On October 19, Cobb Schools will be opening middle schools around the District, welcoming junior high students back to the classroom. Elementary and special education students that chose face-to-face were welcomed back during Phase One of Cobb's reopening plan on October 5.

More than 14,000 students—around 54% of Cobb Schools middle schoolers—have chosen to return to face-to-face learning, while just under 10,000 have chosen to continue learning remotely.

Middle school teachers will be utilizing "shared synchronous instruction," which simply means that students will be seeing and hearing the same lesson regardless of location. Students in the classroom and students at home will be learning the same material at the same time. This makes it possible for teachers to reach both groups at once and all students learn together as a class, without having to teach two separate lessons.

Students will be taught the class material as a group at the beginning of the lesson. Remote students will see and hear the lesson though a laptop camera and a Bluetooth microphone worn by the instructor. 

Students will then be required to work through comprehension material individually while continuing to have access to the instructor for questions. Group projects are also a possibility during this time thanks to online technology.

Teachers will wrap up the lesson to the class as a whole with concluding/takeaway statements to reinforce the day's material. As the class winds down, face-to-face and remote learners will have both learned the same lesson and will have worked together as a class. The lesson will also be archived on CTLS that all students can access for review.

More information on Cobb's Phase Two Reopening Plan can be found here.

In addition, at the end of this first week of phase one, as is the case every Friday for the rest of the 2020-2021 school year, Cobb Schools will provide you with the number of COVID-19 cases which have been confirmed by the Cobb & Douglas Public Health Department. District totals and school-by-school totals can be found here.