Middle School
Updated on 12 March 2021
Learning at Home – What Parents Can Expect
MIS has a detailed Hybrid and Distance Learning Policy that reflects government regulations and best practices for online learning. On page 11, there are recommendations for families to support learning at home.
Students will use either the school iPad (Gr. 5 and 6) or Laptop (Gr. 7 & 8) for Distance Learning. Students are expected to follow their regular schedule by attending the classes listed below virtually on Microsoft Teams each time they appear in the student’s schedule:
- Homeroom starting at 9:10 every morning.
- Math
- Science
- English
- Individuals & Societies
- German
- Languages – Spanish/Mandarin/French
- Learning Support
- Ethics
Distance Learning
Students will attend the classes listed below virtually on Microsoft Teams at least once a week. Teachers will inform students when a virtual lesson occurs in the Weekly Assignments Spreadsheet available Monday mornings.
- Physical and Health Education
- Drama
- Visual Arts
- Design
- Music
- Supervised Studies will be an independent study time. A teacher will not be using Teams with the students.
Attending Class
It is mandatory for students to attend classes virtually, unless there is a reason. To report absences, please inform absences.ms@mis-munich.de as you normally would.
For each lesson, students go directly to Microsoft Teams for instruction and get direction from there. The teacher will begin the Teams call. Students join the call by pressing the purple “Join” button. All students in Middle School have had instruction on how to do this.
Students need to have their camera on during Teams calls, be at a desk ready to work, and dressed as they would for school.
Microsoft Teams and ItsLearning are exclusively for learning and are not for social media use. Texting and live conversations not related to class work are not permitted. Please inform the teacher if this is happening as online use such as this must be supervised by an adult.
The teacher will conduct a lesson that is about 50 minutes long that includes an introduction and perhaps some instruction, a student question and answer period, class work, and closure.
If students have questions to ask the teacher, they can do so during live lessons, within the chat feature during the Teams call, or via message on Teams. Extensions for summative assignments are possible if requested in advance.
In the Middle School, our goal is to limit homework so that students aren’t spending an unreasonable amount of time on their device. We will be prioritising quality instruction and meaningful class work during the scheduled time. Therefore, it is very important for students to attend regularly scheduled lessons.
If a student is not attending Teams lessons or does not hand in required work, then a Distance Learning notification will be written in SchoolBase. Commendation for excellent effort will also be included in these notifications.