Ms. Anderson's Epic Class

I’ve finally figured out how to keep track of all our offline assignments.

On each Friday, if you have done offline activities, please fill out this form: Offline Work Submission 2020–2021 (it’s also now a tab on the main menu of the website)

If you haven’t done offline activities, then you don’t need to fill out the form. Mostly it’s just my younger grades that do offline work, but I’ve included all grade levels just in case.

You don’t need to submit pictures or anything right now. However, keep all of your work organized by subject and date in case you have to produce them as proof. Eventually, hopefully, I’ll be able to look over everything in person.

Thank you for being so patient as I figured this out! I haven’t had to do offline work purely virtually before!

IT’S BENCHMARK TIME!

I hope all of you have power again! It’s been a weird year, huh?

Well, like it says, it’s time for Quarter 1 Benchmarks. These are only for grades 03–08, 10–11. All other grades will test in December. You can see the full schedule here.

Here are the tests you’ll be taking, divided by grade level:

• Grades 03, 04, 06, and 07 will take Math and ELA. You will need to sign up for TWO testing appointments (click here to schedule).
• Grades 05 and 08 will take Math, ELA, Science, and Writing. You will need to sign up for FOUR testing appointments (click here to schedule)
• Grades 10 & 11 will take the practice ACT. I have reserved Saturday, November 14 from 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM as our ACT time. Make arrangements with your employers to have that day off (click here to add it to your calendar)

NOTE: If you have individual meetings already scheduled with me, we will be using those to take one of your tests. You’ll still need to schedule the others as separate appointments. Check your calendar to see if you already have one scheduled.

These will be recorded Zoom meetings, like we did at the beginning of the year. All of these tests will be in MasteryConnect.

I have a lot of you to schedule, so please help me out by scheduling as soon as possible and as close to today as possible. We have two weeks to get this done 😱

PS: I am redoing everyone’s Grades spreadsheets to reflect some policy changes that took effect last Wednesday. Don’t be surprised if you see that changing in your student folder.

October is my favorite month for multiple reasons: Fall is my favorite season, I love the cool-ish weather, I get to wear fuzzy pants, and my birthday is next week! I’ll be turning 25 again 😉

As for our platforms, most of the kinks are finally worked out! I’m so glad to be able to start settling into a routine. The only platform that’s still giving us a bit of trouble is Reading Eggs/Mathseeds because they just switched it to Clever. If you have accounts in those programs and you can’t log in via Clever, keep trying and it should be up and running by next week at the latest.

Freckle is not recording time correctly for everyone (who knows why), so set a timer for yourself and be extra determined to work that whole time. Your scores in other areas will tell me if you’re actually putting in the effort or not, so don’t get lazy or deceptive. That will bite you in the booty later.

Grades PK–08 need to look right now in their student folders and find their Daily Guide (HS, I’m still working on yours, but they’ll be there eventually). This is the minimum required work you need to do every day. Pathblazer peeps, some of your accounts won’t show any increase in percentage (I’m still working on that), so if you’re working and your percentage bar isn’t moving, you need to be doing at least 45 minutes in each subject each day to stay caught up.

If you’re unsure of how to work a program, please look through my Student Help page. I’ve added quite a few new things, so if what you needed wasn’t there a few days ago, it might be there now (don’t forget to check the video channel as well as the slides).

HS STUDENTS: Check your emails for notifications on ACe iT and Reading Plus. These are required for 09–11 grades, as is Shmoop. Get started!!! Also, make sure you’re going back and redoing failing mastery tests in Plato (failing is anything less than a 60%). I’ll be resetting those this weekend before I put in pacing because I cannot count failing grades as forward progress. If you didn’t pass the mastery test, pull up the guided notes in the tutorial and do those (then use them on the test).

EPIC LIVE CLASSES should be up and going now. If you have a class scheduled, make sure you show up. Remember, you will access your class from the Epic Live tile on your Clever page. If you click on your class in the calendar on the Epic Live homepage, it should connect you to the Zoom meeting.

I don’t think there’s anything else to include in this update except that I am super grateful for all your patience and flexibility as we untangle some epic knots (tee hee….ah, that was a terrible joke). Have a great day!

