Ms. Strome's Blog

As I have been doing, I will continue to check and respond to emails in the morning and again later in the day on school days . Emails sent after normal school hours may not be answered until the next day. If you need to speak with me or ask a question that you need a quick answer to I will also have “office hours” twice a week.

Office hours will be Wednesdays from 12 pm-1 pm and Fridays from 12 pm- 1 pm. I have a Google voice number set up on an old cell phone working through WiFi. I do not have this phone with me normally and it won’t ring but I can give you the number to text that phone if you email me. (Blogs are public so I am not sharing the number here.) I will only have that phone in front of me during office hours. You can email me and request a call as well during this time.

Please do not think you are limited to only office hours if you need help or need to speak with me. Email me if you need to speak with me or you have a question. For parents who do not have email your child can email me telling me their parent would like me to call. I will call back as soon as possible during normal school hours.

Assignment #7 for Thurs/Fri was posted in Google Classroom. Everything is explained in the google doc.

Starting this week there will be some changes to lessons and work counting.

• With the unexpected closure of schools for the rest of the school year, work went from being “review/ enrichment work” to required “new learning. ”
• Work will be counting and there will be summer school for students who do not complete the remote/ online learning.
• The work may look a bit different in some classes since we are now following a different set of requirements from the state.
• Students who are having trouble completing assignments will be contacted individually to discuss lack of internet access and other such things that may make doing remote learning difficult for them.
• We still do not have an answer about how you are being graded. I am sure Ms. Hassan will post on the school blog once she has an answer about grades for marking period 4.
• Assignments will continue to show as “not graded” in my grade book until we have an answer about grades for marking period 4.
• Parents, remember teachers are still checking our email so you can email us any questions. (Kids already know this because they email us frequently.)

Below is what I posted in Google classroom for assignment #6. The actual document is in google classroom.

Welcome back to online school. I hope you had a relaxing Spring Break. This is the assignment for Mon 4/13, Tues 4/14, Wed 4/15. I made you each a copy of the google doc again so you can edit the copy and turn it in when all three parts are complete. Directions are in the document in red. On Monday you read and summarize the article. Tuesday you look for evidence for a CER topic and two possible claims. Wednesday you write a CERERC type CER. I want GOOD CERs this time, you know how to write a proper CER, the required format is in the document. Once again I have given you boxes and blue text where your answers go. All three parts are due Wed 4/15 at 10 pm.

April 7, 2020

Middle School Report Cards for Marking Period 3 are now available to parents in ParentConnect.  See below for information on how parents can access report card data in MIStar ParentConnect. 

Please note that if you have more than one child, you should be able to see data for all your children and you do not need separate logins for the different schools (if your children attend more than one school).

To log into ParentConnect you will need your PIN and password. If you have your PIN and password, you can go to the Dearborn Schools’ Website (dearbornschools.org) and then click the ParentConnect link.
If you don’t know your login info, click (Need Your Login Information) link and it will prompt you to enter your email address (use the email you provided to the school and is in our system), and then click Submit. This process will email you your PIN and Password.

Once you are logged in, click on “report card marks” module.

We are officially off for spring break next week so there will be no new assignments posted next week. Online/remote learning will continue after break due to the governor’s order to close school buildings. Please be aware that this order closes down buildings but does not end “school” early. Teachers and students will continue to work from home like we have been doing for the past few weeks. I will not know the answer about changes, work, grades, etc until the superintendent and Ms. Hassan let teachers know what their plan is for continuing online learning.

The engineering projects I have seen so far look pretty good. Be sure you test them. You are supposed to turn them in to google classroom. I will grade and share some in the next week or two.

Kids, if you have questions and answer choices for the next survey share your ideas with me. You can type them in a google doc and share it with me. Typing it up and posting a survey in Google forms is easy, it’s coming up with questions and choices that is hard.

Stay healthy and enjoy your week off!

If you didn’t see the video of the teachers telling students we miss you all then go to the Woodworth blog or student council Instagram page and watch it. (My son is in the picture with me.)

https://forms.gle/qfNgohzuwQCkuuLQ8

Marking period 3 grades are based on what we did before schools closed. Within the next few days you should be able to look up the grades under marks in parent connect.

All online work for science has been entered as “not graded” for marking period 4. This is to allow parents to keep track of whether or not their children are doing the online work I am posting. Counting this as graded work is unfair at this point to those kids who have no access to technology at home or who need help doing the work and do not have help available at home. We are not sure what is happening with the rest of the school year. We expect a decision from the government within the next week or so. If we are told the online work is for a grade I will mark it graded at that point.

This week’s work is a little different. Instead of Moby Max and a reading assignment I gave you an engineering challenge. The directions for the challenge as well as daily tasks and reflection questions are all together in a document I am assigning in google classroom. You are only using materials found easily at home since we are all under order of the governor to stay at home. The entire project is due by Saturday.

This week is virtual spirit week!

I will put the flier into google classroom since we aren’t supposed to put pdf files on our blogs. Be sure to look for it- today is pajamas at school day. Ms. Charara wants pictures!

Graded Assignments

Also, after I have graded online work there is no reason for me to go back in and check that assignment over again. Google will alert me if you turn it in late in GCR but Moby Max will not. You will need to email me to let me know to go back in and check. I am posting your scores in GCR so you can see that I have graded it. If you see student connect says you are missing work that you did in fact already do then (politely) email me. You might have done it after I went through and graded.

If I have you missing Moby work that you have actually already done I think you can also send me a screen shot of your scores on the lessons I have assigned. Grading work in Moby Max is not an easy process and the program is telling me some of you have done nothing even though you say you have finished. Sending a screen shot of scores will let me give you a grade on it.

I graded the Moby Max work this afternoon. If you finish any of the past due Moby lessons you need to email me and let me know. I will not go back in to look at your scores until I grade next week’s work.

I posted several suggestions for kids to try who are having trouble logging into Moby Max.

1. You must be logged into your school Google account BUT ALSO logged out of all other google accounts.
2. Go into Moby Max through clever on the student portal of the Dearborn School website.
3. My screen looks completely different than yours but your assignments should show up on the assignments tab. I have assigned them to each of you. If the assignments do not show up you should be able to get to the lessons through what Moby calls the library.
4. Look at the help sheet I posted in Google Classroom to see what to click on.
5. Parents, I am putting the online work in for marking period 4 so you can have your child log into Moby Max and GCR to check their progress. This will enable you to have them get caught up still.

Google classroom will alert me if you turn something in late there.