Dear Parents/Carers,

Preparation for Teaching and Learning

Thank you for your tremendous support at very short notice to help us set up pods for children in school and for switching to remote learning overnight.  As with all things that are new, there will be some challenges along the way but rest assured all of the staff are on hand to support as much as possible.

The teachers were really pleased with the response they had on Dojo and Teams on Wednesday and worked hard to respond to as many queries as possible about the set-up of remote learning and the best ways to access things.  If you have a child in more than one year group, whilst Dojo and Teams will still both be used, depending of the age of the child, some ways of presenting information may be different for different subjects.  We will continue to adapt as we go along based on feedback from parents.

As you will appreciate, a huge amount of time and effort is going in to producing daily learning in core subjects through the preparation of presentations, videos and activities that can be accessed at home as well as for those children who are attending school.  In addition, learning for one or more subjects in the afternoon is being prepared to ensure we are meeting the Government expectation of three hours, on average, of learning for primary aged children.  Staff are also working hard to mark and feedback on the work that is being returned so the children know that their efforts are being valued.

When school is operating as normal, each week teachers receive approximately two and a half hours of planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time to ensure that learning across classes within the year groups is consistent and of high quality.  Although we are now offering a remote learning provision for most of our pupils, this dedicated time for the staff to meet (virtually) and plan the learning is really important.  For this reason, on a Friday afternoon from 1pm, staff will have their PPA time and so will not reply to messages or feedback on work.  We hope that by allocating Friday afternoon for this, that there will be fewer queries that may occur as the vast majority of the week’s work will have been completed.  There will also be some days when your child’s class teacher is teaching a pod of children in school so again there may be more of a delay responding to messages and approving work on this day.  The teachers will message on the days they are teaching so you are aware of this.

We are all adapting to new ways of working and doing so within our existing family and work commitments.  For this reason, lots of the teaching is pre-recorded so you can access it at a time that suits your family life.  With this in mind, teachers will respond regularly during the school day to messages and work returned.  After school hours, whilst the staff may reply in their own time, this cannot be guaranteed.  However, if you send a message in the evening it will be responded to at the start of the next school day.

Once we get to the end of this week, staff, parents and children will be remote learning experts! Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Chamberlain                    Mrs Gray

Head Teacher                        Deputy Head Teacher