A lot of the below applies to multiple grade levels and platforms, so make sure you read everything!

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I’m adding everyone’s student email to the “guardian” slot in their ClassTag. That way, announcements will also go to student emails, so it should be easier to open links that require an Epic email to access (like any workbooks). You’ll need to make sure that you accept that invitation there.

FRECKLE EDIT: I finally got an answer for what to do. On your side, log into Clever. Open Renaissance. Look for the Freckle pink pig. Click on that, wait for your dashboard to show up. Tada! No codes, no logins, nothing. Just POOF Freckle. I’m about to punch Freckle in the face. I love the program for you guys (KG–08), so I’m determined to make it work, but it’s really screwed up on the teacher side. If you can log in, great! If not, be patient. I’m going through and checking everyone’s login individually to see which class you’re actually in (Freckle loaded in over 50 classes on my roster when I’m supposed to just have, like, 2).

All students in grades 05–08 should be able to access NoRedInk for their Writing class. Look through the following slides presentations for instructions on how to access it and what to do: NoRedInk Instructions

I still have 5 of you who can’t log into Pathblazer. I pulled in our principal on it the other day, and now she’s pulling in higher-up people to figure out what’s going on. I received a few emails this morning stating that there had been some sort of glitch in our system that affected a lot of our platforms, but Pathblazer wasn’t on the list, so I’m not sure why it’s not working for you 5. Don’t give up!

We are changing up how we’re doing MasteryConnect. Originally, you had to go to a website and put in a code that I would give you. To save time and sanity, we’re moving to the MasteryConnect student portal in Clever, and you’ll look up your assessment by standard there. Once you’ve completed a standard in Pathblazer, you can copy the standard number or write it down and then search for it on that portal page. Look for instructions here (specifically slides 2 and 3): MasteryConnect Instructions. It should be ready on Monday.

HS students, you will need to start working in Shmoop today if you haven’t yet. Here’s how: Shmoop Instructions.

Also, HS students, we were told that Reading Plus and ACe iT should be ready “soon,” whatever that means. Until you get the green light from me, we are ignoring it.

I’m working on copying and individualizing everyone’s daily guide and gradebook. It’s slow going, so it may be Monday before it shows up in some of your student folders. The new daily guide will replace the sample schedule since the daily guide has required work on it. For reference, here is the Daily Guides folder.

You’re tired, I’m tired, and there just isn’t enough ice cream to deal with all the issues that have gone on. I’m super proud of all of you for plowing on ahead and not giving up. Know that I’m working as fast and as efficiently as possible to get everything fixed and figure out.

ATTENTION: STOP YOUR WORK AND READ THIS

Big changes below. After extensive meetings with admin, principals, and other teachers, and lots of different projection iterations, we’ve finally come up with a solution that should be great for the whole semester and actually require less overall work from you and me both.

Please find your grade level in the links below and open up an example of your new daily guide (the schedules I sent out last week are just too much, so don’t be surprised as they disappear from your folders).

PK Daily Guides
KG Daily Guides
01–02 Daily Guide
03–04 Daily Guide
05 & 08 Daily Guide
06–07 Daily Guide

You should notice that IXL has been removed from the daily activities for everyone except PK (not much changed for you, PK). We will be using IXL more in the second semester once we’ve figured out where to do the pin-point practice.

You should be gaining 8% per week in each subject in your core program (for most of you, that’s Pathblazer). I’m in the middle of setting up a gradebook (work in progress) that will help us keep track of that. Everyone will be getting his/her own copy. Starting this week, if we’re able to do 8% each week, we can still have Thanksgiving Break and Christmas break!

Freckle is still being weird. If you can access it, great! If not, keep trying. I moved a lot of you to Freckle last Friday, so you may just not be entered yet. I’m continuing to update your login sheets with class codes, so keep checking there.

MasteryConnect is a huge, lumbering beast that changes direction very slowly. I’m in the middle of pushing out all your stuff to your student portals (which you access through Clever) instead of trying to generate test IDs for literally thousands of tests. We’ll get there eventually. The dream is that as you finish learning a standard in Pathblazer, you will access MasteryConnect via Clever and go take the test. Sometimes that will be two tests a week, sometimes it will be one, so I didn’t want to put a hard requirement down. Each successful test (80% or higher) will count as a gradable assignment.

