Online Learning
First and foremost, I would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding. Arriving to school today, it was so strange to walk the halls with none of you in them! As teachers we barely knew what to do with ourselves.
Instead of classes today, your teachers gathered with Ms. Hassan to begin discussing how to continue to provide you a quality education amidst the school closure. Mr. Saleh and I spent the morning creating our first online assignment which has been posted to Google Classroom already. Once we were up and running, I cleaned up my classroom and shut it down for the extended time off. Then, I had to leave to pick up my own children and find out what I need to do as their parent to maintain high standards for their education. It has been a very long day full of tough conversations and big changes for everyone involved!
Some of you have been feeling panicked because the information is not getting to you very quickly. I just wanted to thank you for your patience on this matter. All of your teachers are completely reorganizing what we planned to do for you over the next month and coming up with ways to deliver it to you without being able to “teach.” A lot of the things we would say and do with you, you’re going to have to read and do yourself! It is definitely going to be a challenge.
Let’s start off with the basics… Contact information and classroom resources:
- I will be posting regularly on this iBlog to keep you updated. You should check here every day for new posts and it would be a good idea to subscribe just to make sure you don’t miss anything.
- I will be checking my e-mail regularly during school hours in case anybody has questions… but please also understand that I’m not just your 8th grade teacher but also a parent and I will be working with my own two children on very different learning materials. I have to help Jeffery be a kindergartner and Nora be a ninth grader for the next few weeks. I will e-mail you back as soon as I am able to sit back at my computer and read my messages. That is a promise.
- I will be sending e-mails to my students occasionally. Check your student e-mail when you sit down to start your school work for the day.
- I will be using Google Classroom to deliver lessons to you for now. Later on, we may use iLearn to post assignments, and if that does happen I will post instructions for signing up at that time. Right now my iLearn is not being used.
- You can expect to see 2-3 assignments per week and each assignment should take you about an hour to complete. I know it seems like a lot, but you need to pretend like you’re at school. You spend 5 hours with me during a usual week! So two assignments that take you 2 hours to complete is still less than the usual amount of work.
- Google classroom codes are here:
1st hour: i6r4vrh
2nd hour: qomfgx3
3rd hour: 22rwh6w
4th hour: xvehe77
6th hour: brzjguh
Aside from these basic issues, I know you have a ton of questions. I can answer a few things here and others I will address in separate posts or by e-mail.
- Late Work for Q3: I will accept late work in 2 ways. First, if you have the original paper that I printed and gave to you, you can take a picture of that or scan it and send it to me. Second, you can start a Google Doc and type up your answers. Please put your first and last name and the assignment title on the document so that I can find it easily and match it up to the work.
- Binder Checks / Quizzes / Unit Test: I am excusing the binder check for Q3 under the circumstances. We will have a Q4 binder check in a couple of months. Quizzes and tests will most likely be put into a format I can send over Google Classroom or iLearn when it comes time for them. I am tackling one issue at a time. 🙂