Mrs. Benson's 6th Grade Class

PDF of 6th grade Distance Learning parent letter & norms

Please take a minute to complete this parent survey about distance learning.  Your input will help Mrs. Benson and the 6th grade team plan for next week.  Thank you!

Hello everyone!

I hope this post finds you well.  I have been thinking about the students and all our families and missing our “normal” so much.  This week the district is providing distance learning training and time for teacher collaboration and planning.  We will start distance learning with the students next Monday, April 13th.

This Friday, April 10th, you can expect an email from me with more information about the plan Camarena Elementary, and specifically the 6th grade team has in place.  It will be a work in progress, and I know that together we will all figure this out.  For now I can tell you that the plan is going be very flexible and intended to support continual learning, not to burden students and families during this difficult time.

The district has strongly advised against the use of Zoom for security reasons, and they are only supporting the use of video conferencing through the district platform – Microsoft Teams in Office 365.  I would like to have a quick live video check in tomorrow at 10am with the students with the sole purpose being a) to see all of their smiling faces and say hello and b) start trouble shootting with this platform.  It seems to have some limitations compared to Zoom, but again – we are going to make it work!  Here are the directions to log in.  Follow these steps tomorrow, Wednesday April 8th,  a few minutes before 10:00am.  You can also do steps 1-5 ahead of time as a trial run.

The car caravan has been cancelled –  I was really looking forward to seeing everyone.

6th grade camp has not been officially canceled yet.  As with so many things during this time, we do not have any definitive answers.  If and when we get confirmation that camp is indeed canceled, we will begin the process of getting refunds out to all our 6th grade parents. Checks that were turned in the last few days of school had not yet been deposited.

On Friday, March 27th starting at 10am, Camarena teachers will be participating in a teacher caravan parade to say hello to all the students in our community.  We will start at the school and drive throughout the community following the route outlined below.  Come outside and say hello to all the Camarena teachers as they drive by in their cars.  We expect this to take about an hour, so keep that in mind if your home is near the end of the route!  Looking forward to seeing all your smiling faces on Friday.

Any assignments this week are entirely OPTIONAL.  I have been assigning 10 math questions on Scottpad each day this week.  Achieve 3000 was not allowing remote access earlier in the week, but the district has fixed the problem.  If you child needs help retrieving any passwords, send me an e-mail and I am happy to help.

The following ideas are intended to keep our 6th graders engaged and learning during this week’s school closure and are entirely OPTIONAL.  This is intended only to give you ideas, NOT to add any extra stress.

MATH – Scootpad is a program that students use in the classroom.  They already have their usernames and passwords.  I will add a 10 question assignment each day this week that is directly related to what we have been working on in class.  Students can also work on any older Scootpad assignments that were not finished.

READING – Scholastic Learn at Home was created in response to School Closures.  We have always had access to Scholastic Upfront, Junior Scholastic, Scholastic Scope, and Scholastic News.  Our student password is Camarena6.  Achieve 3000 is also still available for students through the district’s single sign-on for students.  Scootpad (see above) also has an ELA component that I do not use in the classroom, but that students can explore on their own.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES – BrainPOP is a large collection of student friendly videos on an unlimited amount of topics.  Usually I am the one picking and choosing videos for the class, but students can use the search bar to find topics that interest them, and then BrainPOP recommends other related content.  The shared username is Benson409 and the password is Benson409.

Please continue to stay up to date about school closures on the  CVESD district website and the Camarena School Blog.

All parent conferences for the 3rd quarter have been cancelled.  Our conferences were going to be student led, but my role was going to be overseeing the conference and answering any questions you might have had.  Students were sent home on Friday with a yellow data sheet / work habits reflection & a white student led conference check list.  I encourage you to still have this conference with your child at home.  While the students were not all entirely prepared to have their conference, the check list is pretty self explanatory.  The writing that is referenced on the check list can be accessed on Google Classroom.  The math question will have to be skipped.  If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s progress, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at jennifer.benson@cvesd.org.  I am available to answer questions by email or set up phone calls.

You are likely wondering about the status of camp.  We were scheduled to go 9 weeks from now.  There is so much uncertainty, but I promise to keep you informed about a possible cancellation as soon as that information is available to me.