From Shannon Whiteside:
We hope you have a wonderful celebration this Easter weekend remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is risen!
Over the years I have tried many different Easter traditions with my children. We have made resurrection rolls that represent the tomb and turn out empty inside after you cook them. We have used resurrection eggs filled with different items such as a donkey, nails, and a chalice to symbolize Jesus’ journey to the cross. I would love to hear some of your Easter traditions. Hop on over to today’s Fabulous Friday post and share them with us!
Easter
by Edwin L. Sabin
The barrier stone has rolled away,
And loud the angels sing;
The Christ comes forth this blessed day
To reign, a deathless King.
For shall we not believe He lives
Through such awakening?
Behold, how God each April gives
The miracle of Spring.
Notes
1. Reflective Practice: We want to encourage you to incorporate reflective practice throughout your school year. If you have not referred to our Reflective Practice Plan Book in a while, perhaps it would be helpful to pull it off the shelf. Here is an excerpt we thought might be helpful as the end of the school year is in sight for many of you:
It is really easy to burn out before the school year ends, and nothing leads to burnout quicker than a lack of margin. How is your life balance right now? Are you feeling like you have margin? Or do you feel overextended? Do your students have plenty of margin, or are school and extracurricular activities leaving little time for “just being?” Talk with your family about ways you can thoughtfully prune activities and commitments–or even drop a couple of subjects–to regain your sense of margin. (See Richard Swenson’s book Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives for more on this topic.)
2. This Week in the Hive: One of our members shared in this post that the USPS has issued a stamp featuring Edmonia Lewis, one of the artists we will be studying in the Alveary next year. If you haven’t perused the 2022-23 Program yet, you may want to check out Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis. (Note: This is an optional teacher resource only–not appropriate for a read-aloud.)
Queries
1. Combining Students: I want to combine subjects for my two children as much as possible. How do I go about that?
Here’s what we’ve written on this subject in the Alveary Member Tutorial:
Placing and Combining Students
We want you to work smarter, not harder, and that means combining as many students as possible for as many courses as possible and taking advantage of what each student can do independently. Here are a few guidelines when thinking about who you will combine with whom:
- If, by looking at the course assignments chart, you see that multiple students share courses, then great! You will teach them together automatically.
- You can probably plan to teach students together who are in the same form, even if they are not in the same grade. To do this, look at the courses for their grade levels and choose one of the courses for each subject. For example, if you had a 4th grader and a 6th grader, you might choose to put them both in the natural history book for 4th grade and the Bible course for 6th grade.
- Adjacent forms are also pretty easy to combine. If you have a Form 3 and a Form 4 student, you could probably teach most of their subjects together.
- Larger age gaps between students make combining less appropriate. For example, using the same history book for your 3rd grader and your 9th grader is not going to work; their needs are just too different.
- Your groups do not have to be rigid. You can combine student A with student B for math and student B with student C for history.
- The main thing is to be aware of each student’s needs and abilities and then structure your groups to meet those needs in the most streamlined way possible.
- Do be sure to give each student in grades 1-8 a math placement test prior to purchasing a RightStart level.
2. Office Hours: Here is the topic we covered during our Alveary office hours on April 6:
Mason’s Use of Myths and Fairytales
If you have questions you would like our team to address, please submit them at least 24 hours in advance by commenting on the event in The Hive. Please note that your Alveary team will be taking a short break from Office Hours around Easter, so the next Office Hours will be Wednesday, April 27, at 3:30 pm EDT.
Have a great weekend!
The Alveary Team
