#AESStayingConnected
May 11-15
Hello Alward Families!
Happy Mother's Day to all of our AES moms! Thank you for your role as caregiver, supporter, and "teacher" as you navigate these unprecedented times wearing and juggling multiple hats. Your support, love, determination, and encouragement to our students is greatly appreciated. This week, we want to celebrate our parents for all that they have done to not only support our students, but our teachers and school community this school year. We are proud to walk alongside all of you as we work to do our best for our students each and everyday!
I would like to also say thank you to all of our families for supporting our teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week. These are different times, but your support means the world to us. Thank you for the kind words, emails, videos, and tokens of appreciation. You made our teachers feel loved and appreciated! Your acts of kindness helped spread smiles across our school last week!
This week's #makingsmileschallenge will be a fort challenge! Our students have such great imaginations and love to play or hide away from time to time. Let's capture their creativity and build forts. These creations can become a quiet place for reading, a castle for playing make believe or a calm spot that provides comfort and peace in the middle of chaos. Take a picture of your forts and post them on Facebook or email them to me by Thursday evening at 9 p.m. I will announce a winner on Friday morning to receive a pizza dinner and will deliver the dinner Friday evening! Let's make some smiles this week and have a little fun along the way!
Stay safe and healthy and find something to smile about each day!
Take great care,
Mrs. McClure
This Update Includes...
- Family Check-in
- #staying connected
- Something to Smile About-Making Smiles Challenge
- Upcoming Events: May 5th Election Information
- Social, Emotional and Mental Health Support for ALL HPS families
- Navigating Virtual Learning
- Breakfast and Lunch Information-Location changing to Hudsonville High School starting on Monday, May 4th! Time will continue to be from 11:00-12:30.
- Lending Library
How are you doing? What supports do you need? AES Family Check-in
#StayingConnected
May 11-15
Let's stay connected virtually! Join Mrs. McClure on Facebook daily Monday-Friday for read alouds, science experiments, work outs and more!
- Monday-Facebook Live Bedtime Story @ 7 PM
- Tuesday-Facebook Live Read Aloud @ 10 AM
- Wednesday-Facebook Live Wacky Science Wednesday @ 10 AM
- Thursday-Facebook Live Music/Movement Challenge @ 10 AM
- Friday-Facebook Live SOAR Champions for the Week @ 10 AM
Alward Champions SOAR During COVID-19
Let's SOAR Together: Alward Champions in Our School Community and Beyond
- Please help us recognize students, staff, families, and community members that are Championing for our students, schools, and community! There are so many going above and beyond in creative ways that we would like to recognize them for their efforts. Please fill out the attached google form. We will recognize them on Fridays at 10 am during our Facebook Live event and in the next weeks school update. I will also send them a card of thanks from our school community!
Updates on COVID-19 from Dr. VanderJagt
- Check out the HPS page for COVID-19 updates and steps that our district is taking to help support our families, staff, and school community.
- Thank you Hudsonville community for voting for the non-homestead mileage renewal. We appreciate your support!
Something to Smile About
#AESMakingSmilesChallenge Week of May11-15 #fortchallenge
Upcoming Events
Online Registration Open for New Students for 2020-2021 School Year
Social, Emotional, and Mental Health Support for ALL
"Why am I so tired?"
Linked HERE is a great resource that talks about, "Why am I so tired?" The article does an excellent job of explaining how traumatic stress impacts our minds and bodies. With all of the news and uncertainty around COVID, our bodies/minds struggle to turn off the fight/flight response; therefore, even though we may be sitting more frequently/working differently than normal, our stress response is in overdrive.
AES Google Classroom for Social-Emotional Support for Families and Students
The SOARce Newsletter
Navigating Virtual Learning
Overview of Current Learning Opportunities
- Specials: Specials' classes will post their learning activities by Monday for that week. This will allow our families some options for when to complete the activities. Specials' Google Classroom Codes are listed below under "Navigating Virtual Learning" if you haven't added their classrooms yet.
- PK-2 Updates: These grades will be covering some new content along with review of essential skills that will help prepare students for the next grade level. There will not be an increase in academic time per day. (See picture below.)
- Grades 3-5 Updates: These grades will have approximately 30 minutes of math and 30 minutes of ELA per day Mondays-Thursdays. On Fridays, they will have 60 mins of science and/or social studies. (See picture below.)
- No Grades: We will not be grading assignments.
- Monitoring Participation: Teachers will be monitoring students' participation in learning opportunities as this follows expectations set by Governor Whitmer. Please do what you can to stay connected to your child's teacher.
- Retentions and Grade Promotion: If the possibility of retention was not discussed at our Spring Parent Teacher Conferences, then students will be promoted to the following grade for the 20-21 school year.
- What about my child's academic, social, or emotional needs in the fall? When we return to school in the fall, we will be ready to support ALL of our students where they are at academically, socially, and emotionally and fill in any gaps that may be present due to this altered state of learning.
Currently, we are all in survival mode. This pandemic is not fun some days and brings with it a lot of emotions that can change for you and your children by the hour or even the minute! Please remember that your mental health is the number one priority right now as is your child/drens. Somedays may go smoothly with virtual learning, and other days, you may be ready to throw in the towel before the day even begins. This is okay! If things are not going smoothly, disconnect from the technology and support one another's needs. The activities will still be there tomorrow for you to try again. Any learning opportunity that your child participates in is a win! Let them explore their interest areas, play games, and read for fun! Enjoy this time with them as much as you can. Continue to find some joy in each day or something to smile about!
Connecting to Google Classrooms
How to Log into Gmail and Google Classroom
On Friday, your teacher sent you an email with your child’s email address and password information. Here is a video that you can watch to help you log into your child’s gmail account. This video also explains how they will join their teacher’s Google Classroom.
How to Connect to Learning Opportunities for Specials’ Classes
Here is a video that will show you how to join our specials’ Google Classrooms. To join their classes, you will need the following codes:
PK-2nd Grade Specials' Codes
Art: 3ppimuw
Music: akv3wr3
PE: ve7uwwz
STEAM: 5mx3urt
3rd-5th Grade Specials' Codes:
Art: 47g3l47
Music: mf7jvye
PE: yjw2ucw
STEAM: All 3-5 students already are in Google Classroom. Please email Mrs. McClure if your child is not in a STEAM class.
PTC Updates
- Thank you to all of the parents and teachers that attended our first virtual PTC meeting! View meeting minutes here.
- We would like to officially welcome our new and returning board members for the 20-21 school year! Co-Presidents-Melissa Hodge and Andi Butler, Vice President-Stephanie Rowe, Secretary-Michelle Nienhuis, Co-Treasurer-Kelly Clough and Tim Smit, and Teacher Representative-Heather LaLonde.
- Thank you to Jenn Johnson and Taryn Nance for their years of service to our PTC and to supporting our students and staff at Alward!
- We can still earn money for our school by collecting: receipts for Family Fare, paper for the Paper Gator, and Box Tops (you can get the Box Tops app to enter Box Tops for our school).
Breakfast and Lunch is Served!
Lending Library is Stocked!
#stayingconnected
Email: mmcclure@hpseagles.net
Website: https://alward.edublogs.org/
Location: 3381 Port Sheldon Street, Hudsonville, MI, USA
Phone: 616-669-6700
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AESEaglePride/
Twitter: @AlwardElem