Week 5: Distance Learning in Primary

Welcome to Week 5 of distance learning. We hope that the Parent-Teacher conferences last week provided an opportunity to connect with your child's teacher(s) and share how things are going for your family. Below are some important notices about what has been happening this week as well as peek into next week.

Our G5 students celebrate their PYP Exhibition

Well done to all of our G5 students for having achieved the amazing accomplishment of completing their PYP Exhibition in a blended learning format. Please see our additional article dedicated specifically to this milestone event. 

---

Synchronous sessions with specialists for this week

For Week 5, 27-30 April, as shared in last week's newsletter, we have added one additional synchronous session with a specialist for each grade level. The schedule below on the left shows the overview of Week 5 specialist sessions.

For Week 6, 4-8 May, the schedule below on the right shows our full program of synchronous sessions with specialists across Primary. This is so families with more than one child, can see the timings all in one place. We realize that not all of the timings for all of the sessions will work for every family. We have been working hard these past two weeks to create a schedule that balances homeroom small group and class meeting times as well as specialist sessions to accommodate as many of our students as we can. These additional sessions are not meant to cause undue stress for families, but rather, provide additional opportunities for synchronous sessions should your child/family be able to join them.

With mixed feedback from families requesting additional email invites for synchronous sessions to those not wanting any additional email invites at all, we will help streamline the communication process. For clarity for families, each homeroom teacher will copy the appropriate times for specialist sessions pertaining to their class onto their weekly choice board/schedule beginning with Week 6 so your child and family can refer back to them in one place. You may want to add reminders in your own calendar so that you will know when to have your child go into his/her Seesaw journal and click on the invite link. Below is a SAMPLE of what you will see at the bottom of the weekly schedule for a child who is in Grade 3 ETC:

Celebrating students' work this week

To highlight the amazing things happening, this post celebrates the learning in Grade 1 over the past two weeks. Working from their weekly choice board, readers have read aloud to their teacher from a place of their choice, identified spelling patterns in words, and noted key information in nonfiction books. They have been writers and researchers as they created their animal books by researching facts. As mathematicians, students have estimated and accurately measured items as well as explored early multiplication strategies.

Please continue communicating with us

As a place to share ongoing feedback, we are including our weekly feedback survey. We are also including our tech support form for families who may need additional support with Seesaw and/or Google Meet. 

Have a wonderful rest of your week and a relaxing long weekend,
​
Darlene Huson, Primary Principal
Christine Kelly, Assistant Principal of Teaching and Learning, PYP Coordinator
Tony Potts, Assistant Principal of Technology and Innovation, Tech Integration Specialist