Dear Parents,
Welcome to the new and final quarter of remote learning and teaching for 2019-2020. I bet you never imagined hearing that welcome.
Firstly, Mr. B and I would like to thank you for the many encouraging emails and messages that we’ve received over the past few weeks. I know that this isn’t how any of us imagined ending the year, but here we are, making the ultimate best of the hands that we’ve been dealt. This year has been filled with so many firsts for us (earthquake, dump fires, a pandemic, to name a few), but with these firsts, we’ve also been given the opportunity to strengthen our relationships with each other. For that, we’d like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We are also very happy that 85% our students have completed all their tasks for us. We know that it’s not easy to make an overnight transition from the classroom to home learning. But, please know that we have worked tirelessly to continually better ourselves to serve you and thus improve on our remote teaching.
With that being said, we now have all our students on Microsoft Teams (MT), and for our final quarter, we will be able to offer a few new initiatives; primarily, a soft roll-out of live, online teaching and group meetings. Given that Mr. B and I teach both Grade 4 and 6 (35 students in total), our aim is to divide each grade into 2 groups and meet at least 3 times per week per grade to begin with, as well as offer a continuation of one-on-one instructional meetings or live chat (through MT). As mentioned above, this is a soft roll-out, and therefore is not set in stone and may need to be tweaked as we move forward. Ideally, we would love to be able to offer live teaching more frequently, but we are also cognizant of your busy work schedules and are striving for a balance that works for both you and your child. We will also be scheduling one-on-one catch up calls via MT to check up on all students. This is an opportunity for us to touch base and reconnect individually. We certainly miss being able to interact daily with our kids.
Mr. B and I will continue to update the blog with daily lesson plans that will include the times for remote live teaching and assignments/activities. We will also continue to include activities assigned in Seesaw, as well as check-ups and assessments set in Quizziz and GoFormative. Unfortunately, MT only allows us to see 4 video feeds at a time in a group chat. Therefore, we will be posting a blog post on the platform that we’ll use for our live teaching and how to join these live sessions.
As always, Mr. B and I are available Monday – Friday, 8:00am – 3:00pm and if you ever have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email us. Enjoy the remainder of your Easter break weekend. We’re looking forward to finishing off this year strong, albeit it, remotely.
Continually praying for you all,
Sincerely,
Mr.B and Ms. Suckoo