Chickering School

Dear Families,

I hope you are doing well. I hope you are healthy and finding what you need. If not, please reach out to us at Chickering and lean on us. Lives have changed, almost overnight, and we are here for you.

“At school” this week we have been engrossed in preparing for a second phase of remote learning, to begin on Monday, April 6th. Just like many colleges and universities in the area, we needed a week to convert our system and prepare for a new mode of teaching and learning. We are proud to share the changes below, and I will also share that there’s a level of exhaustion from all the change. What keeps us going is thinking about our students, and connecting with the children continues to be our top priority. We’re excited that next week all classes will have live video conferences to support those connections.

This week we prepared for live video conferencing, which required additional technology infrastructure, vendor security upgrades, professional development, home network enhancements, and school-wide coordination. We created a schedule that takes into account siblings across the school, to allow all students the opportunity to access these special times with their teachers and classmates. All children will have the opportunity for two live touchpoints with their teacher each week moving forward, and other educators will join periodically to maintain contact and keep us all connected. In addition to these optional live sessions, which teachers are testing this week, instruction will be provided with teacher-made prerecorded videos. These are in addition to the learning plans with activities and resource links, to create a well-rounded, diverse, and flexible learning experience for the children.

Here are some of the changes coming, or put in place this week, based on direction from the state and decisions made by leaders and educators at Chickering and in the district:

· Chickering @ Home: All remote learning content for the entire school is now in one place!

https://sites.google.com/view/athomelearning-specials/home?authuser=0

· #WEareDS Online: The entire Dover-Sherborn Public Schools district now has one dedicated website for remote learning, and the above Chickering@Home tab can be found within: https://sites.google.com/view/ds-remote-learning/home

· Two live chats scheduled per week per class: A school-wide schedule provides the best possible access for all students. Teachers will initiate calls, and will relay the days and times to families. Standard communication with teachers should also continue. (We cannot provide individual, live conferences for students with classroom teachers. Thank you for understanding.) Please access the Videoconferencing Guidelines for Educators, and Remote Learning: Student Responsibilities on the #WEareDS Online website for more information.

· Recorded instructional videos will also be used. A system for posting these on the Chickering@Home website was developed to make these easy to find, within each grade-level folder, and easy to return to for viewing at any time. They will be available next week.

· New content will be introduced April 6th (State guidance was review only, through April 3.)

· Learning activities will now be designed for approximately half a typical school day, per state guidance. Additional activities are always available from grade-level teams and Specialists.

· Specialists: We recommend following your child’s regular schedule, with a different Specialist every day of the week.

· FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary Schools / Spanish): FLES lessons are housed within the Specialists’ tab. We recommend following your child’s typical schedule, with either three or four sessions per week.

· Tier II Literacy Supports: Recorded instruction will be developed each week and posted on grade-level sites, to which students may be directed. Other students are welcome to access these as well.

· ELL (English Language Learning): Family connections have been made and support will be provided using different resources, specific to student needs.

· Special Education: All special education staff members will broaden the depth of services as well as the platforms that are used to connect with students and families. During this national emergency, we may not be able to provide services in the same manner they are typically provided. For the latest information from Director of Student Services Kate McCarthy, please see this link on the main D-S website: https://www.doversherborn.org/page.cfm?p=533

Special Education Team meetings will resume. The Team Chair will (re)schedule these.

· Chickering Community events: Our all-school virtual assembly last week was a wonderful way to connect, and we are planning additional ways for our community to “be together” in the coming weeks.

We are a community dedicated to education, recognizing the personal growth and opportunities that a strong education provides. And we recognize that over one’s lifetime, learning comes in many forms, inspiration comes from many sources, and a love of learning carries us forward in a way that surpasses a month or more of content. Let’s keep the personal connections alive, as those provide stability in uncertain times and allow us to carry forward. Strengthen bonds within your families, and find new ways to connect between home and school. We thank you for your continued support as we recreate our personal and professional lives.

I would like to give a shout-out to all our educators, who in one week’s time developed comprehensive grade-level plans for an entire week at a time, who sought out new resources and developed lessons without access to materials in their classrooms, and who struggled like everyone else to take care of their own children and families while spending countless hours on video calls to develop a whole new way of teaching. And I would like to thank all of you, our families, for accepting new learning plans in a new format, figuring out device usage and online access, and for doing things at home for each family member when needed, when the world was asking you to do everything at once. Thank you, families.

Wishing you well,

Laura

From The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/smarter-living/coronavirus-classic-games.html

That “cooped-up” feeling is real as we all do our parts to halt the spread of the pandemic, and it can be particularly tough to find things to do with your children. It’s important to have as many ideas as possible in your back pocket for getting through the day.

So, here are a few games, possibly from your childhood, that meet the important criteria for our time at home: The games can be played in your house, they require no equipment, they can be modified for different age groups and best of all, they require little or no touching. (Some of them may even qualify as educational.)

But why should the kids get all the fun? Set up a virtual game night with friends and relive your childhood favorites.

20 Questions is a guessing game in which people try to identify a person, place or thing the leader is thinking about in 20 questions or less. Group members ask “yes” or “no” questions until the mystery item or person is guessed. It’s stationary, meaning there’s no running around or mess and it can be played in small groups. A similar game is I Spy.

Ghost was one of my favorite games to play with my parents on long car rides! Players try to add a letter to a growing word fragment without ever actually spelling a word. If they accidentally spell a valid word, they lose the round. If they add a letter but a word is no longer possible to be made using that combination of letters, another player can “challenge” them.

Animal Alphabet asks players to think of an animal that begins with the letter A (like ant). The next person has to think of an animal that begins with the last letter of the last animal thought of within a certain time limit. For example, after “an(t)” someone could volunteer “(t) urtle.” Continue the pattern until someone fails to think of an animal.

Make Me Laugh is great for cheering up the housebound. Choose one person to be on the “hot seat.” Set a timer for 90 seconds. The rest of the group has one simple goal, which is to make the person on the hot seat laugh without touching them. (No tickling!). Laughs, smiles, giggles and snorts can create disagreement, so one simple rule applies: If you show your teeth in the hot seat, you are out, and you join the group trying to make someone else laugh in the next round.

Chopsticks is a two-player math game that may be familiar to families with children in elementary school. (First, wash your hands, as this game requires light hand tapping.) Players put out their hands in front of them with the index finger extended on each hand. The person chosen to go first taps the other person’s hand. The number of fingers the tapping hand had extended get transferred to the receiver’s hand. And the turn moves to the second player. The goal is to keep going and adding fingers to your opponent’s hand by tapping. If you accidentally give your opponent more than five fingers, they are still in and display the “overage.” (For example, if they were given six fingers, they only have to show one.) When someone’s hand has five fingers extended, that hand is considered “out” and is no longer in play.

Below is a preview of the LIVE BOKS class schedule. Every weekday at 12pm EST:

SAMPLE LIVE CLASS SCHEDULE:

Monday - Plank It Up

Tuesday - Ab-solutely Amazing Core

Wednesday - Mash Up

Thursday - Burpee Blast

Friday - Dance Party Workout

In response to COVID-19, here's a new web page to host all free at home resources.

https://www.bokskids.org/boks-at-home/

Join every weekday at 12pm EST/9am PDT on Facebook for a live BOKS class!

https://www.facebook.com/boks

Website: https://www.doversherborn.org/page.cfm?p=815
Location: 29 Cross Street, Dover, MA, USA
Phone: 508-785-0480
Twitter: @ChickeringDover