What an unexpected start to the new year! Thank you for your patience, understanding and support as we closed the school today to give us time to organise the remote learning for each class as well as Keyworker Child Care. It has been a rather busy 24 hours but we are ready and raring to start the term.
Remote Learning
There is a big difference between this lockdown and the previous lockdown in that there is now a statutory expectation (by the government) that all children engage in the work set. We, as a school, have tried to make this as easy as possible for families and completely appreciate that at certain circumstances, and at particular times, this may not always be fully possible. We really ask parents to communicate with us if there are any barriers or issues to engaging with the daily work – we want to help you as best we can, whether that involves delivering paper packs or loaning equipment. Please, just talk with us – we are very approachable and friendly and just want to ensure that we are providing the best learning opportunities that we can.
As in the first lockdown, each class teacher will be posting daily work on the relevant class pages on the school website. This will be posted by 9am each day, and teachers will also be emailing a link to this work (or sending a message on Tapestry in Class 1) and we are asking you to reply to these messages to confirm that you have seen the set work by 9.30am; this effectively acts as a school register. We are hoping to further improve the remote learning by ensuring that we provide feedback regularly to allow children to improve their work, as they would do in school.
We have a remote learning policy which we recently reviewed, and I will be sharing that tomorrow via the school website – if you have any questions about remote learning please do not hesitate to contact us, as we really need parents and children to engage with it if we are going to help prepare the children for their future education.
Keyworker Child Care
We are offering Keyworker Child Care in the school hall to help allow critical workers to function. We do stress that wherever possible children need to be at home, as the priority is to minimise mixing and contacts to reduce transmission. This care is taking place in the school hall and a thank you to the parents who have booked their places up to half term, as we have limited places and this has really helped us to plan.
Communication
We will continue to use the school news and class news pages on the website as our main means of communication, so please, please subscribe or follow closely. We will also be using emails and where appropriate we will post on our Facebook and Twitter pages.
We are also hoping to use more recorded or live means of communication as we feel it is important that children can ‘see and hear’ their teachers so that they can feel in touch. To do this we will use a programme called Microsoft Teams which is free and secure – so watch this space for future developments. We are considering possibly providing live small group teaching such as phonics, as well as holding some sessions to help parents support the remote learning. We just ask that you give us some time to get the new system of operating to settle in!
Also, in terms of communication, we really do want parents, and children to keep in touch – from returning school work to class teachers, or sharing photos/videos via admin@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk so that children can ‘see’ each other and keep in touch socially. We also are very open to parents asking questions and asking for help if they come up with any barriers to the remote learning – the last thing we want is children, parents and families having issues or problems with school based concerns.
These are difficult times, and it has been a long journey, but we do see a light at the end of the tunnel – even if it is a long tunnel! We just need to work together so that we can do all we can to help our children, families and community to be happy and safe, and to allow education to continue. We know that the strong team ethic across the Brown Clee Community can do this, and that we will come out stronger.
Please stay safe and take care and keep in touch!