Friday 4/3/20

Thank-you for your flexibility and enthusiasm as we begin this process of emergency distance learning! As I've mentioned, we are building toward the launch of our Google Classroom on Monday morning. This will be a very important space that will function as our online classroom. This is where you will be able to find important information, your assigned work for each week, and resources necessary to complete that work.

When you first log in to the Classroom on Monday (through a link that will arrive in your educbe email that morning), the amount of work there might look overwhelming. I have decided to upload a whole week's worth of work at once, to allow you to work through it at the pace that works best for you. Some of the assignments have been split up by day of the week; this is a suggestion to help you decide what to work on when. However, it is ultimately up to you and your family how you would like to progress through. Feel free to do more than the one day's worth of work in a day if you're feeling up to it, but also don't overwhelm yourself! Remember, the CBE's expectation for grade 5 students during this time is approximately 5 hours of work per week.

It is extremely important that you treat this space like our classroom (which it is), rather than like an online chat room with your friends. The expectation is that students will write in complete sentences, beginning with capitals and ending with periods, employing proper spelling and grammar. As this is our classroom, treat everything you do there as something that could be assessed. There are places where students will have the opportunity to interact with one another and provide feedback. Again, as this is our classroom, all student interactions are expected to be respectful and purposeful. I was extremely disappointed with the students who chose to "spam" our Google Meet chat with nonsensical, unneeded, and repetitive text. There will be none of that in our Google Classroom. I expect better from you. If you want to "chat" with your friends, email would be a more appropriate venue. 

Here are some more important and helpful etiquette tips for Google Classroom:

Even though we are not physically together, it is important that you remember that I am still here to support you and answer your questions!! My availability each week is as follows:

• Monday - Thursday: 9:00 am - 3:45 pm
• Friday: 9:00 am - 1:20 pm

You can contact me via email or through the "Private Comment" feature on Google Classroom. I can answer you via email/comment, through a Google Meet video conference, or via phone, depending on your particular need. I am happy to answer questions, provide clarification, further explain and teach difficult concepts, and modify/extend work as needed. Remember, we are in this together! I am still your teacher and I still care deeply about you, even though we are apart!

I am really excited to start working with you in our Google Classroom! Please let me know if you have any questions or need any support! Enjoy your weekend!