Week One Is In The Books!!
We can't begin to tell you how proud we are of our students. They really embraced online learning from home with open arms and dove right into our morning meetings and our Google Classroom assignments. In Math, we learned about our math teachers, in writing they learned about different kind of sentences, and in reading they learned about "Grappling" with assignments.
Grappling
We will be speaking in all of our classes about this concept of "Grappling" with school assignments and
exercises. We are promoting the idea that the best learning comes when kids wrestle with new ideas, concepts, and skills. What does that mean for your student? It means, sometimes, they will be frustrated with the lessons that we create. That frustration is OK. We want students to learn from mistakes, we want them to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable in their learning. We will continue to speak about this all year.
exercises. We are promoting the idea that the best learning comes when kids wrestle with new ideas, concepts, and skills. What does that mean for your student? It means, sometimes, they will be frustrated with the lessons that we create. That frustration is OK. We want students to learn from mistakes, we want them to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable in their learning. We will continue to speak about this all year.
Turning In Blank Work
One of the first things students learn about online learning is that their grades will be more about the effort they put into the lessons rather than just getting the "right" answers all the time. During morning I showed students how I grade their work in Google Classroom. I showed them a few examples of work that was turned that was "blank", with nothing completed. We will certainly let parents know, if this happens over and over again with any student. I just wanted to let you know as parents, just because a student has marked an assignment as "done" it doesn't mean they actually did the work. (We returned the assignment and allowed students to resubmit their work.)
What Are We Learning This Week?
In reading, Mr. Grove has prepared an amazing set of lessons about the characteristics of Poetry. In Writing Ms. Yani will be expertly teaching how to write a paragraph. In Math, Mr. V and Ms. Kreill put together lessons about place value and multiples of 10. All the lessons this week will certainly longer and challenging. So it is important to keep our kids encouraged. They can do it! They are so smart.
In Math there will be three assignments everyday:
1) Problem of the Day
2) Fluency Practice
3) Main Lesson.
Ms. Kreil put together a video that will will be posted in Google Classroom that will tell us what the day in the life of a fourth grade student in math will look like. (Thanks Ms. Kreil!) The link is also listed below.
Morning Meeting
In Morning Meetings, we learned breathing techniques and the Little Rock Nine. These week we will be talking about the Black Lives Matter movement. Our proverb next week is "If we do small things every day, they can make a big difference." Last week our proverb was "All things are difficult before they are easy." The breathing techniques are super important, as they will help kids deal with the stress of learning at home, and being separated from their friends. It certainly has helped me personally as I wrestled with tech issues while preparing the week's lessons.
Resources
As I find different resources for parents, I will share them here:
Dayton Metro Library - Our city's amazing library is providing students and parents a ton of resources for online learning:
Tech Help: We have to options for you if you are having problems with your technology:
- A Live HELP DESK can be accessed by families by calling 937-985-DECA (3322) to get additional assistance with tech support.
- Families can also always email help@daytonearlycollege.org and a DECA staff member will get back to you within one business day.
Census Help: We still have a third of Montgomery County residents who haven't participated in the census counting. The census is an important part to make sure that we are represented in government appropriately. The RTA is helping citizens participate in the count: https://www.wdtn.com/news/local-news/dayton-rta-us-census-partner-up-to-help-riders-complete-2020-survey/
Voting: Without telling people who to vote for, we want to promote the importance of voting. In the news there is so much confusing information about voting during the pandemic, this article shows that Montgomery county has made voting safe, easy, and accessible for all: https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/how-do-you-vote-in-ohio-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/VX4ZFEF5NVFVZO2VCQJJ7IT3VQ/.
