School Reopening and Remote Learning Update - 05.01.2020
Mr J Sharp
Dear Parents/Carers
I am not going to pretend that the announcement last night didn’t come as a bitter disappointment, and has caused a huge range of emotions. I don’t think anyone would say that the events over the last four days have been helpful to schools, families or children.
Reopening
We will reopen tomorrow for the children we have confirmed places today. If you have not received confirmation of a place, by telephone or by email, then you must not bring your children to school. If you feel that you are entitled to a place, and require one, please contact us ASAP. There are still some critical workers who have not emailed us proof of their occupation. Without proof, we will not be able to confirm the place.
It appears we will have between 55 and 60 children attending school (~ 25%), and therefore ~ 170 children learning remotely. I want all the children to know, that wherever they are learning, they are all equally important to us, and that we need them all to do their best every day.
For the children returning tomorrow, the school will run almost exactly the same as it did on Monday, apart from there being fewer children in attendance.
The children will be taught in the same bubbles as before. The only exception will be the small number of EYFS children, who will outside together occasionally and eating their lunch together in the dining room.
Breakfast Club will be open only for the children who attended previously, and now have confirmed places.
Nursery children have been offered places in line with those in other classes.
After School Club is permitted to continue, as the government have said that wraparound care should remain in place. We are waiting for Windsor Road Nursery to confirm this.
Clubs. We have yet to receive guidance from the DfE or information from the providers. We will update you as soon as we can.
Children who attend, will have their meals in school as before. Children learning remotely, who are entitled to Free School Meals, will be provided with support (which we are waiting for guidance on). If you feel you need support with providing lunches urgently, please get in touch.
Children attending school must follow the same uniform rules as before. P.E. kits can be worn on the appropriate days.
Start and finish times remain staggered and the same for each class as before.
Hygiene, cleaning and reporting symptoms/positive test results remains the same for all children (home and in school).
Remote Learning
I feel incredibly sad that most of the children will not be able to attend school. It has been very clear how happy they have been returning this school year, and have been a credit to us all. I know from the closure last year, that the children did fall back in their learning, and to have another closure now could cause them tremendous loss over the space of one year.
It is absolutely vital that all children complete home learning, every day. This can be challenging for families, as I know from my own experience. We are here to help wherever we can, and designed our remote learning plans to try and make things as simple as possible.
The staff have designed plans that suit the age of the children, whilst providing challenging and important units of learning.
Here is our remote learning summary.
After the previous lockdown, we learned a lot about remote learning, and undertook training on digital learning platforms, as well as receiving valuable feedback from you all. Each teacher has now produced their own plan which reflects the needs of the children and their age. These plans will be shared with the relevant families immediately. All plans follow these principles:
Daily practise tasks
Units of learning across the curriculum
Feedback mechanisms
Communication systems
The chart above shows how this has been planned across the school.
We know that many families struggled with devices at home, and that some elements of Google Classroom were a little tricky without training. All of the platforms are being practised in school with the children, and indeed we believe we have purchased some extremely good new ones too. Now that we are better prepared, there are also paper based tasks that will be provided as well as equipment that you may be short of at home. We have been allocated some devices from the DfE to be used when children need to self-isolate. There aren’t enough for everyone so if you feel that you desperately need to borrow a device in the event of your child self-isolating then please get in touch.
When children are learning remotely, we expect the children to be completing the work provided on a daily basis (unless they are unable due to illness etc). They should complete ongoing daily practise tasks, as well as the units of learning provided by the class teacher. There are a number of ways to keep in touch with us in school, so please let us know if you are struggling with anything. You can send completed work back to the teachers through Google Classroom for some year groups, and by email for all classes. It can be work completed on a device, or a photo of something completed, whichever is the most suitable.
The lessons and tasks provided will be what the children are going to be studying in class, so it is extremely important that they engage with it, so they are not behind other children when returning to school. We have selected Oak National Academy, as there are high quality videos for instruction, and excellent coverage across the curriculum in each year group.
I know some families have expressed a wish for live lessons, or virtual teaching, with the staff. On the face of it, this sounds a very good idea. Unfortunately, there are a number of issues with using virtual/live lessons:
The teaching staff have children in school who they need to support.
They also have to keep up with providing feedback and answering queries on Google Classroom/email.
Not all children would be able to log on to a virtual live lesson, or at the same time, which would make things very inefficient for the teacher, and also out some children at a disadvantage.
There are often a lot of technical issues with virtual meetings, which would result in lost time that could be better spent on other learning tasks.
There could be the possibility of someone from outside of school gaining access to the lesson. In some cases, offensive and inappropriate materials have been shared into virtual meetings intentionally.
We would not be able to control the behaviour of other members of households, who may accidentally use inappropriate language in the background.
There are privacy and confidentiality considerations when exposing different households to one another online.
Not all members of staff are comfortable broadcasting themselves through the internet, particularly when screen recording could be used.
It is very challenging to cater for different learning needs through a virtual lesson.
Therefore, on balance, we have decided to focus our energy on quality online videos, online learning platforms, personalised learning units and packs, and to provide live/virtual lessons. We do want to keep in touch with the children, and they can get in touch with their teachers through different mechanisms. If your children would like to speak to a member of staff on the phone, we will certainly call them. There is also the opportunity to provide messages etc through Google Classroom, which can be checked by the staff.
We will be posting paper packs to you in the coming days, indeed some of you may already have them, and this is another opportunity for the children to see a member of staff. Please send completed tasks to the teachers, and we will be sending more packs home through the next few weeks.
Nearly all of the daily practise online platforms can be used at anytime, not just in self isolation, and are very useful in bringing the children on in core skills. Don’t forget the Learning Zone, Hobby Zone and Relaxation Zone too - there is lots to do!!
This period will be remembered, talked about and written about for a very long time. I’m sure in the decades to come that COVID-19 will be a watershed moment - e.g. these are the lowest numbers since COVID etc. We know that there will be things for us to learn and improve. Please let us know if you think we can make changes. This really is a team effort, so please get in touch if you need any support.
Finally, I would like to thank the staff for their amazing hard work and commitment. They have been through a rollercoaster of emotions themselves, but never for one minute stopped trying their best for the children.
Thank you everyone, and please look after yourselves and one another.
Mr. J. Sharp
Head Teacher