Cedar Grove Friday Flash
August 28, 2020
Dear Cedar Grove Families,
It is hard to believe we are only a few days away from the start of the 2020-2021 school year. We are excited to welcome your children back to school and to also welcome our new students who will be attending Cedar Grove for the first time.
Your child's day will begin this Monday, August 31, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. The first week of school will be a little different than the weeks that follow, as our focus will be to build classroom communities, prepare your child for distance learning, learning to navigate the technology and Canvas Classroom, and to introduce math and reading routines. During each afternoon, students will work independently to complete assigned learning activities. Also during these afternoons, teachers will be conducting virtual home visits, and our art, music, and PE teachers will provide office hours. We hope you take advantage of these meeting opportunities to share information with staff and receive answers to questions. You can view the school schedules, as well as supply lists, information on how to get started with ParentVue, technology resources, available webinars, and a guide to prepare your child for the first day of school entitled, Where Do I Begin on our Start the Virtual School Year page.
Student log-ins and passwords, as well as parent invitations to activate Synergy ParentVUE accounts, have been previously sent from the MCPS central office. If you have not received these, please refer to the tech support resources on the Getting Started page or call the Parent Help Desk at 240-740-7020 between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. or email communitytechsupport@mcpsmd.org. If you can only see some children but not all, please complete the form by clicking on the link below and MCPS will merge accounts. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3RJam5Fl3jdbhxmSttrSLB-ybJ3Gwp4sB8dPAwqj1VjmzNg/viewform
Parents, please note that online lessons will be recorded to support families and students and create flexibility in accessing learning experiences when attending live instruction is not possible. Recorded lessons will also provide students with an opportunity to revisit lesson content and resources. Please note the following:
- When students first log in, their video and audio is off by default. If students should not be recorded, they should leave these off. Recordings are protected, available only to students through a secure myMCPS site, unavailable for download, and will delete after 72 hours. MCPS recognizes that even with these protections, there may be students or families who do not want their children’s images or voices to be captured. If you would like to have your student opt out of being in the recording, they should keep their video off in each class from the start of the school year. Parents/guardians are asked to indicate an opt out in the Parent Vue portal by September 11, 2020.
- This link to the Parent Vue Slide Deck provides families with information about activating the Parent Vue Account.
As a reminder, if you send us an email with a question, please be sure to include your child's first and last name within your email. Thank you.
We are looking forward to this new school year, and we are committed to working together to assist you and your child in making this an engaging and high quality learning experience. Please contact the school office to let us know how we can support you.
Mr. Derby and Mrs. German
Benchmark Advance Reading Curriculum Information
This year, MCPS elementary schools will complete the rollout of a new English Language Arts curriculum called Benchmark Advance. If your child attended Cedar Grove during distance learning in the spring, the reading curriculum and lessons presented at that time were from Benchmark. Please click on this Letter to see a welcome and an overview of the program.
In addition, the Benchmark Advance Reading/Language Arts curriculum is designed to prepare students for success from Day 1. Before launching Unit 1 of instruction, teachers will spend time days introducing and practicing routines within the English/Language Arts block, which will be critical to student success all year long. During this time, lessons are designed to build classroom community and set the stage for deep learning.
In grades K-2, this 20-day unit is called Foundations and Routines. In grades 3-5, the unit is called Review and Routines and lasts 15 days. However, for distance learning, the lessons have been adapted to work in a virtual classroom setting. Students will spend 10-12 days in this unit during the 2020-2021 school year. In all grade levels, these lessons include read-alouds, book discussions, word work (often review), both shared and independent writing, and independent reading. These lessons are designed to model appropriate literacy behaviors and expectations that students will be using consistently throughout each subsequent unit. Parents should not expect to see homework or graded work in reading and writing other than independent reading coming home during this time. As a result, students will not receive interim grades for reading and writing during quarter 1.Teachers will gather anecdotal and formative data in order to assess students’ reading skills for placement in small, flexible, needs-based groups, but will not report reading or writing grades until Unit 1 begins.
If you have any questions, please contact your child’s reading teacher.
Please read important information below about your child's Google password:
Parents, Mrs. Hirschhorn your media specialist is asking for a favor! Although we understand that students may want to change their Google Chrome password, please explain to your children that they may not change their Google Chrome passwords and must use the password centrally assigned to them by MCPS. This is also the logon information that gives them access to other MCPS applications, such as Destiny. But unfortunately, not all the apps will update the password just because the Chrome password is changed.
More importantly, the problem is that we do not get a report of the newly changed password. This means we cannot help students if they forget a changed password. We want our students to be able to access their accounts, so thank you for having a conversation with your Cedar Grove students about this!