Mr. Z's Grade 4 Class – Remote Learning Update #3

Hello again! In light of the school closure now extending through May 4^th, we have developed new plans for supporting student learning remotely during this period. Please read this entire letter, since it has important instructions about how to get schoolwork for your child as we move forward. It is a long letter – my apologies in advance!

To get this new phase of learning off the ground, I need to provide every family with their student’s user name and password for the child’s school Google account. This will allow students to get in to our Google Classrooms. I am not allowed to send these passwords via email, so I need families to call me.

PARENT/CAREGIVER ACTION ITEM #1

Call Mr. Z at (413) 342-1490 to get your student Google user name and password. I will also provide a second user name and password that students will use to log in to their accounts on third-party educational websites, like Typing Club, ReadWorks and others.    

PARENT/CAREGIVER ACTION ITEM #2

Try to log in to Google Classroom on the device your student will use for school work using the Google user name and password I gave you. You should do a web search for “Google classroom sign in,” and then go to the top page in the search results list and log in there. More on how to log in below.

What Kind of Device to Use

The device a student uses should ­not be a Smart Phone. The ideal device will have a keyboard, like a desktop computer or laptop. Tablets like iPads will work, especially for just reading texts, but they are not nearly as good for typing, which the students will be doing.

**IMPORTANT** If your student does not have access to a computer with a keyboard, please let me know as soon as possible and we can probably get a Chromebook from the district delivered to you.      

What Web Browser to Use

The Google Chrome web browser provides the best user experience when working with Google Classroom and the other Google tools we will use (Docs, Forms, Drive, Slides, etc). It is also the browser your student uses at school on a Chromebook, so it will be familiar. However, I have tested visiting Google Classroom using the web browsers Firefox on a PC and Safari on various Apple devices. These all seem to work fine, but I can’t guarantee that all the features we may use will work as well on these other browsers as they might on Chrome. If you want to download Google Chrome to your student’s device so he or she can use that browser, it is available for free on the Internet. Also, I am attaching a letter to this message from our IT Teachers that provides directions for setting up the Chrome browser to deliver the best user experience to your student, just like at school. 

THANK YOU for reading this far! Here are some other quick tidbits to inform you about plans for schoolwork going forward.

QUICK TIDBITS ABOUT PLANS FOR SCHOOLWORK GOING FORWARD

* Starting on Monday you will get a weekly email from me that provides an overview of and links to the work available for your student for that week. This work will be available via the Google Classroom you will (hopefully) access after getting this message.

* Remember that this work I provide is not required, will not need to be turned in to me, and will not affect your child’s report card. These activities are suggestions to keep your child’s skills sharp and the learning going during this school closure period. Please do what you can, when you can, but PLEASE don’t stress you or your child out if this feels like too much. Do what’s right for you and your family!

* I will “share” a unique Google Doc titled “Talk with Mr. Z” with every student in the class. (Your child will know what I am talking about when I say it is “shared” by me and them.) This Doc will serve as a sort of private chat room between your student and myself for school-related discussions (or for just catching up – I really miss your kids!). Please feel free yourself to look at the Doc at any time.

* Families with students who work with Ms. Foley will receive additional instructions for supporting learning remotely.   

      

WAYS TO CONTACT MR. Z

You can reach me at my new phone line (413) 342-1490. You can also email me at jzyskowski@northampton-k12.us

Mr. Z's Grade 4 Class – School Closure Update #2

Greetings again from the Room 302 (not so) top secret remote headquarters. I hope you are all managing well. I have a few pieces of news I’d like to share in this update:

PHONE CALLS TO FAMILIES

The district has asked teachers to check in by phone with families of all students at least once a week. I am starting these calls this week. I will be calling via a new telephone number that I set up specifically for this task. The number is (413) 342-1490. It will show up on your caller ID as “Springfield, MA.”

If you are busy, please do not feel obligated to answer when I call. I will just leave a message if you don’t pick up. You may also use this number to call me, leave a voice message or send text messages to me. This is not my home phone, but I can access it at home, so don’t feel funny about using it to reach me. That is the purpose of it.

SPECIAL FOOD RESOURCES AVAILABLE

The school community, including the PTO, is putting together some great resources available to families during the school closure period, such as free school breakfasts and lunches, some Stop and Shop gift cards, etc. Please feel free to contact me by any of the means mentioned below if you need a hand getting connected to any of these resources. I would love to help.  

WAYS TO CONTACT MR. Z

You can reach me at my new phone line (413) 342-1490. You can also email me at jzyskowski@northampton-k12.us

I also want to remind you that I am posting copies of all these e-mail updates I send on my classroom blog at: http://bssroom302.blogspot.com/  You can always visit there for access to the complete collection of the school closure updates I send.

Mr. Z's Grade 4 Class – School Closure Update #1

I hope you are all settling in to a new routine for the next few weeks, and that you are all as well as can be.