Please understand that I will not penalize you for things out of your control (like not being able to access a program). As long as you’re trying, you’ll be fine. We are only a few days away from smooth sailing, so just keep checking to see if things are working.

HIGH SCHOOL: You guys need to jump in Plato (Edmentum) TODAY and start working. You also need 8% per week in each subject starting THIS WEEK. If you are waiting for a class to be changed, you can ignore it on your list for now and put in extra effort into your other classes. Our very few GSMs are working with thousands of high school students right now, and schedule changes are low priority since they are still trying to get people into the system in the first place.

Man. This has been the craziest start to the school year I’ve ever experienced in all my years of teaching. Between tech issues, health concerns, and high anxiety, I don’t know how we’ve done it, but we have!! Thank you so much for your patience and encouragement 🙂

And so closes our second week of school. Y’all are CHAMPS for hanging in there while we figure out what the heck is going on. I firmly believe that we are through the worst of it, and we should be (mostly) smooth sailing by some time next week. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, to find some gray in my hair before then.

Example Schedules

Earlier this week, I sent out some example schedules for everyone. Please understand that those schedules were purely to help you envision and understand what a school day needs to look like at its max. They are NOT requirements. In the past, I have had some families struggle with understanding that online school takes as much time and (sometimes more) dedication as regular school, so I wanted to make sure that any misconceptions about that were righted as soon as possible.

As long as your student checks off his/her daily list every day, it doesn’t really matter how long they are spending in a program (with the exception of Epic Essentials). Were they able to get through their English lesson for the day in 20 minutes instead of 45 and passed it? Cool. There’s no reason to just fill time. Either have them do an additional English lesson or go ahead and move on to the next activity. There’s no reason to work for the sake of working. Yuck.

Daily Activities

Speaking of daily activities, I have completely scrapped the Google Classroom idea for this semester. I will eventually go in and turn off notifications for everyone, but I have to do all that individually, and I have other things higher on my priority list right now. Ignore anything you get in your inbox from Google Classroom.

Not using Google Classroom means that the 100+ hours I spent working on it will now have to be repeated as I re-create things in a format that will work. I’m not exactly sure when I will be able to get these to you, so please be patient (I know you’re sick of that word; I am, too) while I put stuff together. In the meantime, make sure you’re getting in lessons for each of your subjects every day and doing your Epic Essentials programs if you have those (look for those schedule emails for more info on that).

Office Hours

Please review this section in my syllabus. For the sake of my sanity and time management, I will not be answering texts or phone calls outside of the 8am–5pm range on weekdays. If you have a question outside of that time frame or the weekends, you will need to send me an email. Otherwise, I’m going to end up in a mental institution.

Also, again, EMAILS are your best way to reach me. I’m still having to attend quite a few staff meetings right now, so I can’t always make it to the phone. Also, at least for right now, any moment away from the computer means a longer wait for you guys to get your needed materials. Just take a deep breath, know that I’m taking care of y’all, and that everything is going to work out. I promise.

Curricula Updates

Here are the latest updates from relevant curricula (not all of you will have all of these):

ABC Mouse: It’s working! HOWEVER, we figured out that students are somehow able to just switch users and work as other students. We are waiting on ABC Mouse to fix that. That is why the icon sometimes disappears from Clever (it’s being updated). Please make sure that your student is logged into his/her profile and not in someone else’s.

ACe iT: I still don’t have these, so we’re ignoring this for now.

Apex: Can you log in? I can, at the moment. It’s eventually moving to Clever, but I don’t know when, so be prepared for it suddenly not work. If that happens, go look in the Clever app to see if something has popped up there.

Classcraft: It’s a work in progress. Ignore it for now.

Dreambox: This should be up and running. If this is part of your Epic Essentials program, you need to start working in it. If you can’t get in, try again the next day.

Freckle: Everyone who had Freckle Science and/or Social Studies will be getting a refund since we’ve moved those subjects to Pathblazer. I logged into Freckle today and had 52 classes 😱 I have no idea what’s going on. If you can get in and work, yay! If you can’t, just keep checking daily. I’ll pass along more info as soon as I get it.

