I hope this second full week away from school went well for you and you were able to engage in some of the activities we sent out on Monday. Links to next Week's Stay Engaged Plans are at the bottom of this email (and will be shared with students in their Drives and on Clever). I have been receiving many Google Docs shared by students with daily work, notes, or pictures. When I check student progress on Zearn and Stemscopes, I am excited to see that the children are working hard to continue exercising their brains. Well done!
The plan going forward is to send out each week's Engagement Plan the Friday before, in order to give families some time to look it over before starting on Monday. You'll notice a few new features and changes this week. The first page now has some suggestions for prioritizing the activities and some general estimates of time required to complete each activity.
Starting Tuesday, the reading assignments will be through Raz-Kids. When students sign in, they will find the assigned texts and can either read-to-self or choose to have the text read out loud as they follow along. At the end of each text is a quiz, so I can check on student comprehension and follow up with students who might need help. The login is the same username and password students use to sign into a computer at school: for most this is last name + first initial (larsone) and their 6-digit student ID (654321). Students can also access the text directly through the Stay Engaged plan without signing in, but there is no text-to-speech function and I can't see their progress.
On Monday I'll be emailing each family to check in on how learning is going at home, and to confirm Raz-Kids login information. The regular Monday newsletter is moving to Tuesday going forward, as this will better allow me to address any new information or any problems that come up as families start work on each week's Engagement Plan. I do want to acknowledge that these are challenging times and the amount of communication you are receiving from me or SVSD may sometimes feel overwhelming. When possible, I am trying to communicate directly with your child through his/her Google Drive. I will do everything I can to limit my class-wide emails to Fridays and Tuesdays. Of course, that means that they will be lengthy and full of important information with attachments. I hope that you will be able to read through them carefully as our district tries to serve students remotely while fulfilling the new requirements set forth by the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
Last week we checked out devices to many families in need. If you do not have individual devices for each of your children to access our weekly Stay Engaged Plans, please let Mr. Frazier know at [email protected] and he will arrange a time for you to pick up a Chromebook from our school.
If you are having trouble accessing any of the materials and resources or finding roadblocks to accomplishing this work, please communicate this with me so I may support you and your family. As you know, I am working remotely and will be checking email throughout the week.
It is my goal to set up a Microsoft Teams video call with your child each week and to host small student groups as well. Once we get more accustomed to the video calls, I hope to have one full class call each week as well. In order to have a video chat together there are some SVSD requirements:
1) I am required to record the session.
2) Consent from parents is required. If students want to participate and I do not have parental consent to record the session, I will not be able to allow them into the session. : (
If you would like to grant your student permission to participate in our (recorded) video calls, please copy and paste the following into an email response to me:
I _(your name)_________ give consent for Ms. Larson to record _(child's name)___________ in the Zoom or MSFT Teams video sessions with his/her teacher and classmates between 3/30/20 – 4/23/20 (or for the duration of the COVID-19 School Closure).
Listed below are links to our second week of Stay Engaged Plans.
Kindergarten Week 2 Stay Engaged
1st Grade Week 2 Stay Engaged
2nd Grade Week 2 Stay Engaged
3rd Grade Week 2 Stay Engaged
4th Grade Week 2 Stay Engaged
5th Grade Week 2 Stay Engaged
Student Login Information for Online Resources (updated)
Principal Message to school families:
We know many of you have experienced challenges and successes. We are committed to continuously modifying and adjusting our engagement plans to meet the needs of our students. Our teachers and coaches have been working hard behind the scenes planning and preparing these remote learning opportunities for their students. We miss our students so much along with the daily interactions that keep us engaged. In addition, we miss seeing our parent community who have shown such positive support of our school. Thank you for being there for your children during this difficult time. In the end we will be stronger and better as a result of this nasty virus. Take care and stay well – Jim Frazier.
Sending hugs to your 4th grader (and courage to you),
Emily Larson
[email protected]