Starting Monday, students will have weekly half days with noon dismissal falling on a different day each week. These new weekly half days will happen instead of the half day schedule on your original Lang calendar for the school year. This new calendar will provide staff with much-needed planning time to learn about integrating new tools and methods for teaching our children online. This time will also allow for staff coaches to provide faculty with the new feedback they need to ensure our schoolwide approach is consistent and in line with new needs and expectations. The gist of the schedule is that we'll have a Monday half-day during the first week (this coming week), a Tuesday half day during the second week (the first week after break), and so on; this will ensure that no single class or therapy session is missed often. 
 

We are lessening homework expectations for grades 2 through 8, and these students will begin the coming week with a clean slate of past due assignments. For grades 2-8, we will emphasize independent reading, math problem practice, and journal reading, depending on your child's grade. To ensure the continued value of a Lang high school diploma and to prepare these students to manage the stresses of college, we won't be lessening our high school homework expectations (unless your child is on an agreed upon, individualized homework plan); their teachers will continue to email alerts about missing homework, and no homework during the spring semester will be marked lower for late submission.
 

We are integrating more movement into your child's remote learning day. OT MIke and High School PE teacher Kat have provided teachers across grades with a folder of movement break resources that will be used with students during classes and transitions this coming week. If your child seems to need more movement during a live Zoom session, please try using the chat function on the lower right side of the screen to ask for teacher feedback, then the cup icon to convey that your child is going to take a break.
 

Basis periods will now be available in The Lower School Monday through Friday from 2:30-3:15. As in The Upper School, Basis is reserved for 1:1 meetings between teachers and students, whether initiated by the student or by the teacher, in order to provide additional instruction, whether remediation or acceleration. Parents can also email teachers to request that teachers work with their child during Basis. 
 

If your child misses a Zoom mini lesson, do this: check your child's Lang email inbox, as teachers will be recording mini lessons and emailing them to students who were absent.
 

Lang staffers are working to provide families with student and parent resources for this period. Please email your own gem discoveries to us, so we can share — e.g., Actor Josh Gad, Frozen's Olaf, reading new picture books daily on Instagram at #GadBookClub. An initial rollout of family resources will happen no later than the weekend before we return from spring break; this will be a living doc that we update and re-share weekly after that.
 

We are reviving the Parent's Association online. Please contact us to suggest ideas for parent & family social events.
 

We know you're getting a lot of emails from school that are hard to organize & read all of. What we're going to do: non-emergent, non- personal communications will come from me each Saturday via Lang Headlines. More time-sensitive emails from staff will use the following naming convention in their Subject lines.