pencils, pens, notebooks, books, manipulatives, etc.)
Near a power outlet, so scholars can plug in their laptops and work without interruption for the day
If a family has multiple scholars attending an online academy and working at home, they will need to have some spaces that are separate enough to not distract each other during class time (for example, one scholar singing during music class might be distracting to another scholar who is trying to focus on a history lesson in the same room!)
Please be careful with pets! It can be fun to share the screen with a beloved pet at an appropriate time, but pets popping up during Live Learning sessions can be quite the distraction to everyone

Organizational Tips from GHO Parents

Notebooks and folders should be color-coordinated for each class (the Scholar Success Kits have color-coordinated these supplies)
Make sure printables for the week are carefully organized in the appropriate class folder
All school supplies should be kept in the same place (a shelf dedicated just to school materials, or organized bins, etc.) so that scholars will have quick, easy access to their materials, and will not need to spend time searching for them when they should be focusing during class!
Extra materials, like whiteboards for scheduling and notes or hooks for headphones, can be helpful for scholars
Depending on your family's space and routines, it can be helpful to put everything away when scholars are done with school for the day. For example, if a scholar works in their bedroom, putting away their laptop, document camera, books, notebooks, etc. into a specific cubby or shelf at the end of the day can help signal that they are done with school, and they can play in their bedroom without risk of damaging their school materials

Developing and Maintaining a Daily Schedule

Routines, procedures, and habits are all important components of a Great Hearts education, as an orderly schedule can help contribute to an orderly soul. Teachers at Great Hearts Online will work with scholars to implement and maintain class routines, but families now have more responsibility and control over scholar's daily schedule during the times they are not in Live Learning.

Parents/guardians can help their children to be successful in an online academy by working together to set up a consistent weekly schedule for Live Learning time, Independent Practice time, and breaks (it is important to make sure to take breaks from screens during the day!). Parents should plan to monitor their child intermittently throughout the day to an age-appropriate extent.

Scheduling Tips from GHO Parents

Set up the same routines everyday (e.g., wake up, eat breakfast, put on uniform, set up school materials, ready for school before class starts, make sure to have set lunch times)
- Write down the schedule, with specific times listed for each activity
Print out the scholar's school schedule and tape it to the wall near them so they can reference it throughout the day
- Frequently remind them to check their schedule!
- It can be helpful to set reminders for scholars for when they need to be in class (via a calendar, phone reminders, Alexa, etc.)
- It might be helpful for parents to have easy access to scholars' schedules: think about setting up a Google Calendar or using a phone calendar app to enter your child's schedule so that you can easily keep track of what your child should be doing
Make sure scholars are ready for class before the actual start time-- sometimes it takes a couple extra minutes to complete the log-in process
If you have a child who tends to run late, tell them that class starts 10 minutes before it does! (If class starts at 8:00, tell them they need to be ready to go at 7:50)
Use "school terminology" (like "recess" instead of "playing outside") to help scholars maintain the mindset that they are at school and on a school schedule
Make sure to take breaks from screens! When scholars have a break during the day, parents/guardians can help them to make healthy choices and do something away from computer and phone screens

How to Prepare before Each Week

Mise en place: a French term for having all your ingredients prepared before you start cooking

Families need to prepare for school with their children before each week, in order to ensure an undisturbed week of learning. Knowing what lies ahead and having their physical workspace and materials prepared in advance will help scholars to navigate their learning throughout the week with a sense of calm and peacefulness.

Wondering how best to prepare for school each week? Please read the list below to see what tasks will help your family to get ready for a smooth week at GHO.

Read the Weekly Newsletter

The Weekly Newsletter is an excellent source of school- and class-level updates, including everything from curriculum, to tech updates, to events. The expectation at GHO is that parents will stay up-to-date with school happenings by reading this valuable source of information each week. The Newsletter will be sent to your email and will be available via your child's Lyceum course in Canvas.

Print and Organize the Weekly Printables Packet (K-3)

Every week, each grade-level team of teachers will compile a "Printables Packet" for scholars in their grade. The Printables Packet will consist of resources and assignments that scholars must have a paper copy of. Before the week begins, it is important to print out the packet and help scholars (as age appropriate) to organize their printed materials neatly by subject. The Printables Packet will also be available via email and the Lyceum course in Canvas.

Scan the Week Ahead

In Canvas, families can scan the assignments for the week ahead. Although scholars should not start their assignments before the appropriate day (it is important that scholars attend Live Learning sessions in order to complete the corresponding Independent Practice with appropriate context and knowledge), families can still make sure they know what to prepare for throughout the week by looking ahead. Further instructions about exactly how and where to look for this information will be included in the Onboarding Week information in Canvas.

Organize scholar workspace and materials

The French cooking term mise en place means to have all your ingredients prepared and measured, pans prepared, and tools at-the-ready before your start cooking. The idea is that cooking will go much more smoothly if everything has been prepared in advance; missing ingredients can be spotted ahead of the time they're needed, there is adequate time for special preparation for ingredients, and the actual cooking process can go much more smoothly and quickly. Much like cooking, your scholar's learning for the week will run more smoothly if all learning materials and tools are mise en place!

Scholars will need a variety of materials to aid their learning throughout the week, and an orderly workspace in which to work. After reading the Newsletter, organizing Printables, and scanning the Canvas assignments for the week ahead, families will be able to organize all the materials that a scholar will need for the week.

Materials to think about include:

technology learning tools (e.g., laptop, charger, doc cam, possibly headphones, etc.)
writing utensils (e.g., pencils, pens, highlighters, coloring tools)
folders (containing printables such as worksheets, resources, packets, etc.)
notebooks and/or loose leaf paper
books, textbooks, workbooks
additional learning items such as flashcards or manipulatives