Thursday, April 30, 2020

Dear all,

Enjoy the three day weekend together with your families - we hope you are finding ways to enjoy new and old activities together.  

We thanked the 12 parents who attended our parent coffee on Tuesday in the parents blog today. We appreciate their positive feedback and thoughtful questions. We agree, ES teachers are doing an excellent job providing virtual lessons, and we too THANK YOU for all the hours you are spending doing this!

ES Celebration of Learning - May 8

Please schedule a “celebration circle” on Zoom with your students at 2 PM on Friday May 8, during which time you can share your screen, watch the Principal’s  introductory video, then let students pick which videos to watch together, and comment on if desired, as a class. Feel free to do this “closing circle” in lieu of your morning meeting or your regular end-of-day session. Thanks to so many who have already input their students’ videos, or class videos into the celebration of learning Flipgrid. We will celebrate class-by-class with our students, and then have a “launch party” for the families in the Weekly Principal’s Notes. 

Faculty meeting Next Wednesday at 3:45 p.m

All faculty meeting. Look for the link from Angeline in your Google calendar.

From the EAL Department: EAL Strategy Talk, #7!

EAL Strategy Talks are still happening! Feedback is such an important part of teaching and learning. Our next Talk focuses on giving targeted feedback for all 4 language skills. We'll even talk about how to do this virtually. Hope to see you there!

When: Tuesday, 5 May 2020, 7:30-8:15am

Where: ZOOM, meeting ID: 791 2836 0377

Password: 010635

Feedback on Virtual Learning (repeat announcement)

We know that approving and commenting meaningfully on Seesaw posts is an ongoing task, and we thank you for your commitment to this! We have  received some comments from parents, particularly from those in the younger grades, requesting more feedback on Seesaw. To support teachers and help parents understand the context and moderate their expectations, this statement about “Feedback on Virtual Learning” has gone into today’s parent notes.  

What does this mean for you? 

• Consider highlighting activities as Evidence activities, if they are the main item for the week.
• Be sure to give meaningful feedback on these items - similar to a conference think of feedback as a compliment, a teaching point and a next step
• Feedback should be given on 1-2 pieces per core area of math, literacy and s/ss per week (Feedback should include written feedback for at least 1 piece )
• Specialist teachers should also aim to provide feedback on learning weekly or at least every other week

**If you notice children/parents are not reading or responding to feedback, design tasks for that subject that specifically direct the students to the feedback and ask them to engage with it.

Have a restful and relaxing long weekend!

Keryn, Dave, and Calley