11th January 2021
Home Learning Letter and Guide to Sway and Class Dojo
January 2021
Dear Parents and Carers,
Home Learning
I would like to express my utmost thanks for all your support and patience whilst we navigate the complexities of this latest lockdown. All our staff have appreciated your messages of support, thank you!
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:
- Providing a core curriculum which is sequenced and objective led
- Making use of technology and online resources without an over reliance on computers
- Providing a uniformity of learning whether a child is in school or learning at home
- Developing and adapting our home learning as parents and children become more confident, and as a result of listening to your feedback
- 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. We believe that back-to-back live lessons are unsustainable in the long run due to excessive screen time. Young children also find it difficult to concentrate during 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. Children can watch the recorded lessons at a time that suits their family’s circumstances.
In order to address these difficulties, 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, independent paper-based tasks, feedback and assessment 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 live sessions in the coming weeks.
An overview of a typical week (Year 1 – Year 6)
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A daily maths lesson will be uploaded in the format of an interactive Sway before 9 am. (Some teachers may upload more than one day’s learning at a time, depending on the days they are in school.) The typical format of a lesson will include:
Assessment opportunities will be provided in the format of a Forms quiz at certain points during the teaching sequence. |
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A daily English lesson will be uploaded in the format of an interactive Sway before 9 am. (Some teachers may upload more than one day’s learning at a time, depending on the days they are in school.)
The typical format of a lesson will include:
The daily English lessons will build up a sequence of learning to enable the children to produce a published piece of writing at the end of the unit of work. Each year group’s daily work will look slightly different depending on the task and the age of the children.
In years 2-6 the reading comprehension lesson on a Friday will continue in the format of a piece of text to read or a video to watch and then suitable questions and tasks to complete. |
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Phonics and handwriting (KS1) Teachers will share some recorded phonics lessons that will revisit previous learning as well as teaching new content and spelling rules. Children will have the opportunity to practise their phonics and handwriting. |
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Topic Children will have a set of challenges that they can work through. Teachers will add extra topic challenges or activities to keep the children engaged. Teachers will upload videos to teach children new learning and model ways of working. Children will be encouraged to present their learning in different ways. Children have also got the home/school project idea for their current topic which they can access. |
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PSHCE Weekly lesson activities from SCARF will also be uploaded. |
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Extra daily expectations
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*A separate letter will follow with EYFS details*
Our teachers will respond to message queries regarding the children’s daily maths and English content and address any misconceptions raised by children 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. Our lessons will be uploaded through Sway documents onto your child’s class story, with any differentiated work being added to individual portfolios. A parents’ guide to how Sway works and a reminder of how to use Class Dojo will be sent to you with this letter.
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
