The children are adapting so well to the new ways of learning.  We are receiving many positive comments from children, parents and staff about the live lessons which are taking place every day.  Thank you for your support at home to help make these lessons a success!

As you know, online safety and the safety of our children is very important to all staff at Newdale.  Therefore we want to share with you our latest code of conduct for children to adhere to during live lessons.  Please can you ensure your child knows and follows these rules:

• Cameras.  We would like the children to have their cameras turned on for the beginning of each session.  It is important for the children to be able to see their peers and it is the perfect opportunity for them to say hello to their friends.
• Recording.  Each live lesson is recorded so it can be seen at a later time or be referred back to.  If you do not wish for your child to be on the recording then you will need to ensure they have turned their camera off at the appropriate time.  Each teacher will announce when the recording is about to begin.
• Clothing. Pupils need to be in appropriate clothing during the live lessons.
• Location.  Parents need to take responsibility as to the location of where the live lessons take place.  We recommend that if your child is attending any live lesson from their bedroom, then they should keep their bedroom door open.

Please remember that Newdale staff are very experienced in supporting E Safety and only happy to help should you need advice and support.

There has been a lot of publicity around the offering of free school meals in the press.  On 8th January we informed you that we would be working with Edenred Uk and was waiting for further guidance from the Department of Education.  Because we understand this is taking some time for the guidance to be released, we have ordered our own vouchers in the hope that they will be processed swiftly.  As our post stated on 8th January if you are desperate for food we can in the short term offer packed lunches, please do not hesitate to contact our school office or pastoral team for more support.  I can assure you our team are working very hard to ensure that vouchers are received as quickly as we possibly can.  Many thanks for your patience and understanding in this difficult time.

Update 4.1.21

Dear Parents/Carers,

As many of you will have seen, schools across the country are closed with immediate effect.

We are as frustrated as many of you are with this last minute change of direction.

As ever, we want to support you in whatever way we can. Our teaching teams are all set for online learning and will contact you either later on tonight or in the morning with more information.

We will be operating a limited offer in school to support some specific groups. Please open and complete this form if you think you qualify for this support.

We have already operated very successful online learning for 2 year groups in school and are confident that we can roll this out across the whole school quickly.

Clearly the big issue could well be access to digital devices for our children, especially if you have more than one child in need of access at the same time. Teachers will be delivering live sessions which will be recorded and shared. The intention being that children can tune into the sessions when a device becomes available to them.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=2s8TOK9SpUy44yMVeXcKujfWR1zrUJ1JhQgacqv0-RBUNVlMN0I4UzMyWFRGMEZBN1ZDTkhYWDc0TS4u

We really do need your support. Children may well need an adult to help them log on and get started! Again, if you are stuck, email in to your child’s year group email that was posted earlier.

More information to follow tomorrow.

Miss Cook

Headteacher

Update 4th January 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

The Newdale team have all been working very hard today, making sure we are ready to welcome your children back to school tomorrow.

We are aware that there is a Government announcement at 8pm tonight that may change things, but we wanted to share as much information as we can now, with things as they currently stand.

We have further reviewed our risk assessment and consulted staff on measures we feel would limit risk to a greater degree.

Procedures that stay the same –

• Parents are required to continue using the one way system, maintaining safe distances to other people and must wear face coverings at all times on our site.
• Parents must air on the side of caution and not send children into school if they are displaying any symptoms of the virus, or any other illness.
• Lunches will be delivered to class bases so that children can remain in their allocated seats to avoid additional close contact with others.
• PE will continue as normal but adults leading PE will ensure that children are moving around for the whole session, again to avoid close contact.
• Very regular hand washing and sanitising will continue to take place throughout the day.
• Children in KS 1 and 2 will continue to have allocated seats so that we have seating plans to access should a positive case arise. (This is more difficult for our youngest children, but rest assured safety measures are in place to minimise risk).
• Staff are to continue to wear face coverings in communal areas.

Additional measures –

• Staff are now invited to take more regular rapid tests to ensure they are not carrying the virus into school.
• Staff will continue to whole class teach throughout the day, but will not be running intervention groups and focus group teaching sessions.
• Staff will not be hearing individual children read. We therefore ask you to read as often as you can with your children at home.
• Parents need to keep on the move when dropping off and picking up children. We therefore ask you to not stop to deliver messages to teachers or teaching assistants and to do this via telephoning school or via year group email addresses which are posted below.
• Reading diaries will be collected in tomorrow and not handed out again until Monday. From then on reading diaries will be collected in every Friday and handed out again every Monday until further notice. This is to reduce risk of transmitting the virus.

If you require any further information about your child’s class, please use the year group email. This will be monitored daily and staff will get back to you as quickly as they can. Also don’t forget to refer to the class pages on our website which will be updated regularly.

Reception: newdale.yearrteam@taw.org.uk

Year 1:  newdale.year1team@taw.org.uk

Year 2:  newdale.year2team@taw.org.uk

Year 3:  newdale.year3team@taw.org.uk

Year 4:  newdale.year4team@taw.org.uk

Year 5:  newdale.year5team@taw.org.uk

Year 6:  newdale.year6team@taw.org.uk

Obviously this is an ever changing picture and we are only able to work with the information we have at this time. We appreciate it is a very difficult situation and rest assured we always have your children at the centre when decision making. We will send further information should anything change overnight.

Thank you for ongoing support.

Miss Cook

Headteacher