Homework Help: This is working and is required for all grades 03–12. Please check out the instructions here. If it says that everyone is busy, just try back later. I highly recommend the weekly appointments if you can set that up now. I’ll be forwarding your benchmark information to them so they know what to work on.

IXL: This is up and running. Make sure you are working you YOUR grade level.

MasteryConnect: I’ve set up trackers, but the assessments haven’t been pushed out, so I have no test IDs to give anyone. We are ignoring it for now. I will let you know when it’s ready.

MindPlay: This should be up and running. If this is part of your Epic Essentials program, you need to start working in it. If you can’t get in, try again the next day.

Pathblazer: IT’S WORKING!!! There are only two of you now who still can’t get in. If you open up your Student Login Sheet and the Pathblazer link is highlighted in yellow, then you are one of the those lucky two. Read my earlier post about Pathblazer for more specific instructions on what to do in the program.

Plato: This is found through the Edmentum app on Clever. We are aware of “performance issues” (whatever that means; admin wasn’t specific). If you try to open it up and won’t work, close it, open something else from Clever, close that, and try Edmentum again. That’s what’s been working for me, anyway.

ReadingPlus: Right now, I only have 9th graders loaded in. So all of you 10th and 11th graders still don’t have access. I’ll let you know what to do when I know what to tell you.

Shmoop: Shmoop should be working. CLICK HERE to activate your account. You won’t have much to do yet, though, because Shmoop thinks I’m also a student (still) and so I can’t set up any classes 🤦 But at least you can log in and poke around.

Waterford: Waterford should be up and running for students. However, although all of you show up in my roster, I can only run reports on 2 of you. I’ve sent inquiries to figure out what’s happening.

 

There you have it, friends and neighbors! Enjoy your weekend!

IT’S FINALLY READY!!

Pathblazer peeps, thank you for your patience as I put everything together for your students. I think you will be pleased at how straightforward and itemized this curriculum is.

All but four of you have login access. To see if you’re one of them, open up your Student Login Sheet. If your Pathblazer link is highlighted in yellow and has a comment attached to it, then you are still in the process of being uploaded. If you still can’t access it on Monday, let me know.

First, please watch this video to see how the program works: Pathblazer—Student Video

Key things to remember:

• You must change the school to Epic on the login page.
• KG–02: You will only have ELA and Math
• 03–08: You will have ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies
  • Note: 07–08 will have multiple sciences while 03–06 will only have one

The spreadsheet I mention in the video is turning out to be an absolute BEAST to make. To prevent any more lag in learning time, all students in Pathblazer are going to temporarily drop IXL and just work in Pathblazer and your Epic Essentials (if applicable). Aim to complete 6% in each subject each week in Pathblazer (go to the Gradebook to see your percentage).

Science/Social Studies aren’t showing up in the drop down right now and I don’t know why. For now, try to complete an activity each day (lessons + quiz).

Example of one activity:

I’m still working to make sure that everything is working and being tracked like it should. At least you can log in and get some core stuff done now!

Y’all. I’m just…*sigh* Here are the updates. I’ve included everything so you don’t have to click everywhere:

IMPORTANT: IGNORE ALL GOOGLE CLASSROOM STUFF RIGHT NOW. I’ll be sending everyone individual instructions today. Be patient.

ABC Mouse: It’s working! But not on iPads. You will have to go to clever.com/in/epiccharter in the Safari browser and then open the app from there. The actual Clever app for Apple isn’t working properly. If you’re on a Chromebook or PC, it should work fine.

ACe iT: This will be set up as Google Classrooms that are originally created by the ACT team and then pushed to teachers. We are still waiting on that. They told us to not expect them until late September, so you’re off the hook for a little bit.

Apex: Can you log in? I can, at the moment. It’s moving to Clever, but I don’t know when, so be prepared for it suddenly not work. If that happens, go look in the Clever app to see if something has popped up there.

Classcraft: It’s a work in progress. Ignore it for now.

Dreambox: This program will not be set up until Epic gets everyone’s benchmark scores imported. If you are not using Freckle Math, then this will be where you do the math part of your Epic Essentials.

