Dear Families,

We are excited to share information about the online learning platform that we will be using with our students who are choosing to start the school year off from a virtual setting. This year, we will be using Accelerate Education for our online students. 

As a parent, you are probably wondering what will be expected of you during your student's online education endeavor.  We do not anticipate that you will have to do any "teaching", that will be done through Accelerate and the assigned teacher at school, we really just need you to make sure your students logs in to complete work and participates in virtual instruction with the teacher at the assigned times.  Please review the information below to learn about what you can expect from this experience:

As a parent of a middle school student, you can expect to be involved less than you would for younger students, although you are still an integral part of their education. Accelerate Education's learning platform will be overseen by a teacher at Horizon and this teacher will be your student's first line of contact about many things. The teacher at Horizon will:

Provide support to the student in using online systems
Monitor the student's pace and progress in the course(s)
Motivate the student to move toward successfully completing the course(s)
Enhance the online courses with help or learning extensions
Provide live instruction to supplement the online curriculum and support students
As with our in-person students, please know that the teacher who is assigned to your student's online class will:

Know the subject they teach and is an expert in course content
Help the student when he/she struggles with particular content
Grade and provide feedback for all submitted work
Help you, the parent, and your student with whatever you need
Your student's username and password will be their email that is assigned by the school. A staff member from Horizon will be contacting you about this in case you have any questions. 

For an overview on Accelerate Education at the secondary level, please visit the link below. 

Accelerate Education

Horizon Families,

I know many of you are evaluating your preference for going back to school in a few weeks. Many of you have already completed the survey informing us of your current thinking, which is very helpful to our scheduling team. Others have already received a call from our office staff to discuss options and they are currently working to connect with families we haven't heard from. Needless to say, there is a lot going on here and a lot of planning taking place.

If you have chosen to go with virtual learning, or are still thinking it over, I want to share some information on what that will look like in case it helps with your decision.

We are planning to utilize Accelerate Education as our primary virtual learning platform during the 2020-21 school year. Accelerate Education provides an online curriculum that can be followed on its own, including instruction -- not just work completion.

There are three primary reasons I chose to pursue Accelerate Education: 1.) Teachers are able to move units of learning around in order to match our typical progression for teaching, and to match what students are learning in-person, 2.) Teachers are able to replace or supplement lessons in Accelerate with some of their own creation that is better or fits the needs of students better, and 3.) Teachers are able to set the mastery level for units in Accelerate, meaning students have to show a certain level of achievement before moving on to the next lesson. There are certainly other benefits that make it a good tool as well, but these were especially important to me.

Students learning virtually will be able to work at their own pace to some degree, we will have a minimum expectation of lessons completed each week.

Students will have daily virtual access to a teacher in each subject area, it will be based on a class schedule similar to a schedule students follow in-person. For example students may have access to their math teacher during 2nd period, language arts during 3rd period, etc. Keep in mind these teachers will also be teaching in-person so the virtual access will be based on the schedule in each grade level. There will be occasions, potentially weekly, that students will be required to join a ZOOM class for live instruction from a teacher. Students (or parents) will be able to communicate with teachers by email at any time, like normal, and will get a response within 24 hours.

Teachers will take attendance for students learning virtually, this will likely be done on a weekly basis and will be based on lessons completed in that week by subject area. We still need to finalize some of the procedures around how this will look.

Students who do not have a computer at home to access virtual learning will be able to check one out from Horizon. Computer checkouts will be done at the school level, rather than District.

This doesn't cover everything, and as is the case with many things right now, things change quickly. However, I thought it was important to communicate what we have planned for virtual learning as it may assist in your decision on what is best for your family. I am not trying to influence anyone either way and completely understand the choice everyone makes.

If virtual learning is the choice for your family, please fill out the attached agreement and return to the school. You can either scan and email it to me: dhorras@d49.org or drop it off at the school. We must receive and agreement in order to enroll, and create a license, for virtual learning.

Please let us know if you have questions we can help with, the office number is 495-5210.

Horizon Middle School Staff

District 49 E-Learning

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D49 COVID Update

This pages has all the district COVID updates provided by D49 and other resources.

Meal Information

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