Our approach to remote education
We’re being very careful and sensitive about how remote education
will work for our school community. We know that home learning
can be tough for parents and carers to manage and that, for some,
online activities simply won’t work.
For example, a single parent in my community lives in a 2 bedroom
flat with 3 children aged 14, 11 and 6. They use one tablet
device between them to access online learning. One of the
children is also deaf. In another example, we have a pupil in
year 4 whose parents are professionals, and they have access to
multiple laptops, tablets, and a place to work in.
Because of differences like these, we chose an inclusive approach
that everyone could access equally. This meant less reliance on
online learning.
Teachers make contact with all pupils in their class by phone,
email or video calls at least once each week. In many cases,
contact is made more often.
Our Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) and pastoral
Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) have been phoning families
who have vulnerable children every week. Notes are taken and
shared with the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) and senior
leadership team.
We make visits if we get no response, but so far we’ve only had
to do this 3 times.
Setting a routine
We felt that it was most important for pupils to have a routine
and to continue to practice the skills they already have. We
suggested that parents and carers could:
- start the day with Joe Wicks; lots of children have already
been joining him for his 30-minute live workouts at 9am
- practice reading
- write something (this is for pupils in year 2 and above to
help maintain their writing skills)
- practice maths, for example times tables
- do something creative, such as drawing or painting
Online resources
Initially, we created a webpage of resources, but this grew over
time and became overwhelming. Teachers have been asked to be more
selective when choosing activities for their class, groups within
the class or individual children.
Providing printed work packs and resources
Because most parents do not have a printer, we have made work
packs of activities and resources that can be collected from the
school.
Parents who don’t have resources such as paper and pens can also
contact their child’s class teacher by email to request these.
The resources would be put somewhere safe near the school to be
collected.
Books are also left out for children to collect from a bike shed
and are changed regularly.
