Dr. Johnson's Reading Blog

 Before tomorrow's first day of virtual learning, I wanted to send out a couple of reminders and thoughts. School starts at 9:00 am. Each day when students get on their Chromebooks they will click on this link to enter our Google Meet. This link is also found at the top of our Google Classroom page. That link will be used for ALL virtual meetings (synchronous learning). This week (8/31- 9/4) I am ending the day at 1:30 pm, but I will be available after that time to help parents and students navigate all the technology. At CFI we believe in building community and relationships! The next two weeks will focus on this through virtual morning meetings and synchronous teaching. The next two weeks will also focus on helping students gain some independence on their Chromebooks. I will help students organize the different websites they will need to use, organize their classwork, and hopefully develop a way for them to organize their passwords. Hopefully this will help students and parents ...

During virtual learning teacher are expected to take daily attendance. I wanted to highlight how attendance would work. A student is considered "Present" if he/she: participates in synchronous leaning OR completes and submits the Daily Participation Assignment (DPA). For our classroom, the DPA will be a Google Form Exit Slip that students will fill out at the end of the day. Each day's Google Form Exit Slip will be located on our Google Classroom . Students will fill out the exit slip and submit it for each day. A student is considered "Absent" if he/she DOES NOT: participate in synchronous class lessons OR complete and submit the DPA (Google Form Exit Slip) 🙏Virtual learning is complex and personal for each family. There might be particular days in which students are unable to meet for live meetings; there might be particular hours of the day when virtual learning just might not feasible for whatever reasons. There might be days when we just need to take a na...

During virtual learning, communication between myself, parents, and students will be more important than ever. Being at CFI we are all so used to simply "popping in" the school when we have questions. Virtual learning will make this difficult unfortunately! Parents: Feel free to email ( scjohnson@richland2.org ) any time throughout the school day, but know I may not be able to immediately respond. I should be able to respond when I'm not engaged in synchronous learning or working with small group and individual students. Most emails will be responded to during my office hours between 3:00 - 4:00. (Honestly, I'm usually pretty good about responding quickly since I hate having my inbox full.) If you send any email after 4:00 pm, I will try to respond when possible. Last year I didn't allow myself a clear deadline for responding to emails or text messages so I felt like I was constantly available. If you need to call (803-699-2969) into the classroom to contact me, p...

 I know that we have a few weeks before we officially start the virtual school year, but I want to start reaching out to everyone. So . . . WELCOME TO THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR! I am excited to be working alongside you and your child for the next two years. Instead of sending out long emails with lots of information, I thought I would start sending short, succinct emails that would provide information you might need to start the year (I will also copy these emails and post them to my classroom blog so you can refer to them if needed). Little by little I'll be contacting you with information on virtual learning, goals for the year, the different ways I will push information to you, etc.

We got through our first week of E-Learning. It feels that most of this week was figuring out how things work such as Khan Academy. As I have told students, I'm assigning work through Khan Academy so it should show something under their "Home" page. I am not having them do random review work (though that may come later towards the end of the year). All assignments have a start date and due date. If students do not finish by the due date, they may not be able to go back and complete. I'm noticing that Khan Academy does this. Because of this, I have several students who have not completed their work. Please help me out by checking your child's Google Classroom account so you can see their progress. There have been several students who have failed Khan Academy quizzes. They can retake a quiz as much as they want, but some take the quiz once even though they failed the quiz. I'm trying to catch those students and will send emails the child and parent to retake...

When students log onto our Google Classroom page  , they should now see a CFI announcements page. Each morning Mrs. Watson will share the morning announcements and thought for the week. The work in the district-created packet should be completed by April 9 (I still do not know about where, when, or who they will need to be turned into). Spring Break begins Friday, April 10. There will be work due on these days. I am attaching the school work schedule for April 20 - April 24 and the school work schedule for April 27 - May 1 (May 1 just in case).This schedule is to help you and your child stay organized with their assignments. This schedule is about 90% completed. The assignments are not available on Google Classroom yet. Each day's lesson will only be available on the day its assigned so students do not try to move on (if they want additional work they can work on the MAP skills or Khan Academy). You will see that there are assignments for all subjects each day. The assign...

Ok everyone! During this Corona-break, I would like everyone to move from using MAP skills and move back to Khan Academy. MAP skills always used Khan Academy as a resource, and since we are no longer MAP testing, it makes sense to move back to Khan Academy. With Khan Academy, you don't have to constantly ask me for new work. I can also assign you specific lessons that look just like the math we are doing in class. For instance, when we left off school we were going to start volume. I have assigned you volume work for Khan Academy (without all the fluency skills, application problems, etc.). If you have problems logging into Khan Academy please let me know. It should be easier to login than MAP skills. Also remember, the packets have been extended to April 9. At that point I do not know when, where, or who to turn those packets into. Hold onto them until I find out. So . . . . for supplemental work, if you finished your packet, or you want additional math work, start logging into Kh...