January 2021

 

Dear Parents and Carers,

Home Learning (Early Years)

 In addition to the letter sent out to all parents last week, we would like to set out below how we are addressing providing our very youngest children in school with the best opportunities to learn at home

 As a Beckfoot Trust school, we want to provide the children with the best home learning opportunities we can whilst understanding and addressing the difficulties each particular family faces. 

 Below are the five core principles on which we are basing our home learning: 

1. Providing a core curriculum which is sequenced and objective led
2. Making use of technology and online resources without an over reliance on computers
3. Providing a uniformity of learning whether a child is in school or learning at home
4. Developing and adapting our home learning as parents and children become more confident, and as a result of listening to your feedback
5. Regularly communicating with children and parents.

 Each family’s situation is unique and we need to ensure that all children can access the provision and learn effectively. Whilst ensuring children are busy learning new content, we are very conscious that we do not want to overload either our parents or the children. Our youngest children find it difficult to concentrate during streamed live lessons and need parental support with technology and their learning. Strict daily timings of lessons also disadvantages those children who are sharing devices with siblings, or where their parents are working from home. Parents can watch the recorded videos with their children at a time that suits their family’s circumstances.

 We will provide a blend of learning methods such as videos of the teacher teaching new learning, commercial videos which also cover the learning objectives, paper-based tasks, practical activities and feedback opportunities. Our home learning will develop in a measured and gradual way to enable all our children and parents the time to learn additional technologies and systems slowly. We will also give children more opportunities to meet their teacher and classmates with a live session in the coming weeks.

 A typical weekly overview for Reception and Nursery

Reception Daily, the staff will provide: ·         A phonics video(including writing) ·         A maths video ·         A dough disco video ·         A story Time video. Weekly, the staff will make available: ·         The home learning sheet with extra challenges ·         The link to a PSHCE activity.   It is also an expectation that you will continue to read with your child regularly and discuss the characters, settings and events. In addition to the daily phonics, it is important that the children learn to read, spell and write ‘tricky’ words. These are generally the words that do not follow phonic rules and are listed on our planet spellings throughout school.

Nursery Daily the staff will provide: ·         Either a maths/English or PSHCE video ·         A phonics video ·         A story Time video Weekly, the staff will provide: ·         The home learning sheet with additional activities and challenges.

                                                                                   

Both Miss Hacking and Mrs Joyce will respond to message queries regarding the children’s daily video sessions and address any misconceptions raised by parents, either individually or through whole class feedback. The timescales of their reply will depend on the individual teacher’s timetable of when they are in school with the key worker children. They will monitor children’s engagement and we will provide support for those who may be finding it difficult. 

We will continue to use Class Dojo to share children’s successes, upload activities and communicate with children and parents.  At present our Early Years staff will continue to use Class Dojo and the introduction of Sway, as a learning platform, will follow in time.

The weeks ahead are going to challenge all of us in many different ways. We have to remember that we all have the same goal; to ensure every child is happy, that they are learning with their usual enthusiasm and that parents are able to make the best of their individual family’s situation without too much difficulty.  As a school community, we pride ourselves that we take care of all our members.  If you need any extra support, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Christina Gunning

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