Dear Wonderful MMA Lower El Families,

We hope this email post finds you and your family well. As your teachers and as a school, we have been thinking about you and working hard to support you as you undertake this new distance learning adventure with us. Thank you for all your hard work and patience as we get everything figured out and put together. Your continued support is greatly appreciated and does not go unnoticed. So thank you.

As a lower elementary team, we are sending this to give you updates and reminders about what we are doing for your child’s education at this time. Please continue to check our lower elementary blog for online resources to use with your child. The blog site is http://blogs.mariamontessoriacademy.org/lowerel/. Here you will find the main digital resources we are utilizing as a team to monitor your child’s work and progress. The main ones we will monitor are Imagine Learning Reading and Math, Reading Horizons (I will let you know when this resource is available), and Khan Academy. We encourage you all to take advantage of these as much as you can. You can find all the login information under the Language Arts and Math tabs at the top of the blog site. You will also find lots of other great resources under the other tabs.

While we are excited to use these sites, we also understand that for many of you there are limitations in regards to technology use. We know that some of you only have access to one computer to share among many children or have limited access to the internet. To help with this, we are also providing hard copy packets for you to work on with your child. These include math, reading, writing, and other fun ideas. With the news of our school continuing soft closure until May 1, we will be making packets for the month of April. If you are able to pick up your packet this Thursday or Friday, that will be great. Otherwise, you can get it after spring break. As a reminder, school office hours are Monday-Friday, 9 to 11 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. The packets are in a bag with all your child’s personal belongings from the classroom and lockers.

We have also created a new work chart that will be included in the packet and will be posted on the blog. We are not asking that you turn in any of your child’s completed work but that you mark off on the work chart when they have done a work. We have also included a suggestion of how many times a week to do the work as well as a suggested amount of time for it. You can turn these in every two weeks by bringing them to the school and putting them in your teacher’s basket, taking a picture and emailing or sending it to your teacher, or just sending a message with the works your child has done. This is how we as a lower elementary team will be keeping track of your child’s completed works as well as monitoring online progress. Just be mindful that as teachers we are not going to be in the school daily so we may not get your hard copy work chart the day you turn it in. Please use the work chart to guide which works you use from the hard copy packet.

We will also be touching base with you weekly to provide you and your child with feedback. Please watch for an email or blog post from your teacher as to how they will be doing this. It may be through an email just to you or even a phone call. Each teacher will decide the best way for them and your class.

As always, we are available to support you through email and or phone calls. If you contact the teacher with a question or concern, you should hear back from them by 4:00 p.m. during regular school days. Since next week is spring break, we ask that you as parents take a break with your child and allow for time to relax. As teachers, we will not be available during this week so please do not expect replies or feedback until the break is over.

As always, thank you for all you do. Stay healthy and safe.

Sincerely,

Lower Elementary Teachers