Dear fabulous community,
Happy Friday! I hope you have an incredible weekend. I wanted to send this out today so that all of you are aware of what is happening next week. As many of you know, my father-in-law passed away last week due to complications with his declining health. It was not a surprise, however, it did catch us off guard and I do not believe anyone is really prepared. For those of you that have reached out, I thank you. We are doing well, for the most part, and take each day as it comes. That being said, I am traveling to Florida on Monday and will be down there for the week to help my mother-in-law work out the details. I have a sub covering my classes, however, as you all know, Hybrid teaching is an art that can be difficult, especially for a sub. Therefore, I have made the decision to set my class up with work through google classroom, and not have my students log into my google meets. We will continue to have class, and there will be work for everyone to complete, daily. This way, my sub can take care of the students who attend school on the two days that they come to school. For all of my students who do not attend or when they are at home instead of school, THEY WILL NOT NEED TO LOG ON TO GOOGLE MEETS. Instead, they are to log into google classroom and work on the assignments that I assign.
We have been working on Avi's Nothing but the Truth, but we are taking a week off, and will resume when I return. In the meantime, the assignments will surround the upcoming inauguration. There is a video that the students will watch with the historian and author, Michael Beschloss, who uses examples of five historic inaugural addresses to discuss what makes an effective inaugural address. He cites the inaugural address of Lincoln (1865), Roosevelt (1933), Kennedy (1961), Reagan (1981), Bush (2001), and Obama (2009). They (students) will then write to various prompts and answer questions surrounding the video. That should cover at least the Tuesday and Wednesday of class. Thursday I plan on having my students participate in a district writing initiative called NO RED INK and they will be completing this assessment during class. Again, all of this will be in Google Classroom that the students will access each day. As always, my students will also be independently reading and filling out their independent reading logs that they are to turn in on Friday.
I know that was a lot of information. The most important thing to know is there is NO GOOGLE MEETS NEXT WEEK. Instead, students are to check Google Classroom each day at the beginning of their class (11:10 am for block 2 and 1:40 pm for block 3), and work on the assignments. Have a great week and I look forward to reconnecting with my students on Tuesday, Jan.26th.
With gratitude,
Justin Oberndorf aka Mr.O
