mrsjaffe14

Dear Families:

I hope you enjoyed your weekend; and mothers, I hope your kids were helpful, kind, and good to you today! I was happy to spend time with our younger son who visited with us today (at an appropriate social distance) on our back porch! This was the longest visit we’ve had with him since mid March 🙂

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a change in our remote learning. You will see evidence of this right away in math. Your children are aware of when they are meeting with me in small groups, and you each received an email from me about these times last Friday. Tonight I will post a formal-looking schedule for kids to access in Google Classroom, but I think they will get used to it pretty quickly. 

Since clarifying some confusing emails I sent some of you (sorry!), I have made one additional change to the schedule. I think it will make most sense for kids if I am available every day for an “office hours” check-in time. So, starting tomorrow that time will be 2:00-3:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. As of right now, I am not having them sign up for a time to meet with me; we’ll see how that goes.

On the horizon, there are a couple of other new content objectives that have to be completed by the end of the year, one in reading and one in writing. Here’s my thinking: By the time we hit the end of this month, it will become increasingly hard to keep kids focused on completing assignments that represent NEW LEARNING. I am already seeing signs of kids not submitting “must do” assignments or finishing their work late into the evening. These are habits that will get harder to break as we move into the final weeks of the school year, be that as it may. Therefore, I am going to do my best to cover the remaining reading and writing objectives by May 29. Anything we accomplish together after that will be icing on the cake. 

I recognize that as things get more difficult for your kids, they also become more difficult for you. I am asking for your support to help keep your kids focused on completing their required school work during this next few weeks. None of us has any leverage other than continuing to appeal to kids’ sense of personal responsibility. Let’s just accept that, and we’ll all do our best. If for some reason your child is not going to do his/her work on any given day (e.g., your family is going to be away for the day or some other personal event trumps his/her school work), please communicate that to me so I don’t continually check Google Classroom wondering why nothing has been submitted. 

I am confident that the work I have planned for kids is doable and engaging and will help them feel more prepared for sixth grade.

As always, if after reading this you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me.

Best,

Mrs. Jaffe

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