Week 4: Distance Learning in Secondary

Dear families,

Thank you for being our partners at home in supporting your child’s learning. Thank you for your e-mails and communications, your idea-sharing, and your listening.  We want to highlight some changes we’re making to our distance learning program based on feedback from you, your children, and our teachers.

Balancing synchronous and asynchronous learning in Secondary 
We care about making sure that every student thrives.  Therefore, we are adapting our teachers’ current office hours schedule to a hybrid synchronous/asynchronous schedule.  

Each Monday and Tuesday, teachers will host synchronous, or face-to-face, learning sessions for their classes.  The schedule can be found below.  During the synchronous times, teachers may conduct direct instruction, host class discussions, provide whole-group feedback, or conduct a student Q&A open forum.  The structure provided by the teacher teachers will be dependent upon the subject, the module lessons, the learning objectives, etc.  

Each Wednesday and Thursday, teachers will host office hour sessions for individual and small groups.  While we feel it is important to add direct contact time with teachers for entire classes of students, we also want to make sure that we are preserving the time for individuals that are struggling the most with distance learning.  The structured office hours times ensure that students have a reserved time to speak to their teachers about that class that is not in conflict with other office hour sessions.

Lesson times have been adjusted to later in the afternoon to meet the needs of all members of our community.

All lessons will be recorded so that students who cannot attend lessons can watch them afterward on their own time.  ELL and SEN support will continue with times that work for the supported students.

Monday - synchronous lessons
A block: 14:00-14:30
B block: 14:45-15:15
C block:  15:30-16:00
D block: 16:15-16:45

Tuesday - synchronous lessons
E block: 14:00-14:30
F block: 14:45-15:15
G block: 15:30-16:00
H block: 16:15-16:45

Wednesday - office hours
A block: 14:00-14:30
B block: 14:45-15:15
C block:  15:30-16:00
D block: 16:15-16:45

Thursday - office hours
E block: 14:00-14:30
F block: 14:45-15:15
G block: 15:30-16:00
H block: 16:15-16:45

Friday - synchronous PSE lessons/Advisory/individual or small group office hour sessions
Grade 6: 14:00-14:30
Grade 7: 14:30-15:00
Grade 8: 15:00-15:30
Grade 9: 15:30-16:00
Grade 10: 16:00-16:30
Grade 11 as scheduled by advisors

The PSE lessons’ plans and resources will be shared in advance via the Leopard’s Tale, as per usual.

THE NEW SCHEDULE INCLUDING SYNCHRONOUS LEARNING WILL BEGIN ON THE WEEK OF SUNDAY 3 MAY.


Reaching out for support
We highly value the feedback that we have received from our parent and student communities as it, in part, helps us to assess the value of our distance learning program so we can make the proper adjustments to best serve our students and families.  We encourage all members of the community to maintain open lines of communication, either directly to the teachers and administrators, or through the distance learning survey.

Parent-teacher conferences
In light of the new synchronous learning schedule and efforts to maintain routine and consistency, the Secondary school will not host a structured time for parent-teacher conferences.  In lieu of this, parents that would like to speak to individual teachers are encouraged to contact teachers to arrange one-on-one video chat times during office hours times provided on the schedule above.  We kindly ask parents to schedule times during teachers’ office hours if possible, as teachers are still attending staff meetings, grade-level meetings, and collaborative meetings, assessing work and providing feedback, planning modules, and collating resources.

Thank you again for your continued support and communication.  Please remember that you can always email us with any questions or comments you might have.

Kind regards,
Ty Smeins, Secondary Principal
Sheila Seiler, Secondary Assistant Principal