Hello again, parents:

With the announcement of school continuing remote instruction for the remainder of the year, we are continuing to adjust our schedule to meet the needs of as many students and parents as possible. As noted in Mrs. Estes’ email Friday evening, we will need to switch our Mondays and Fridays for our fifth-graders. Please refer to this document regarding the most recent schedule for our students. Not all students meet during all of our scheduled times, so be sure to ask your child which math group and which reading group to which they belong. Also, please know that by using the calendar feature of Classroom, students only see the assignments and Zoom times that have been assigned to them. We have set aside dedicated times for each core subject within the four-day week. These times may involve being part of a Zoom meeting, require students to work on an assignment on their own, or they may involve a combination of online and offline work. We feel very strongly it is also important for all students to have plenty of time to get outside, partake in family activities, and enjoy their own hobbies and interests. We hope that our revised schedule reflects as such.

We have also factored opportunities into our weekly schedule to offer support to you and your students, such as time to receive extra help on assignments, as well as one on one check ins. We hope that these blocks will provide your students the time needed to progress on their class assignments, check in with us, and receive the help they might need. We have also created a system which we hope will allow for a more direct way for each student to correspond with us directly in lieu of having email. We will be sharing this with our students on the Fifth-Grade Classroom page.

We will continue to gather feedback and tweak the schedule as needed. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns as we move forward.

Thank you for your continued support,

Kimberly & Tim

Please know this is solely a copy of the email sent out on Friday, March 20, 2020 in an effort to keep record of emails that are sent directly to parents. If you read this already, please disregard. Stay healthy!

Hello, parents:

Thank you for all of the cooperation and feedback you’ve offered to us this week. Though our days have been very different from our usual school days, we have seen a lot of great work and effort from everyone as we’ve adjusted to these digital spaces and online instruction. We are truly enjoying the maturity and excitement your students are showing as they rise to this new challenge.

As we move into our next week, we wanted to provide some updates to help streamline the experience for not only our students, but you as well. We recognize that everyone involved is balancing multiple responsibilities between parenting, working, facilitating student learning, and so much more. In light of this, please know we are appreciative of whatever amount of support you are able to give your child from home. In the next few days, we will be organizing check-ins between each student and their homeroom teacher. Our hope is that this might serve as an outlet for your child to share concerns and ask questions about how to navigate this new learning environment.

In fifth grade, Google Classrooms will serve as our primary source of information for you and your child as we continue our online learning. We certainly don’t want to inundate you with information spread across several different platforms, so we believe the accessibility of Google Classroom will be most efficient for you and your child. Each Monday, we will update the Google Classrooms for each of your student’s core subjects with assignments, online meeting times, and any other relevant information for the week. The general Fifth Grade Classroom page will be used for updates from Specials teachers, non-subject specific interactions, general well-being links, and links to our weekly grade-level Zoom calls. Students should get in the habit of checking each of their Google Classrooms twice a day. Setting a specific time first thing in the morning and another time in the afternoon or evening might be helpful. This way, they can be aware of any changes that are made to their weekly schedules, as well as check in on the other comments and questions made by their classmates.

We highly encourage you to follow up with your student as they record these responsibilities in their agenda just as you did throughout the year. This will continue to help them develop their own accountability and scheduling skills, while also having the assistance of their team of parents and teachers. In Middle School, students are expected to check each teacher’s Veracross and/or Google Classroom pages for all assignments. While parents do have access to their Veracross accounts, in order to support their child’s growing independence they are not directly notified of assignments unless there is an issue in which a student is having difficulty and needs more support. Keeping track of assignments for their own classes is an important step for your student, especially as they continue to build ownership of their own learning in the years to come.

To help with the adjustment to online classes, we will be offering an open Zoom meeting for parents through the link posted in the Fifth Grade Google Classroom tomorrow, Saturday, March 21, at 3:00 p.m. We welcome you to join us so we can help clarify any confusion or answer any questions you may have.

We hope to see you Saturday at 3 p.m.!

Take Care,

Kimberly & Tim

Please know this is solely a copy of the email sent out on Monday, March 16, 2020 in an effort to keep record of emails that are sent directly to parents. If you read this already, please disregard. Stay healthy!

Hello, parents:

Thank you all for bearing with us as we figure out the best way to support your children as we navigate the instructional shift in the wake of FA’s closure. We wanted to touch base to provide more information on how this next week is going to look for you and the students. By now, you should have received a detailed email from Sheila Wimble for PE and either Jesica Lontor or Abigail Ibarra about their expectations for Foreign Language this week. 

We have posted our assignments for this week and will continue to post assignments, links, and any online meetings to the Google Classroom for each specific class as listed below. All students already have access to these classrooms at this point, so they should know where to go.

• Fifth Grade
  • *This is a page for us to keep in touch with each other as a whole class. As Mrs. Estes mentioned in the recent video of our Division Heads, it is important for our students to “maintain a sense of belonging”. As we practice “social distancing” in the coming weeks, we know it will be important for students to have this sense of community. As such, we will be posting the links to our online meeting space here. 

• Math

• Language Arts

• Science

• History

We will have the week’s assignments, meetings, and activities posted to the above sites by 10 a.m. each Monday. Please have your child use their agenda to write down and plan their week on this day. We ask that you review your fifth-grader’s agenda each Monday evening to help keep them accountable and so that you are aware of what they are doing for their classes. Students could also be working on any long-term assignments on Monday and throughout the week. Each Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. we will hold a weekly morning meeting for all fifth-grade students. This will begin tomorrow, March 17.

This week, students are continuing to work on assignments they started last week for our core classes. Please have your student check the Google Classroom sites above to see specific details. As we move forward, we may need to make adjustments. Lessons in the classroom don’t always go as planned, so we are used to making adjustments as we teach. Learning how to teach virtually will be a bit of a learning curve and certainly may need some tweaking as we continue. We are here to support you and your child for the weeks to come. Please don’t hesitate to email us should you have any questions, concerns, or feedback. Once more, we appreciate your patience and flexibility not only in starting up, but with any adjustments that we need to make as we proceed through these new learning spaces and opportunities.

We know many students have been very eager to get started, so we look forward to connecting with our class tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m.!

Take care,

Kimberly & Tim