Home-School Connection

Hello Room 209 parents,

  We do A LOT in the course of a day at school. However, somehow many children come home and when you ask, "What did you do today?" the response is, "Nothing". You, I and they know that is just not true. In order to help you find out what is REALLY going on in Room 209, there are lots of things you can do.

  Make sure you're asking JUICY questions. Ask questions that cannot be answered with "yes" or "no". Here are some great ideas of questions to ask. You'll also have enough online access to what is going on in our class (through our blog, twitter and YouTube channel) that you can always ask leading questions like, "I saw that today you were talking about gears, what did you learn?"

  You can come in and volunteer in the classroom or on field trips.
(We always need volunteers and for now you can set that up by emailing Shauna at shauna.pollock@ocdsb.ca until we have a Class Coordinator.)

  If you're out of town or stuck at work when your child is making a presentation, you can arrange to Skype in to the classroom and watch.
(We'll start off by Skyping from the account "shaunapollock", please feel free to add us as a contact on Skype!)

  You can be a fly on the wall in the classroom by checking us out on Social Media:

  We will be blogging here.
(Our class blog is a "web log", a virtual diary that teachers and students will add to regularly. You'll see pictures, read posts and you can even leave comments for us! You do not need to have )

  We will be tweeting here.
(Our class Twitter account will be a place where we can "microblog" - write posts that are 140 characters or less and share photos, links and videos. You do not need a Twitter account to follow us. If you have one, though, you can reply to our Tweets, ask questions and Tweet directly at us!)

  We will be posting videos here.
(We have a class YouTube channel where we'll post all kinds of things throughout the year. You do not need to have a YouTube account to view our videos.)

  We will even live-stream some of our classroom events here.
(We did this a few times last year. You can watch the streaming of class events without an account, but if you'd like to leave comments and interact with us live, you just need a Google account.)

  You will get lots of information about what your child is doing in class, how he or she is progressing towards setting and meeting academic goals and see his or her work in progress.

  We will be working on the Google Drive and sharing documents with you.

  We will be using lift.do to track our goals.

  We will be trying out a new ongoing assessment tool I'm calling "Annual Learning Plans".


  We look forward to sharing our learning with you in person and virtually. Sometimes your child will need encouragement to share what is going on at school, and all the tools listed above will help start the conversation.

  Please feel free to share any of the links with family far and wide. We've had lots of international families being a part of our classroom in the past!

Shauna