ExactPath: Unless you are doing an offline curriculum, you will no longer be using this platform. You will be in Pathblazer. Hopefully you’ll have access on Monday.

Freckle: Last night, Freckle moved in with Renaissance (the big R). The pink piggy will no longer be on the Clever page. You will have to open up Renaissance and look for it on that page. Also, some of you have joined one class and have had both math and reading on there. If that’s the case, cool. Don’t worry about joining the other. I’ll figure it all out when I can get back into the app (teachers are currently locked out because…you know…technology).

Math class code: M3HUE5
Reading (ELA) class code: C9X5S4

Homework Help: This is working and is required for all grades 03–12. Please check out the instructions here. If it says that everyone is busy, just try back later. Some people are getting phone calls from HWH, which is weird. You don’t have to set up recurring appointments right now. We’ll talk about that later.

IXL: This is up and running. Make sure you are working you YOUR grade level

PK–02: If the IXL app has shown up, awesome! Log in and go to Learning (look in the big green bar) or you can hang on in the Recommended area. Just make sure that you’re working on your grade level. If the app still hasn’t shown up, don’t freak out. Hopefully it will be there by Monday.
03–08: Log in and go to Learning (look in the big green bar) or you can hang on in the Recommended area. Just make sure that you’re working on your grade level. Don’t worry about going to Google Classroom right now. It’s a whole lot of mess.

MasteryConnect: I’ve set up trackers, but the assessments haven’t been pushed out, so I have no test IDs to give anyone. We are ignoring it for now. I will let you know when it’s ready.

MindPlay: This program will not be set up until Epic gets everyone’s benchmark scores imported. If you are not using Freckle ELA, then this will be where you do the reading part of your Epic Essentials.

Plato: This is found through the Edmentum app on Clever. We are aware of “performance issues” (whatever that means; admin wasn’t specific). If you try to open it up and won’t work, close it, open something else from Clever, close that, and try Edmentum again. That’s what’s been working for me, anyway.

ReadingPlus:

Shmoop: Shmoop should be working. CLICK HERE to activate your account. You won’t have much to do yet, though, because Shmoop thinks I’m also a student and so I can’t set up any classes 🤦 But at least you can log in and poke around.

Spider: All of you should now be switched to Pathblazer. Hopefully you’ll have access on Monday.

Waterford: Waterford should be up and running for students. Not for teachers, though. I can’t log in today and I don’t know why.

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That’s all for now. Thank you for being understanding and patient with me as I continue to run back and forth between y’all and admin.

Below are only curricula that have had changes. If what you are using is not listed  below, look at yesterday’s post to see what it’s doing.

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ABC Mouse: I was told that it should be up and running today. Yeah, it’s still not working.

ExactPath: I would like to switch y’all to Pathblazer (with the exception of PK–01 doing offline curriculum). I can’t customize in Exact Path, so you will end up doing extra work.

Freckle: Freckle is working-ish. To sign in for the first time, follow these instructions:

• Click on the Freckle app (pink pig) in Clever (this is eventually going to move into the Renaissance App, so check there, too).
• It may say “Oops! Your Clever account is not connected!” but it is, so just go to the bottom of the page and sign in as a student.
• Sign in with Google and use your Epic email address (always!!) and then wait about 5 seconds for your dashboard to pop up.
• Use the following class codes to get into your subject areas (I’ve also updated your Student Login Sheets):

Math: M3HUE5
Reading (ELA): C9X5S4

Also, Freckle is still being a little weird on the teacher side (my dashboard has all sorts of crazy going on), so just go in and do about 30 minutes of work on each subject that you have.

Homework Help: This is working and is required for all grades 03–12. Please check out the instructions here. If it says that everyone is busy, just try back later.

IXL: This is up and running.

PK–02: You still may not have access. Many of my orders were deleted somehow and I had to resubmit them. Give it until Monday.
03–08: Log in and leave that tab open. Then open up your Google Classroom and go to the IXL Practice assignment for Week 01 (some of you have two assignments for Week 01). Work on those IXL practices.

Spider: I would like to switch y’all to Pathblazer, too. Spider offers much less customization than what I was told, and I know that Pathblazer will allow me to make sure y’all are doing what you need to do and not a bunch of fluff.

