Remote Learning

Hello Winthrop Families,

Welcome to the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year! I would like to start by briefly introducing myself- I am Meagan White, the Director of Teaching and Learning for the Winthrop Public Schools district. Although I am new to this position, I have been a math-teaching Rambler at the high school since 2013. I am very excited to start supporting our teachers and students across all buildings and help to make this challenging year the best it can be.

This Tuesday, September 8th, students will start entering our schools. As you can imagine, building leadership and teachers have been working diligently over the last week to create inviting, safe environments and procedures. Opening day will be different, and most likely imperfect, as we all try to navigate how to keep everyone safe. Teachers have been developing plans to engage students while also practicing new building and classroom protocols. As you might expect, this is going to take time to get used to.

Since the focus of the first week is to acclimate students to the buildings while safely interacting with their peers and teachers, remote instruction will look similar. Instead of our young remote learners hopping right into instruction with their teachers, they will be asked to view and complete small tutorials available each day on Google Classroom. This “Remote Academy” will hopefully provide some support for students, grades 4th-8th, and their families as they transition into this digital learning platform, while allowing classroom teachers to focus on in-person student safety the first week back. The following week, beginning September 14th, students will be expected to start interacting with their teachers and working on grade-specific content.

In order to begin the Remote Academy, families must complete the necessary paperwork and pick up their devices at their school. Some of you may already have, and others will be over the next week. I will be “inviting” students to join the class by sending an email to their school account. To initially access the virtual class, students can look in their email for a message (similar to the one pictured below) or go to classroom.google.com, login with the above winthropschools.org email, click the “+” and join the class (code: qpswhwu). Students who are choosing in-person learning will have the same training within their individual classrooms.

Each day this week a new, short tutorial will be released to the Remote Academy classroom. All of these are “due” by the end of the school day Friday, September 11. These tutorials are also listed under the "Google Classroom" tab above.

The platform used for our Pre-K through 3rd graders will be Seesaw. This platform allows students to interact more dynamically with their teachers through the use of drawings, videos, voice recordings, and additional teacher designed tools and lessons to assist and inspire our youngest learners. A brief introductory video is located under the "Seesaw" tab above. Families with 1st-3rd graders starting remote learning this fall should anticipate their teacher reaching out to begin instruction by Monday, September 14. Those with students in Pre-K and K, will begin remote instruction Monday, September 21.

I hope that this clarifies some questions for those of you who have chosen to learn remotely. Classroom teachers will be reaching out soon to share expectations for the following week through either their Google Classroom or Seesaw.

Please feel free to reach out, ask for help, or share your concerns.

Warmly,

Meagan White

email: mwhite@winthropschools.org

phone: (207) 377-2249 ext.4040