September 4, 2020
Parents/Guardians,
Unified Arts classes, or what the students and staff commonly refer to “UAs”, are some of our students’ favorite classes. The UAs at GMS this year include: Gym, Fitness, Art, General music, Music tech., Robotics, STEM and Health.
The circumstances surrounding this year with COVID, and the need to minimize the transitions of students and staff, have led to some changes in the scheduling and rotation of these classes.
Students will be assigned to these classes as a cohort group. Students have two UA classes each day and these classes will change every two weeks. For example, all of the students in Teacher A’s math block will have Gym and Music tech for two weeks before switching to Art and Robotics. While this model is being implemented for safety reasons, and in anticipation of moving to a hybrid learning model, we believe it has an additional benefits Students will be able to explore many different classes, in a shorter amount of time, will be able to work on collaborative projects, and will experience a new and exciting challenge every two weeks.
By the end of each academic quarter, every student at GMS will have had the opportunity to take all eight of our Unified Arts classes.
Unfortunately, our scheduling software does not allow us to reflect this rotation of classes in a student’s schedule. Those of you who have accessed student schedules in Plusportals will see that UAs are listed there for your student. While your student will have the two classes listed during each academic quarter, it may not be the UA classes that they will have at the start of school.
Teachers will be reaching out to students and families next week to share information and request that students join their Google classrooms. This will be the way in which students will be notified of the UA classes they will be in to start this academic year.
We appreciate your patience as we continue to navigate these uncertain times. Please know that we have your student’s best interests in mind and use this to drive our decision making.
Please feel free to call the GMS Main Office at (978) 632-1603 if you have further questions regarding scheduling.