In the first work packet you will find a cover letter from Ms. Liz and I that details the work enclosed and offers a semblance of a school-day schedule. The schedule idea of course is just a suggestion. We anticipated that some folks might find it easiest to try to keep a bit of a schedule, but it’s really up to you and your family’s needs if you want to follow it. The included work is largely review and enrichment, an approach that is being used across the Northampton school district for all the elementary grades.

I will try to keep my communications to you brief (I know I’m getting a little burned out myself already trying to stay abreast of all the news). I will number my updates to you to hopefully make it easier to keep track of them. This is Update #1.

I will also post copies of all the e-mail updates I send on my classroom blog at: http://bssroom302.blogspot.com/  You can always visit there for access to the complete collection of the school closure updates.

Finally, I feel a little bad about the situation last Friday afternoon at school dismissal time. I found out about the school closure literally two minutes before the dismissal bell, and was told not to tell the students. When one or two students packing up at their cubbies asked me if the school was going to close, I told them it hadn’t been decided yet. However, some of the older students had found out about the closure and were talking about it in the bus line, causing some confusion and perhaps anxiety. It’s so important for children to be able to trust adults, and I do feel bad about not being able to be more forthcoming in that moment. If your child wondered if I knew about the closure, I’d be grateful if you could explain the special circumstances we found ourselves in that afternoon and why I said what I said.

Please be safe and healthy. Please contact me at jzyskowski@onrthampton-k12.us if there’s anything I can do to help support you and your child these next few weeks. Lastly, please tell your student I say “Hello” and that I miss them already.

U.S states song and presentation

Here is our presentation of the elementary school classic. The song is a fun way to learn and remember the names of all fifty states.

We need some chaperones for our field trip

CHAPERONES NEEDED

We could use a few parent or caregiver chaperones to attend our Tuesday, June 5 field trip to the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke. The bus will leave at 9:00 a.m. and return to Bridge Street at around 1:00 p.m. Chaperones are welcome to take the bus with us or take their own personal cars. Chaperones must have a CORI background check in order to attend. There is about a two week turnaround time for the CORI check, so let me know if you would like to chaperone as soon as possible.    

HOT WEATHER

Now that summer is officially here (at least temperature-wise), it is important that the kids stay hydrated during the day. Our room gets HOT! Last year we recorded almost ten days in which the temperature in our room was 90+ degrees. Kids are welcome to bring in water bottles. However, please don’t send in any other kinds of beverages for consumption during classroom time. Spills otherwise are too hard and time consuming to clean up, and the kids don’t need any added sugar or caffeine during the school day.

Field trip and new reading and writing units

FIELD TRIP

Tuesday, April 24 is our field trip to the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. We have to board the bus at 9 a.m. sharp to insure that we arrive in Springfield at 9:30. Please be sure your student arrives to school on time Tuesday so they don’t miss out.

READING – NEW UNIT ON HISTORICAL FICTION

This week we begin our unit on historical fiction. Our class read-aloud text is Number the Stars, a book about the escape of a Jewish family from Denmark during World War II. During the unit students will work in small groups to read and discuss a common text, like a book club model. Ask your student about characteristics that make a book historical fiction. Do you have any historical fiction favorites?

WRITING – NEW UNIT ON LITERARY ESSAYS

Students will learn how to write a literary essay. This type of essay is not a summary of the plot or characters, but rather a critical and careful analysis of a theme or big idea of a story. Students will support their ideas by citing evidence from the text. You may notice this unit builds on the work from our last unit on persuasive essays.  

MORNING MEETING – PROBLEM SOLVING

For the past several Wednesday mornings we have been learning about problem solving strategies, the last bend of our Second Step social-emotional learning curriculum. In the last session we discussed some ways to resist peer pressure and stay true to ourselves. It’s not always easy to do, but students agreed that it’s really important!

GARDENING

Right before vacation we had our first spring gardening class. Students selected seeds for the plants they would like to grow this season.  We also prepared the beds for cultivation. A lesson on photosynthesis connected wonderfully to our science unit on energy transformation. We head over to the garden again this Wednesday.

SUPPLIES NEEDED

Our supply of sanitizing wipes for cleaning desks and tables has run out. Any donations of wipes would be appreciated.

Geometry,opinion writing and more

The school year is zooming by, but we still have lots of important learning to do.

In math we are in the middle of our geometry unit. After that we have a unit on fractions and decimals and then another visit to multiplication and division, this time with larger numbers. Last week in writing we kicked off our persuasive essay unit. We also call it opinion writing. In reading, we are wrapping up our unit on non-fiction texts. Next we move on to historical fiction. In science we just began a unit on energy. And finally in social studies we continue our march across the United States and its regions as we turn our attention to the Midwest.  

We have made it through the year so far with very few student absences due to illness. On a related note, our supply of sanitizing wipes for cleaning desks has run out. If anyone would like to donate some wipes to Room 302, it would be appreciated.