Dear parents/guardians,
It was fabulous to be able to meet and chat with some of you fortunate enough to be able to make the time for parent/teacher conferences. Here's a short update of what we're still working on in ELA...
- Book clubs are finished this week. It was impossible to create consistent groups due to the different groups of students in front of me each day. It's good I've read all the books, so I could help the few students in front of me if the rest of their group was online. We are wrapping up our historical fiction unit (three weeks - stellar for during a pandemic!), and we'll be writing about the theme of the book. Students will create the claim of the theme together, and then will support it with their own evidence and reasoning.
- Our school library was closed today due to staffing issues (and yes, this will continue), but I'm not going to stop sharing great books with the class now that our unit is over. The AHML has a drive-through and e-books - please encourage your child to have a stack ready to go. Students should be adding to their "Books I Might Want to Read" list in class.
- Tomorrow I'll be starting to share "12 Days of Stories" - a video or audio prompt that should get the children thinking and writing a bit more, while working on our writing stamina once again. We'll weave grammar into these small pieces of writing this month. Since everything is taking four times as long during this pandemic, we're still working on how best to build better grammar habits.
Note: This latest update has a video embedded - of our in-person students only (as I cannot share Zoom photos with students' names on them). I hesitated to send this out, as I feel it is not fair to those families who are learning remotely. However, all families may want to see what school is like these days. Consider it as documentation of the '20-'21 school year - a highlight reel.
Be well,
Joy
It was fabulous to be able to meet and chat with some of you fortunate enough to be able to make the time for parent/teacher conferences. Here's a short update of what we're still working on in ELA...
- Book clubs are finished this week. It was impossible to create consistent groups due to the different groups of students in front of me each day. It's good I've read all the books, so I could help the few students in front of me if the rest of their group was online. We are wrapping up our historical fiction unit (three weeks - stellar for during a pandemic!), and we'll be writing about the theme of the book. Students will create the claim of the theme together, and then will support it with their own evidence and reasoning.
- Our school library was closed today due to staffing issues (and yes, this will continue), but I'm not going to stop sharing great books with the class now that our unit is over. The AHML has a drive-through and e-books - please encourage your child to have a stack ready to go. Students should be adding to their "Books I Might Want to Read" list in class.
- Tomorrow I'll be starting to share "12 Days of Stories" - a video or audio prompt that should get the children thinking and writing a bit more, while working on our writing stamina once again. We'll weave grammar into these small pieces of writing this month. Since everything is taking four times as long during this pandemic, we're still working on how best to build better grammar habits.
Note: This latest update has a video embedded - of our in-person students only (as I cannot share Zoom photos with students' names on them). I hesitated to send this out, as I feel it is not fair to those families who are learning remotely. However, all families may want to see what school is like these days. Consider it as documentation of the '20-'21 school year - a highlight reel.
Be well,
Joy