St. Thomas Aquinas Distance Learning Program

Dear Families,

Welcome to Wednesday! In tonight’s update, I wanted to reach out and express my gratitude and appreciation for the entire St. Thomas Aquinas community – for our teachers and staff, for you and your children – we are blessed to be together as a community of faith in the light and love of God. For tonight, I would like to share with you a prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas and dedicate it to each and every one of you, who have committed to an education in God’s grace and love. Thank you.

O merciful God, grant that I may ever perfectly do Your Will in all things.
Let it be my ambition to work only for Your honor and glory.
Let me rejoice in nothing but what leads to You, nor grieve for anything that leads away from You.

Good Evening Families,

Happy Tuesday! Please keep your eyes on your inbox this afternoon and evening for your child’s Wednesday small group schedules. This evening’s updates are below.

High School Admissions
All eighth grade families should be sure to connect with their home academy guidance counselors regarding high school admissions. Please also note, an important reminder that this Friday TACHS registration closes. You can register for the test here: https://www.tachsinfo.com/home.aspx

Teacher Contacts
Linked here you will find a current sheet with all teacher emails. You may note we are continuing to hire in some areas in a continued effort to reduce class sizes. We will continue to update this list and information as we welcome new members to our team!

Grades and Progress
You should now have full access to your child’s grades and progress in the Rediker Plus Portal Account.

Materials and Devices

We are in the process of confirming the final two distribution sites and will share with you the dates and times when they become available to us. In the scheduling of these times, we are working in direct partnership with representatives of those sites to ensure proper guidelines in safety are met, so as soon as this information is made available to us, we will make it available to you.

Have a blessed evening!

Manuela Adsuar-Pizzi                     
Principal              

Good Evening Families,

I hope you had a restful weekend! For tonight’s update, we have two key announcements to share with you.

Grades and Progress
Starting tomorrow morning, you will be able to access your child’s grades and progress through your Rediker Parent Portal Plus. For now, grades and progress are available in Google Classroom and Realize.

Devices and Materials
We are currently in the process of scheduling and securing two final pickup dates and locations for families still in need of materials and devices. Information will be shared with you as soon as it is confirmed with us.

IReady
This week, our teachers will begin getting set up in their iReady accounts in order to prepare for a full roll out to students and families in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more updates!

Have a pleasant evening!
Manuela Adsuar-Pizzi                                 
Principal              

Dear Families,

Happy Friday! Even though it was a short week, our students accomplished many things including connecting with their Realize accounts through Google Classroom, receiving access to their Religion distance learning program, My Catholic Faith Delivered, and beginning the first rounds of benchmark assessments and readiness assessments.

As we move into next week, keep your eyes on your inbox for updates on the roll out of our iReady program, ongoing communication and updates regarding devices and books for our K-3 families and updates to your Parent Plus Portal account on Rediker, including how you will be able to access your child’s grades.

For those families who still need to connect to their child’s Realize account through Google Classroom, I have provided a short screencast tutorial here: DIGITAL TEXTBOOK ACCESS

I hope you have a blessed weekend!

Sincerely,
Manuela Adsuar-Pizzi
Principal

Good Morning Families,

Inthis 10/15 update, we would like to provide a few important announcements regarding high school admissions and device and material distribution.

High School Admissions
This is a gentle reminder that parents should be working with their home academy or parish school for all high school applications and records, including TACHS and the NYC DOE My Schools applications. As an educational program we do not have administrative rights to create accounts for our 8th grade students. This must be done with your host school and deadlines are fast approaching. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this process.

Materials and Devices
Today we completed another round of material and device distribution at our Queens distribution center – we were able to distribute over 600 Chromebooks to our upper grade students and distribute workbook materials to our K-3 families.

Good Evening Families,

Happy Wednesday! We have only a few items to bring to your attention this evening.

Savvas Realize K-8

Savvas Realize is the program we are using for our curriculum and instruction. Students enrolled in the academy have access to a full suite digital license for every core subject in this program and the license includes access to two versions of their textbooks – an eBook and Interactive Digital Textbook.

How do you access these features?

Teachers will post assignments in Google Classroom that are linked to the student’s Realize account. By clicking on the assignment in Google Classroom and the link to Realize in Google Classroom, students will be taken directly to the task. There is no separate log on information or invitation that you need in order to access this content. Your child only needs to be enrolled in Google Classroom and access Realize by following the link in their assignments.

Instructional Leadership

Our new Assistant Principal Maria Lamattina has moved on to a different role outside of St. Thomas Aquinas and we are currently in the process of hiring and training a replacement for her position. For now, please continue to direct any school related emails to principal@stthomasaquinasbq.org. Please continue to use the ticketing system for any technology needs by going to https://stthomasaquinasbq.org/technology-support/

Physical Workbooks for K-3

Any family who has not received the K-3 instructional materials can pick them up at the Immaculate Conception Center, located at 7200 Douglaston Parkway, Douglaston, NY 11362, tomorrow, Thursday, 15 October, from 11am–2pm.

Have a Blessed Evening!

Manuela Adsuar-Pizzi

Principal

Any family who has not received the K-3 instructional materials can pick them up at the Immaculate Conception Center, located at 7200 Douglaston Parkway, Douglaston, NY 11362, tomorrow, Thursday, 15 October, from 11am–2pm.

Good Evening Families,

Welcome to Week Three! I hope that you had a restful long weekend and are excited for another joyful week of learning. We have some exciting news and great wins to share with you this evening!

Religion Program – My Catholic Faith Delivered

Good news! This week, your child will receive an email invitation to his/her STADLP account in order to activate their online Religion Program – My Catholic Faith Delivered. We are really excited about this program and are so thrilled to support your child in his or her faith journey. This afternoon, invitations were sent to our upper school students and by the end of the week, invitations will be sent to our lower school students.

Savvas Realize

Dear Parents,

Thank you for a great week of learning! As our second week of school comes to an end, we want to address some new questions as well as some recurring ones.

Teacher Coverage
Emergencies will happen; teachers will get ill – that can’t be avoided. Unlike a bricks-and-mortar setting where an adult must be physically present with students for safety reasons, teachers in virtual settings can record/post lessons and work for students to complete. 

When teachers will be absent for an extended time, we will, whenever and wherever possible, assign a substitute who will work with the absent teacher to ensure continuation of instruction. In fact, that occurred in one of our classes this past week.

Device/Books Pick-Up Schedule
If you have previously requested a device, we have your name listed and will be providing you personally with information on when you can pick up your device. If you missed a book pickup, you can receive them during device distribution.

Calendar Announcements
Please note, due to the holiday, there is no school Monday, Oct. 12th.

We are planning for a Back to School/Curriculum event to be held towards the end of the month. It will not occur for STADLP on October 14th as previously indicated in the Diocesan Academic Calendar.

We wish you an enjoyable and blessed weekend!

Dear Parents:

Hasn’t the weather been glorious?

We’d like to start with a couple of reminders –

1.      All students are expected to come to class wearing their school uniforms.

2.      For safety and privacy reasons, parents should not be visible while classroom meetings are being held in Google, nor should they be engaging in conversations with teachers.

It has also come to our attention that in some classes, students aren’t participating in prayers but, instead, using the meeting chat feature to engage others in conversation. Please remind your children that they are attending a Catholic school, and that while in school, all students are expected to participate in prayers or any other religious activity. That’s a policy of the Diocese, and not a choice to be made by individual families.

This week, we’ve received a number of questions about communication between and among students and families. To clarify a few points…