• Dear Families, 

    Welcome to this new journey of remote learning! Parents/guardians, thank you for your commitment, flexibility and support. Room 8 students, I miss you so much. I’m so excited that we get to learn together again!

    Before Friday rolls around, here are a few housekeeping notes:

    • If you have not already picked up the work packets from the school, you still can! I highly recommend this, as it comes with books, a journal to write in, log-in information, review worksheets and more. You can pick up your child’s packet during breakfast distribution hours at Sheafe (10:00-12:00 Monday through Thursday, starting tomorrow.)
    • Please practice signing into iReady, Raz-Kids, and Epic. Many of you are already familiar with iReady and Raz-Kids, but Epic is a new website we’ve just discovered. On the Epic website, there are amazing books your child can read for free. They are not just passages or short stories, they have books that your child might recognize from our classroom or the library. Epic also has an audio option that will allow your child to listen to books read aloud. This will be a great resource for you at home. The links for these three websites can be found under the ‘Beneficial Website’ tab. 

    Each school day, I will be providing your child with four lessons. I will rotate between reading, writing, phonics, math and social studies/science. The structure of these lessons will look pretty much the same: I will teach a mini lesson and your child will practice what was taught. For example, if I was to teach a reading lesson, first, your child would watch a video of me teaching and demonstrating. Then, he/she would read on his/her own using the books from the work packet, books on Raz-Kids or books on Epic to practice. Each lesson will be approximately 20 minutes, including the mini lesson and independent practice, which means your child should be learning for at least 80 minutes per day. 

    Here are the steps on how to get to the lessons beginning on Friday:

    1) Sign into our google classroom 

    • You will need to log into google with your child's wcsd username and password. Your child's username is firstname.lastname@K12.wcsdny.org  Password: firstname(with upper case first letter) followed by your student's id number. This id number is the same one they use to purchase lunch. If you need help signing on, email me at sarah.altmann@wcsdny.org.
    • Click on this link- https://classroom.google.com/c/NjEwODQ1NDgxNzNa or go to classroom.google.com 
    • Click the plus sign in the right hand corner to join our class
    • Enter the class code: upgvjft

    2) Click the ‘Classwork’ tab 

    3) Look for that day’s date

    4) There will be some type of check-in question as a means of taking attendance

    5) Click on each subject area underneath the date and complete each lesson 

    Your child will be able to complete the lessons at any point during the day. They are not live videos, so they will always be up there for whenever you and your child are ready. 

    I am holding office hours every week day between 10:00 and 11:00. If you email me between those hours, I will respond as soon as possible. 

    I can only imagine how stressful this must be for you- helping your child/children with schooling to this new degree, needing to understand technology, dealing with a pandemic, some parents are still working- all in addition to the other responsibilities you have on a daily basis. I am also nervous as we begin this new journey, but I’m going to do my best to make this experience manageable for you and the kids. I do believe that we will get the hang of it. Just know that I am here to support you.

    Thank you,

    Miss Altmann :)