DMS Band Weekly Newsletter
Week 3 - 8/24-8/28
Reading through this newsletter will help you troubleshoot the week. Don't panic! Be prepared & read your agendas! :)
Welcome to the DMS Band!
Thank you for remaining supportive and patient as we all navigate this new process together. Man, do we miss playing music with our kiddos!
Scroll down in the newsletter to find your WEEKLY AGENDAS for this week.
Ms. Patriquin and Mrs. Merritt both learned new things in terms of Schoology assignments, google form turn in through an assignment and submitting things in schoology this week. We have made some small improvements for next week!
1) Student work folders for Week 3 will be released day-by-day (Tuesday's folder will release at midnight for the next day, etc). We discourage working ahead, simply because we had tons of questions about various assignments that we hadn't had a chance to go over yet.
- Don't forget to check weekly agendas - found below in this newsletter. Weekly agendas have the "task list" for each day!
- We will sometimes be implementing a setting that requires a student to complete ONE task before moving on to ANOTHER. Don't be alarmed if it says something won't open. Just explain to our students that if the directions say to watch a slideshow first, or watch a video first, they must do that in order.
2) We REALLY really really (really really) need kids to login to our live WebEx sessions on time if possible. It seems like kids are not wanting to watch those 30 minute videos later that day or evening when it comes down to it. Obviously, if you aren't ABLE to make it - we totally understand. That's why we record. But, if kids are just sleeping in - maybe you can help us encourage them to attend because it will vastly reduce the questions we repeatedly answer.
3) Please make sure you've completed the Parent Student Information google form in Friday's folder from Week 1. Most of you have - but we are still missing about 80 students' info. Email us if you aren't sure if you submitted.
- This is put in iNow as a bonus point (0/0 or 1/0) so you can check if you've completed this task or not.
- The other grade is the discussion board that can be found in WEEK 1-->WEDNESDAY folders. If students find and complete Wednesday's tasks late and therefore need us to change this grade from a 0 in iNow, we will do so. Please just contact us. We want everyone to go back up to 100% so we are leaving this window open! We just NEED to be able to let y'all know when assignments are completed.
THANK YOU for a great week! Let's dive into some music theory next week.
We are compiling information for each class regarding instruments as well. We appreciate your patience with this matter, too!
Cheers, Panthers!
Tech Help
- Make sure before school starts each day that your student is logged into their Madison City account IN GOOGLE CHROME as well as IN SCHOOLOGY itself. Do not try to access assignments through the parent account or a sibling account. Do not be logged into Chrome (top right in the gray panel) through a sibling account, parent account or personal Gmail account. It must always be the student's madison city email address.
- Please check your weekly agenda and make sure you did everything for the day.
- We suggest making a schedule - and attending the live sessions on time. These are where new material will be taught, and assignments that may have many steps will be gone over. We are finding that very few students are actually going back and watching the 30 min videos to make up the live session. These students who do NOT watch the lives are the ones who are making repeated mistakes and clicks.
- We like the Schoology app - it seems friendly enough. Give it a try.
- Students: Try messaging teachers through the schoology app. We are getting lots of emails from parents, admin, other teachers, central office, etc. Student troubleshooting can be done through schoology. We are happy to jump into our WebEx rooms during student support to help you!
- When opening an assignment, clicking "submit assignment" initially on the right hand side will THEN prompt you to attach something or create something. Some students are afraid to click submit before they've attached anything, but don't worry - there is a second turn in button to push. We think that first button should be called "attach" or "create" or something because submit seems deceiving...
If you don't have an instrument - Please DO NOT go get an instrument until we give further instruction/direction. Thanks!!
SmartMusic should be up and running this week, we hope!
We will be working from the Tradition of Excellence books in class, but these will be found in SmartMusic this year.
If you want to go ahead and get one, the beginners use the RED, level 1 book and this year the CONCERT and SYMPHONIC classes will both start in the BLUE, level 2 book.
Con/Sym students can also grab the Rubank Advanced Method off of Amazon for a few bucks so you can start practicing your All State Band music!! All State requirements can be found by clicking the music stand in our virtual classroom.
Fundraising Updates - Fall 2020
This year, for somewhat obvious reasons, we won't be having the sheet fundraiser as soon as usual, we will push it off for a few weeks.
We will need to solidify our DMS Band Booster team/organization and get parent volunteers plugged in as usual. If anyone is interested in helping with fundraisers, please email us! :)
All that to say - for those of you who are not new to the DMS band program we still have our sheet fundraiser website up and running from this summer. I actually opted to leave this website open until December so technically y'all can order bedsheets right now!
Here is our bed sheet sale website:
https://goalfundingdirect.com/discoverymiddleschool/
Please check it out and grab some sheets if you're in need!
Next week we will ask for parent volunteers to serve as band boosters, so please be thinking about how you can help us out!
Lastly - check out our DMS yearbook challenge! Help out Ms. Shergy and the yearbook staff!
Contact Us!
Email: info@dmsbands.org
Website: www.dmsbands.org
Location: 1304 Hughes Road, Madison, AL, USA
Phone: 256-837-3735
Facebook: facebook.com/DMSBand
Twitter: @WeAreDMSBand