If your child will be fully remote during the first trimester, he or she will be transitioned into Mrs. Gail Brown's classroom. She is an experienced fourth-grade teacher from Memorial School in Upton who has been employed by the Mendon-Upton Regional School district for nearly two decades. Mrs. Brown will be working in lockstep with the MURSD fourth-grade team to provide an experience for fully remote learners that will be similar to the experiences of our hybrid learners. This will make it easy for a child to transition out of or into a fully remote learning environment should your family's circumstances change for next term. Families will be given an opportunity to chose a learning program that works best for their child before term two begins. The district's offerings will be influenced by state data and the health of our two communities.

Mrs. Brown should be reaching out to your families soon if she hasn't done so already. We have left a link to her Zoom room in Clever and in the Homeroom Google Classroom should your child need it. Please don't hesitate to reach out with questions about the fully remote program. We promise to do our best to answer them.

Despite our distance, our class has built quite a community. We will work hard to maintain contact with our fully remote students as they have become important members of our class.

Drop-in extra help will be available on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 1:20 to 2:00. I will post links in the Homeroom Google Classroom but will also leave them here for you.

Monday and Tuesday help: Click HERE. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Lopes will be available to assist.

Thursday and Friday help: Click HERE. Mrs. Ellis will be available to assist.

If prompted to use a password, the password is "help".

We will begin hybrid learning on Tuesday, October 13th. Our cohort one students will attend school on Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week due to our holiday school closure on Monday. We look forward to meeting with our cohort two students on Thursday and Friday. When not impacted by holidays, cohort one students (Gryffindor and Slytherin houses) will attend school on Mondays and Tuesdays and cohort two students (Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw houses) will attend in person on Thursday and Friday. Wednesdays will generally be reserved for remote learning. Students will receive remote instruction in our Zoom room in the morning, culminating with their specialist's class, and will spend Wednesday afternoons working independently on assignments at home.

Please find the hybrid schedule for your child by clicking on the below links. Your child will be learning in-person two days a week. He or she will be learning remotely in our Zoom room on Wednesday mornings and will be learning independently from home two and a half days a week. We realize how challenging it may be to guide your child through those two fully independent days. In order to support our students at home we will be:

• Assigning a reasonable amount of work through Google Classroom.
• Inviting your child to log into our Zoom classrooms four times daily on his or her fully remote days.
• Beginning and ending each day with a class meeting. During our morning meeting, we'll take attendance and read a #classroombookaday. During our afternoon meeting, we'll be summarizing our learning and reading, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
• Holding both mid-morning and mid-afternoon house meetings. During these meetings, your child will be working with his or her housemates in Professor Quimby's Zoom room. This time will be spent pre-teaching and re-teaching concepts, helping your child to stay on top of assignments, and supporting your child in any way that we can.

We are hopeful that the schedule we've designed will work for all witches and wizards but we know that there may need to be some tweaks along the way. We ask that you give us feedback as we move forward with this phase of our school year. We promise we'll do our best to respond to any feedback, positive or negative, with thoughtfulness.

Cohort 1: Gryffindor

Cohort 1: Slytherin

Cohort 2: Hufflepuff

Cohort 2: Ravenclaw

Please contact the office to report your child absent, tardy, or dismissed, just as you normally would. Teachers will be taking attendance. We will need to report your child as absent if he or she is absent from in-person learning or doesn't show up for any of his or her remote meetings. Please save our busy office administrators the trouble of calling home by phoning or emailing the school in advance.

Please send a note in with your child if there are ANY changes in his or her dismissal. An email or phone call will work too. It is imperative that we receive all such communications by 10:00 AM. We may not be able to honor non-emergency requests to change dismissal made after 10:00 AM. Please understand that dismissal will be tricky as things stand and that we will be working as an entire staff to get children safely and efficiently out the door.

Clough will be operating on a week one/week two schedule so that students can experience all of their specials over a two week period. Aside from art which will happen remotely through Mrs. Stone's Zoom room, the students will have their specials during their IN PERSON days. Week one and week two schedules can be found by clicking on the below link.

Cohort one students will have library on Tuesday and technology on Wednesday of this coming week. Cohort two students will have music on Thursday and Gym on Friday of this coming week. All students will have art in Mrs. Stone's Zoom room on Wednesdays of each week.

Click this LINK to access the students' week 1 and week 2 specials schedule.

We can't wait to begin teaching the witches and wizards in person! We will work hard to ensure that school continues to be a fun place where learning is engaging. We know that you will do your best to stay positive and flexible as you discuss school with your children. While this is not an ideal model for any of us, approaching it with positivity and flexibility will enable all of us to make the best of the in-person and remote time that we'll spend together. We truly appreciate having such wonderful parents as partners during these crazy days!

Sincerely,

Marie, Abby, Adam, and Kathleen