Family Newsletter

Dear Families,

I hope you had a relaxing week off from school and digital learning tools.  I also hope you feel ready to get back to remote learning together again!  I am very excited.

My family and I had a fun-filled week together with very little technology.  We hiked in the woods and did some yard-work, which at my house entails clearing some land and chopping down trees while moving rocks!  I will share more with the kids tomorrow on seesaw.

Our new remote learning schedule is complete.  I wanted to send this email to you as early as possible so you and your family can plan the upcoming week.  I know what it is like to manage multiple children's schedules, broadband capacity as well as your own working schedules.

Before you look at it, I wanted to explain a few things:

1. Our days/times remain the same for our small group google meets.  We will have another whole class google meet on Friday and there is no need to sign up for that.

2. Most slide-decks have been linked in a slightly different format.  I did it in the "preview" mode so the images would be bigger for everybody to see, but this means that you will need to use the arrow keys to forward through the whole presentation and get to my video-recording.

3.  We will start a new writing unit on Wednesday.  Wednesday's slide-deck is a little longer than the average ones from last week because I wanted to introduce/explain opinion writing and how to get started in depth.

4. Monday's schedule has two lessons for literacy; one for reading and one for writing.  They are related and we will share on Friday.

5.  As we did in the past, I will post a morning message on seesaw around 8am.  This message can be followed up on right away, later during the day, or simply thought about, or talked about at home. I hope your child visits the remote learning schedule (on the wiki and linked below) after that to watch/listen to the literacy lesson.  This lesson is followed up on and modeled by me on seesaw again around 8:15-8:30.  Since these are recorded, there is no need to watch them at this particular time, but the sequence, seesaw, wiki, seesaw-post, helps your child make stronger connections now when we are teaching new materials.  I also hope it helps families by having one child at a time online since passcodes vary and many times devices are shared.

Here is week 2 (2nd grade math will be linked later today)

Remote Learning Schedule Week 2

Lastly, I wanted to offer parent-teacher conferences in google meets in the next few weeks.  They were cancelled due to the school closings, but if you would like to meet up for approximately 15-20 minutes, please email me and let me know which days/times work best for you.  My "office hours" are on the remote schedule as well.

Thanks for reading this very long email.  I will "see" everyone tomorrow:)

Maria