Dear Parents/Carers,

Firstly I want to say a huge thank you to all those parents who spent the time filling in the Online Learning Survey (127 received). We are delighted with your feedback and have shared your wonderful comments with the whole team and Governors.  We have now read each and every one and here are just some of the highlights and the areas that we are now working on:

Highlights

• You are delighted that children who are working at home are getting the exact same offer as the children who are attending school.
• The live learning lessons are a hit! Your children are loving seeing their teachers and friends in the same way that the teachers are loving seeing them too!
• Communication between school staff and you is brilliant: staff are working hard to support you even out of school hours.
• You have complimented all our staff teams about how hard they are working.

Areas we are now working on

• Ensuring that work is organised (maybe in dated folders) and daily or weekly timetables are shared so that you can see easily what needs to be done and when.
• Uploading the work the night before, in order for you to prepare if you wish.
• Offering a wider variety of lessons e.g. topic days or art days.
• Giving more opportunities for pupils to meet e.g. carrying out ‘show and tell.’
• Supporting you further in understanding topics and concepts e.g. vocabulary definitions and Maths knowledge organisers.

Year group teachers may also feedback specific points to you based on comments that link to their particular year group.

We are constantly reviewing our offer and it is wonderful to have this feedback to work on.

We appreciate that it is very difficult for children to maintain the level of concentration and motivation needed for home learning and we are so proud of them for keeping going. Our priority is clearly the wellbeing of your children and of course ensuring they continue to make as much progress as they can, so that when this virus is under more control, they will still remain where they should be with their learning.

Senior managers met last night and have begun plans to incorporate some sessions that would have been going on in school, that perhaps have less structure than normal. For example, next week on Tuesday afternoon, all children in school will be given the opportunity to see an online pantomime that we have purchased for them.  The team is also planning in more themed days and practical art days which we know the children will enjoy and will potentially give adults who are supporting a bit of relief! Please remember that teachers are conscious that parents at home, may well be working from home, and therefore the sessions are designed for the children to work as independently as possible – don’t let your children trick you into thinking you need to be supporting them through every minute of every session – they would be working independently in the classroom too!

It has gone very quiet as far as announcements from the Government about schools are concerned. As soon as we hear what the plan is, we will of course let you know.

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Cook

Headteacher