Newsletter 1 Spring Term 2021

The photos above say it all and this really isn't how we hoped to start the new school term!

Thank you to all of you who are doing such an excellent job of home-schooling and particular thanks to everyone who has taken the time to get in touch and express your gratitude and satisfaction with the work that is being provided to complete at home.

As many of you will remember, the home learning offer last spring gave limited opportunities for live lessons and for the children to interact, albeit remotely, with their teachers and class mates. We are working hard to improve this offer and most classes are having several opportunities a day to receive live teaching. Unfortunately, this can create scheduling clashes between classes, which can be a problem for siblings who may be trying to access live lessons at the same time. With seven classes in the school, it is impossible to offer several slots a day without them clashing occasionally. Please do your best to help your children to attend as many as you can and explain to your class teachers when attendance isn’t possible because a sibling has a lesson.

The other improvement we are determined to make this time around is to increase the opportunities for children to submit their work back to teachers for feedback. To this end, we now have years 6, 5 and 4 working on the Google Classroom platform, which enables them to turn in all their work for feedback and teacher comment. This week, we will be sending out details to enable year 3 pupils to also be accessing and completing their work on this platform. In years R and 1, we are using the Evidence Me app and Year 2 are hoping to begin using an app called Seesaw.

I’m sure that you wish to join me in thanking all staff for their immediate response to the school closure and ensuring that children are able to keep learning effectively at home. Staff are currently doing two jobs as they are also teaching critical worker children in their classes alongside the remote offer. It would be an understatement to say that I am proud of their excellent work in these very difficult conditions. 

Critical Worker Clubs
Thank you to all parents who have responded to our second survey this weekend. All parents who have been asked to reduce provision have been contacted. Your children's bookings for the coming weeks will be as seen in your school gateway accounts. Please help us by following the DFE advice to only send your children into school on the days on which you cannot safely care for them at home. 

Starting next week - remote PE lessons

Class teachers will be sending out invitations to join weekly live PE lessons with our SAINTs Southwest PE coaches. Please see example lesson plan and disclaimer below:

Free resources from the Field Studies Council

Here to support schools
We've collated a whole host of useful FSC resources for teachers to help support pupils whilst they are learning from home. Our primary resources are based on activities children can do in their gardens or local green space which focus on geography and science to help them keep connected to nature.

​Further information and links can be found here.

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​I'm not sure how well this works, but I found this picture on a social media feed and thought it might be useful for some of you.

Government Help with Data
This scheme temporarily increases data allowances for mobile phone users on certain networks. This is so that children and young people can access remote education if their face-to-face education is disrupted.
get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/about-increasing-mobile-data