Good afternoon! As we start our online learning, I wanted to give you some guidance. I know this is all new (for me too!) but we will get through it together!
This Week’s Playlist
Each week we are doing online learning, I will have a “playlist” for you. You can think of it kind of like a checklist for everything that needs to be done for the week. There are “Must do’s” and “May do’s” – the Must do’s are what you want to make sure are completed by the end of the week. Feel free to print it if you have access to a printer, but if you don’t it’s okay! This resource is for you to use as you need. I am also linking a new copy on the Homeroom class each week. Here is this week’s playlist:
Where do I start?
There are pieces to do each day, much like homework was assigned each day when we were in the classroom. There are also lessons for the week that you can find in the Blend Dashboard. My recommendation is to start with the Core subject areas – they will always be the first ones listed on the playlist under “weekly must do’s”. This week there are three core lessons. They’ll also tell you what class tile you’ll find them under – for example, this week’s STEM lesson uses both Math and Science, but you’ll only find the lesson if you click on the “Math” class in Blend.
How long should we take to do the lessons?
The lessons themselves will take 10-15 minutes for the lesson, 10-20 minutes for the assignment, and 10-20 minutes for the choice board. There may be additional pieces that will take a few more minutes. Why such a large range of times? The actual time lessons will take may vary, depending on a few things:
- How many breaks you take. Breaks are a good thing! If your child is starting to get bored or frustrated (or you are starting to feel frustrated – you are an important part of this process too!), take a break! Grab a snack, drink some water, put on a favorite song and dance, do 30 jumping jacks (we do jumping jacks in class a lot), maybe even switch to a different activity for awhile. This is self paced, which is hard to get used to in some ways, but also a really interesting opportunity to learn a different way.
- How many times you repeat the lesson videos. If you repeat the videos, it will take longer. However, I encourage you to do this. In class you don’t normally get the chance to hear the teacher’s lesson and directions as many times as you want, when you want to hear it – take advantage of it!
- How long it takes to do the assignment. While it should not only take 5 minutes to do the assignment, if it takes more than 20 minutes you may want to pause and come back to finish it another day.
Don’t try to finish everything in one day!
This is not meant to be finished in a day! The playlist is for a week’s worth of work. Please don’t feel like you need to complete everything on the same day! If you have questions about this, please email, text, or call me.
Having technology trouble?
If you are having technology issues, please let me know. I want to work through them with you – this is a learning process for me too, and if we can solve the problem together, I may be able to help other people with a similar problem. If you can take a screenshot or a picture of the problem when it is happening, that will be really helpful to me to help figure out what is wrong.
If you have questions, please ask!
Even if it doesn’t seem important, ask anyway! During school hours I can respond pretty quickly (especially during my office hours Monday – Friday, 8-9am and 1-2pm) but even after school hours it’s okay to send me a message – I might not answer right away but I can answer first thing in the morning.
Thanks for reading! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!