A reminder that tomorrow, Friday, February 11 is a school holiday. There are no classes for students. 

At ISY, we pride ourselves on being adaptive. To me, being adaptive means being able to change the way we organize ourselves and do our work to meet the changing needs of our community. This is particularly important as we respond to the challenges of Covid.

Who are we?

Despite all the changes going on around us and the pressure Covid is putting on us, our identity does not change. We are a compassionate community committed to the wellbeing and academic growth of all of our students. It is important to remember this as we keep adapting to meet the needs of our students and our community.

Why are we doing this?

When we are planning to adapt how we do things, we first make sure that there is a good reason behind any possible change. For instance, we want to ensure that teachers of core subjects are not teaching online students and in-person students at the same time in the same class. Why do we want to avoid this? Because this model is disruptive to the learning of younger students – both online and in-person. This is a major ‘why’ behind the design of our hybrid learning program.

Why are we doing this, this way?

This is a very important question that we must ask ourselves everyday when a situation is as changeable as the current Covid challenge. The best way to keep online and in-person students separate when studing core subjects depends on many variables that change daily – most importantly the number of students learning in-person and the number of students who must or whose families have asked for them to learn online.

The changing number of in-person and online students and the current high number of online students will require us to be adaptive in how we match our teaching resources to the changing needs of our students and our community. This will be particularly true in the next couple of weeks and we appreciate your support as we keep adapting for your children.

To help us keep adapting, please email the Elementary School Office (elementaryoffice@isyedu.org) as soon as you know that your child will need to learn online. Our online program is designed for students who will need to learn online for an extended period of time because they are unable to come to campus but are well enough to study. If your child is sick, we expect that they rest as they normally would instead of joining online classes.

Covid At-Home Testing

This message is copied from an email that went out to the community last week from the ISY Communications email account:

As a further measure to keep ISY students safe we have acquired a substantial number of COVID test kids, and are continuing to acquire more.  Subject to availability we should have enough kits for every student and staff member to test themselves twice a week for the rest of the school year.

Every Monday, two test kits will be sent home with every student each week.  We ask that students be tested every Wednesday and Sunday evening and that you inform the ISY clinic (clinic@isyedu.org) if your child’s test result is positive.  If a student is absent on Monday they will be able to get their kits directly from the clinic when they return. 

Each kit has instructions on how to perform the test but here is a video from the clinic showing you how to test. Again, if your child tests positive please inform the ISY clinic (clinic@isyedu.org) and keep your child at home.  Here is ISY’s ‘Can my child come to school’ graphic.

If a student has a suspected case of Covid-19, the other students and parents in that person’s class will be informed and they should follow ISY’s Health and Safety instructions.

Many thanks in advance to all the members of our community for helping to keep ISY a safe environment to come to school.

COVID Considerations 

This message is copied from an email that went out to the community today from the ISY Communications email account:

Used Book Donations

MAP Testing

From Monday, February 21 until Thursday, March 3, we will be MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) testing in the Elementary School (Grades 2 to 5). MAP assessments are online adaptive assessments that provide useful data in developing a fair and accurate assessment of a student’s academic achievement and growth.

Grade 2 to 5 students will be tested in Mathematics, Reading, and Language Usage.To ensure a fair and accurate assessment of a student’s academic growth and achievement, teachers combine MAP assessment data with all other student data that they have collected in classes. This combination of data informs teacher instruction in meeting the needs of each child. MAP assessment data is not the basis for a student’s academic grade as reported in Semester Report Cards.

We appreciate that in many ways this might be a challenging time for our students to be MAP testing. If you would prefer that your child not participate in MAP testing, please email the Elementary School Office on elementaryoffice@isyedu.org.

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