April 3 – Update

Hello everyone!

I am grateful to have received emails and messages from many of you over the past few days.  It is fun to read about the interesting activities you have been up to!

Yesterday, I sent emails to the parent email addresses on file at the school office to send student log-ins and passwords for student email addresses, blogfolios, Tynker and All the Right Type.  (Please note that for All the Right Type, you will need to sign in as a school user with the school code: canbcsd412068.)  When you have succeeded in signing into the student email address, please send me an email.  Likewise, if you encounter any issues with signing in, please let me know.  Many have been encountering problems with the passwords, so if that happens to you, just let me know and I will help sort it out.

Thanks to Ms. Pook, I have added an Online Learning Resources tab at the top of our class website.  If you wish, check out the websites listed for games, activities and digital books.  I have signed up our class for an Epic Reading account.  To access thousands of books through this site, click on the Students and Educators button, and enter class code ktk0857.

Next week I will begin posting assignments through this blog.  We will keep it as simple as possible for the first week, and as we all get the hang of the digital platforms and gain comfort in distance learning, I will assign an increasing number and complexity of work.  We want to ensure that everyone is comfortable first.

Expectations for next week:

I will post assignments on our class website on Monday morning.

A live video meeting call through Microsoft Teams will begin at 11:00 am on Monday.  I will send the link to access this meeting through student emails.  Students can follow the link to join me in an “online classroom.”  For this first video meeting, we can talk about school, Spring Break, how you are doing, or what neat things you have seen from your kitchen window! 😊 If you have questions about the week’s assignments, I can answer them as well. 

I will host another video meeting at 11:00 am on Wednesday.  These video chats will be my “office hours” for students to check in and ask questions about assignments.  I will continue with these office hours each week.

Aside from my office hours (Monday and Wednesday, 11:00-12:00), the school schedule will be flexible for what works best for your families.  Structure is helpful for keeping us on track, but I recognize not every family has the same scheduling possibilities.  Later on, I would like to arrange one-on-one video meetings with each student.  To schedule this, I will send out a survey of times that work well for you, and send out a schedule when I have received responses.  If you would like to arrange further video chats or phone conversations with me, please let me know and we can arrange a time.

We will be using our class website to help schedule our days of distance learning together. Here is how it works:

1. Every day, you will have a choice of activities to do in a variety of categories. I will update a list of activities every week, and each day you can choose which activity from each category you would like to complete.  To start, I will not include as many categories – let’s keep it simple!
2. You may do the categories in any order.
3. Think of the activities like a BINGO card – your goal is to do cover as many of the activity boxes as you can. However, it is up to you which activities from each category you do each day.
4. Select any activity from the list under each category. Don’t repeat activities, unless you are finishing an activity from the previous day. It is good to finish what you start before moving on.
5. Complete tasks at any point in the day between the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. Talk with your parents about the best schedule. Maybe from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, so you stay in school hours.
6. Some tasks will be mandatory and some will be optional. Mandatory tasks need to be completed and posted by 3:00 Friday of each week, and I will put them in italics. 
7. I recommend making a schedule that fits you to post on your fridge or bulletin board.*
8. I will add options as we go along and re-post each week.
9. For this first week, I will not be asking students to post their work. This is just a practice week, as we get used to the routine and expectations. Instructions will follow on how to document and post completed assignments.
10. I will be participating in these activities too. There will be a section of our class website called “Ms. Anderson’s Blogfolio” to show you my progress. Parents and siblings are also welcome to participate!
11. You can provide suggestions to add to each category, too! Just email me your suggestions to add to the coming week’s list.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while I worked to prepare a plan this week!  I hope you all have a lovely weekend.  I hope to see you on Monday though our first Microsoft Teams video meeting.  We will do our best to learn how to use this platform together.

Take care!

Ms. Anderson

*Your schedule might eventually look something like this: