Essentially, school will operate as it is operating now. All of our teachers will still be teaching live synchronous classes on Myanmar time between 9am and 1pm. Students will remain in the same classes with the same teachers and classmates using the same online platforms, tools and Zoom links. We consider this consistency in classes to be very important for our students to stay connected and engaged in their learning in this quarter. If you find yourselves in a time zone that might make it difficult for your child to join their regular class between 9am and 1pm Myanmar time, please email me directly on msimpson@isyedu.org and we will work with you to develop a learning option that will work for your child as we have with other families up to this point.

By leaving the weekend before Thingyan, learning will not be disrupted up to the break and then teachers are able to use the Thingyan break to get settled and recommence classes on Monday, April 19 as planned for in the calendar.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PREFERENTIAL PLAY TIMES

With students no longer being able to attend Transitional Day classes on campus, we have decided to set aside weekly times between 2:30pm and 3:30pm for each grade level to have preferential access to the facilities and playground. These times will provide opportunities for students in the same classes and grades to connect and play in person

Schedule:

• Monday: Pre-Kindergarten & Grade 1
• Tuesday: Kindergarten & Grade 2
• Wednesday: Pre-Kindergarten & Grade 3
• Thursday: Kindergarten & Grade 4
• Friday: Grade 5

You can use this ES Preferential Play Times Sign Up Form to book a time for you and your children to come on campus as per the schedule above. The same rules for facility use apply:

• We can only have up to 30 community members on campus at any one time (including adults and children)
• Every child must be actively supervised by a responsible adult at all times. There will be no ISY staff or faculty supervision.Students cannot be dropped off at school without adult supervision.
• Masks must be worn at all times by both adults and children. This is particularly important for us to be able to safely keep our campus open for our community.
• Siblings may come on campus with their brother or sister during their brother or sister’s play time (e.g. a Grade 1 student may come on to campus with their grade 2 sibling during the Grade 2 play time)

INTERNET PROBLEMS & OFFLINE LEARNING

We have done some planning for the unlikely event that there is a country wide permanent loss of access to Google tools.  In that event everyone should log in to PowerSchool and look for the menu item on the left side of the screen called ‘Office 365 Credentials’.  Here you will see a single user name and password for both email and for documents. The email has already been set up such that all school email from now on is being forwarded to the alternative email platform.  The documents platform is the place where teachers would upload documents for students.  There is no need to log in to Office 365 before losing access to Google.  It is advisable, however, to login to PowerSchool just to make sure you know your login and password.  If anyone needs help with logging in you can review this simple guide to resetting your password and if that doesn’t help you can contact the PowerSchool Help team at powerschool@isyedu.org.

Although we have yet to lose complete access to the internet during the school day, we do have a plan for this happening.  In that event, students not involved in a transition day, will work from home on pre-arranged work that they have downloaded already.  Elementary School teachers have sent a download to parents today and Secondary School parents and students will be getting their downloads on Monday.  Secondary students and Upper Elementary students will go through the download process with their teachers in class.  It is important that this work is downloaded as soon as it is received so no use of the internet will be required to access the instructions.  These downloads will be updated from time to time in line with the progress of students through their various studies.

Offline Learning Activities in the Elementary School:

The grade level summaries you receive every Friday now have a PDF document attached. This document will be a summary of what has happened in class that week plus a selection of Offline Learning Activities. Students are to do these activities only if we lose internet access and classes cannot proceed online. These activities are connected to what we are doing in class but they are only to be done on days that we cannot meet as a class. When classes resume, students will share and reflect on their work. Please download the PDF Summary & Offline Learning Document when you receive the email on Friday. In this way these Offline Learning Activities will be immediately available to students if we lose internet access in the following week.

Below is a video that outlines how to download a PDF document:

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