Remote Learning

The information below is intended to provide clarity and transparency to pupils and parents about what to expect from remote education if local restrictions require entire cohorts (or bubbles) to remain at home.

For details of what to expect where individual pupils are self-isolating, please see the final section of this page.

The remote curriculum: what is taught to pupils at home

A pupil’s first day or two of being educated remotely might look different from our standard approach, while we take all necessary actions to prepare for a longer period of remote teaching.

1. THE REMOTE CURRICULUM: WHAT IS TAUGHT TO PUPILS AT HOME

What should my child expect from immediate remote education in the first day or two of pupils being sent home?

Reading/phonics activities, one maths task per day and direction to Oak National Academy online English lessons will be available from day one. Pupils may also be sent home with worksheets to complete independently in the first instance. These will draw on recent face-to-face teaching they have received from their teacher.

Following the first few days of remote education, will my child be taught broadly the same curriculum as they would if they were in school?

Wherever possible and appropriate, we aim to teach the same curriculum content remotely as we do in school. However, teachers will do their best to design activities that are accessible for pupils when they are working from home. Teachers will adapt work to stand alone and will keep explanations as simple and as clear as possible. They will also provide links to recorded lessons, quality videos, online experiments, animations, and podcasts in lieu of teacher-led explanation.

2.  REMOTE TEACHING AND STUDY TIME EACH DAY

How long can I expect work set by the school to take my child each day?

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will take pupils broadly the following number of hours each day:

Reception – 3 hours per day

Key Stage 1 (Years 1 & 2) – 3 hours per day

Key Stage 2 (Years 3 & 4) – 3.5 hours per day

We will provide pupils and their parents with a daily timetable showing the learning to be completed across the day and suggesting the time to be spent on each lesson.

More details are provided in section 10 and appendix 2 of the Covid-19 Contingency Plan, which can be accessed by following the link below.

COVID-19 Contingency Plan

3.  ACCESSING REMOTE EDUCATION

How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?

Teachers will use live streaming as well as a range of online tools and digital platforms to support curriculum delivery, assessment and provision of feedback as well as next step developments for pupils. Digital platforms that will be used at Nunney First School include:

  • Class Dojo
  • Video conferencing through Zoom
  • Purple Mash (and Serial Mash for pupils in Years 2 and above)
  • Oak National Academy
  • White Rose Maths

If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?

A survey conducted by the school indicates that pupils currently on roll live in households where there is Internet access. However, teachers recognise that some pupils do not have laptops or tablets suitable for accessing daily teaching and learning.  We will take the following approaches to support these pupils to access remote education:

  • In the event of a whole school or ‘bubble’ closure, the school has registered with the DfE to access a small number of laptops (Get help with technology during coronavirus (COVID-19)). Working in partnership with teachers and parents, the Headteacher will allocate these according to need.
  • The school also has a small number of iPads that can be loaned to pupils.

Parents will be asked to sign a loan agreement stating that the device will be used for the sole purpose of supporting the child to access learning set by their teacher and will be returned in full working order as soon as the child is able to return to school.

  • Resources and/or printed materials will be posted or hand delivered to pupils who need to move to areas without Internet access.
  • For marking and feedback purposes, smartphones can be used to submit photographs of pupils’ work to teachers via pupils’ Class Dojo portfolios. In cases where pupils do not have online access, parents can drop worksheets into school to post these to the school office.
  • In exceptional circumstances where completed work cannot be submitted, a teacher will call the child’s parent to discuss and provide feedback on work that has been completed.

How will my child be taught remotely?

At Nunney First School we use a combination of the following approaches to teach pupils remotely:

  • Live teaching (online lessons)
  • Recorded teaching such as Oak National Academy lessons, video/audio recordings made by teachers
  • Worksheets and tasks posted on Class Dojo
  • Commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences.

 

4.  ENGAGEMENT AND FEEDBACK

What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?

Teachers are committed to working in partnership with parents to ensure that all pupils engage with remote education.

Pupils in Years 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been introduced to the daily timetable teachers will provide for them and have received training in how to follow the links provided by their teachers to access, complete and submit the worksheets and tasks set for them.

We kindly ask parents to:

  • Follow the lead teachers provide regarding expectations
  • Set routines to support their child’s education
  • Provide a quiet, distraction free environment in which schoolwork can be completed
  • Help their child submit completed work
  • Encourage their child to act on feedback provided by the teacher
  • Provide verbal praise for effort and work completed and
  • Communicate with and seek support from their child’s teacher if things are not going well.

How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?

Each weekday, teachers will check and provide feedback on work pupils have submitted for marking. In doing so, teachers will maintain a record of each pupils’ engagement with remote education.

Where engagement is a concern, teachers will contact parents via Class Dojo or telephone to discuss difficulties/challenges and help remove barriers to engagement.

How will you assess my child’s work and progress?

Feedback will take different forms and may not always involve written comments for individual children. Where written feedback is used, this will be recorded in and shared via the child’s Class Dojo portfolio.

Sometimes feedback will be directed to the whole class. Quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms may also be used. Some of the commercial websites we subscribe to allow teachers to see the errors pupils are making and the time they take to complete certain tasks. Teachers use this information to inform the next set of tasks they allocate for the child to complete. Teachers will also use feedback obtained in this way to shape live teaching sessions for the whole class, year groups or specific groups of pupils.

5.  ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR PUPILS WITH PARTICULAR NEEDS

How will you work with me to help my child who needs additional support from adults at home to access remote education?

We recognise that some children, for example some of our younger pupils in Reception and Year 1 as well as some pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families and we will work with parents and carers to support these pupils in the following ways:

  • We will ensure that work set for pupils is pitched at a level they can access.
  • We will provide motivational tasks of a length the child/ren can concentrate for.
  • We will make sure that tasks/activities draw on short and medium targets identified by parents and teachers as being important to the child i.e., those record in formal SEN records such as EHC plans, Annual Review documentation and Individual Learning Plans.
  • In some cases and particularly for pupils who have SEN, we will where possible, provide concrete resources for parents to use at home. Clear instructions for use, telephone communication and teacher modelling via video conference will be used as appropriate.

6.  REMOTE EDUCATION FOR SELF-ISOLATING PUPILS

Where individual pupils need to self-isolate but the majority of their peer group remains in school, remote education will likely differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges faced by teachers in teaching pupils both at home and in school.

If my child is not in school because they are self-isolating, how will their remote education differ from the approaches described above?

We aim to ensure that individual pupils who need to self-isolate are taught a planned and well-sequenced curriculum with meaningful and ambitious work each day in a number of different subjects.

The main differences between the approaches described above for the whole school or complete cohorts are:

  • Remote learning will be provided from the start of the third day. This will allow for COVID-19 testing to take place as required and the outcome to be advised. It will also provide the teacher with time to plan the remote learning for the child.
  • As far as possible, learning will mirror that completed by children in school.
  • Teachers may set work to be completed over 2 or 3 days rather than posting new work each day.
  • Recorded videos produced by Oak National Academy and White Rose Maths will be used to deliver new content and model new skills/procedures.
  • Feedback will be individual. It may be every other day rather than daily.