March 25th Update

March 25, 2020

Dear Great Falls Families,


We hope this letter finds you healthy and well. Thank you for being patient, open-minded and flexible as our staff have worked diligently to communicate and provide instructional opportunities for our students during this unprecedented challenge. Similar to educators, we imagine that you are experiencing good days and days of feeling absolutely overwhelmed. We want you to know that you are doing wonderfully!

This morning we met with the Great Falls staff through one of our many Zoom meetings, and teachers are grateful for your support and dedication to making “remote learning” work for your children. As our Commissioner of Education Pender Makin shared, “Do the best you can with what you have for as many as you can.” We have no doubt that this is happening at home.

For the first two weeks of “remote learning,” our goal was to establish effective communication between our families and students. Your efforts to learn new communication platforms, attend Zoom meetings, and extend the learning to your children have not gone unnoticed. We have witnessed families demonstrate kindness, growth mindsets, risk-taking, and the ability to be flexible and creative thinkers, all skills we work so hard to teach our students. Thank you for modeling such within your households!

We originally thought that we would be able to offer another mass material pick-up by parents that would occur on the campus of Great Falls. Unfortunately, given guidelines and current information provided by medical professionals, this is no longer in the best interest of the Great Falls community. Printed materials will be provided only as needed for equitable access on a case by case basis. Our staff are ready to provide opportunities for our students to maintain skills and be exposed to their grade-level performance indicators without providing physical printed materials.

To help ease the burden at home, we have made some educational decisions for how much time our students should be engaged in daily academic and creative arts activities. Special Education and Response to Intervention supports will begin during the week of March 30th and may happen through the use of Zoom.

Kindergarten
Reading: 15 minutes
Writing: 15 minutes
Math: 15 minutes
Science and Social Studies: optional
Creative Arts: 15-20 minutes

Grade 1
Grade 2
Reading: 20 minutes
Writing: 20 minutes
Math: 20 minutes
Science and Social Studies: optional
Creative Arts: 15-20 minutes

Grade 3
Reading: 30 minutes
Writing: 30 minutes
Math: 30 minutes
Science and Social Studies: optional
Creative Arts: 15-20 minutes

Grade 4
Grade 5
2 Hours (Reading, Writing, Math)
Science and Social Studies: optional
Creative Arts: 15-20 minutes

Teachers will continue to communicate daily expectations while providing learning opportunities for your child through flexible methods that may include email, SeeSaw, or Google Classroom. They are creating experiences that are tied to grade-level performance indicators and may not require the use of printed materials. Please reach out to your child’s teacher if you do not have supplies such as pencils, paper, books, and more. We will figure out on a case by case basis how to distribute the materials that your child may need. It is very important to us that all of our students have the tools they need to participate in learning opportunities at home.

Parents and guardians, we’d like to quote Commissioner Pender Makin once more, “Put on your own oxygen mask. Breathe and be gentle with yourselves and everyone else.” We are in this together. We will catch all of the students where they are academically when they return to us. Thank you for being such wonderful partners in education. Please continue to reach out with any questions, concerns, or needs.


Kindly,

Becky Fortier and Stacey Sawyer
Great Falls Administrators