Waterford: Waterford should be up and running today. Please let me know if it isn’t.

Okay, I know that technically it’s our second day of school, but it feel more like this is the second half of the first day.

If your core curriculum is not working (ABC Mouse, Waterford, ExactPath):

Open up Epic’s Curriculum Sites and choose your grade level. Your subject areas will be in drop-down menus in the top-right corner of the page (sometimes they are hard to see).

If you are in grades 03–08, you should have access to a Google Classroom for your math and for your English. Log in there and get the “Additional Instruction” assignment done at least.

On the curriculum site, you can ignore anything that goes with MindPlay/Dreambox since those programs are not set up and many of you won’t even use them since I’ve replaced them with Freckle. If you can access Freckle, then do at least one lesson in each subject that you have access to. If you still can’t get into Freckle, don’t worry about it. We’ll catch up later.

Independent reading can be done in the MyOn app from your Clever page. That should be working.

If you can do the IXL stuff, great! If you can’t, that’s fine, too! It looks like none of my littles have access to IXL, which weird, because I requested it for y’all. I’m hoping that they just haven’t been loaded in yet. Remember to always log in to IXL from Clever. Leave that tab open and then click on the IXL link from the curriculum page.

Here is the Workbook folder that I have. This is only accessible from an epiccharterschools.org email address, so make sure you’re opening this from your student’s Chromebook.

If your core curriculum is working (Apex, Plato, Spider):

Apex and Spider have their own logins and will not be from Clever (check your login sheet). Plato (now called Edmentum) must be accessed through Clever.

Things should be working okay, so just jump in and start getting things done.

I have been able to go through and adjust Plato’s dates, so you can follow those recommended due dates to keep yourself on track. You want your little progress bar to increase 8% each week.

I’m still learning how to work Apex and Spider and can’t get the calendar to cooperate with me yet, so ignore all the dates you see. Your goal is to increase your completion percentage by 8% each week, regardless of the program’s due dates.

I hope that this helps you figure out what to do today! 😀

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For some additional information, here is a breakdown of what each program is doing (or not doing):

ABC Mouse: The company that runs ABC Mouse has not finished loading all of our licenses yet. That’s why it keeps saying you have to have a teacher account to log in. I’ll let you know when that is ready to go.

ACe iT: This will be set up as Google Classrooms that are originally created by the ACT team and then pushed to teachers. We are still waiting on that. They told us to not expect them until late September, so you’re off the hook for a little bit.

Apex: This is one of the few programs that is not loaded in through Clever (although I just opened up an email saying that it would be at some point soon 🤦). This should be working. Let me know if it isn’t.

Classcraft: It’s a work in progress. Ignore it for now

Dreambox: This program will not be set up until Epic gets everyone’s benchmark scores imported. If you are not using Freckle Math, then this will be where you do the math part of your Epic Essentials.

ExactPath: This is found through the Edmentum app on Clever. We can all log in, but I have no students on my side, so I can’t make any assignments or assign classes or anything. So…I’ll let you know when that’s working.

Freckle: Some people can get in and some can’t. It should take you directly to Freckle without asking you for a class code or a username/password. I know they are still loading people in, so be patient and just check it every day to see if you can get in.

MasteryConnect: I’ve set up trackers, but the assessments haven’t been pushed out, so I have no test IDs to give anyone. We are ignoring it for now. I will let you know when it’s ready.

MindPlay: This program will not be set up until Epic gets everyone’s benchmark scores imported. If you are not using Freckle ELA, then this will be where you do the reading part of your Epic Essentials.

Plato: This is found through the Edmentum app on Clever. This should be working. Let me know if it isn’t.

ReadingPlus: We can log in, but I have no students uploaded. Don’t worry about this until I tell you to start working in it.

Shmoop: Shmoop is being weird. If you can log in, great! If you can’t, wait a little bit. I’ll let you know when it’s behaving.

Spider: This is one of the few programs that is not loaded in through Clever. This should be working. Let me know if it isn’t.

Waterford: This should take you directly to Waterford without asking for a username/password. I haven’t heard exactly what the problem is with Waterford, but I’ll let you know when it’s working. Just keep trying it occasionally for now.

Let me know if I missed one!