Castle Primary School

Remote Learning

REMOTE EDUCATION AT CASTLE PRIMARY SCHOOL: INFORMATION FOR PARENTS

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 6. at the bottom 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?

All children will receive a selection of activities that they can complete independently on the first day of closure. These activities will be sent out on our standard HAL (home assisted learning) proforma. The activities sent will include a maths activity, a range of English activities (reading, spelling, writing), an activity linked to the wider curriculum and an activity to promote physical exercise. The activities will link closely to the learning that they have been doing in school.

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 base all of the learning on what the class would have been doing in school. However, teachers will do their best to design activities that are accessible for pupils when they are working from home. Teachers will aim to keep explanations as simple and as clear as possible and suggest activities which require minimal resources to ensure as many children as possible can take part. They will also provide links to recorded lessons, quality videos, online experiments and animations to support children’s learning.

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, 5 and 6) – 3.5 hours per day

We will provide pupils and their parents with a daily activity sheet showing the learning to be completed across the day. Resources will be provided where appropriate.

Each day will always start with a ‘Zoom’ registration. This will allow children to ask any questions they may have about the learning set for that day.

In addition to their class learning, children will have the opportunity to ‘zoom’ in to whole school assemblies.

3. ACCESSING REMOTE EDUCATION

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

Teachers will use a mixture of live Zoom lessons and pre-recorded sessions via YouTube as well as a range of online tools to support curriculum delivery. Digital platforms that will be used at Castle Primary School include:

• Video conferencing through Zoom
• Purple Mash
• Spelling Shed
• Oak National Academy
• BBC bitesize
• You tube (pre-recorded videos are uploaded to our own non-public channel)
• White Rose Maths
• Times Table RockStars

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

We 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 chrome books 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 available for collection or in some circumstances posted or hand delivered to pupils who are unable to access them online.
• To ensure regular contact is made with each child, all classes have their own email address. Parents are made aware of their class email and know that this can be used to submit photographs of pupils’ work to their child’s class teacher.
• In exceptional circumstances where children are older and still struggling to access the online learning, a member of staff can provide a short lesson to the child explaining how to use the laptop/chrome book to access the learning set. 

 How will my child be taught remotely?

At Castle Primary 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 clearly explained on the HAL proforma
• Commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences
• Drop in sessions via zoom so children can speak to their teacher about a particular piece of learning if they feel that this would be useful

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.

Each day will begin with a registration session and will end with a de-brief session. This will be led by the class teacher and/or class TA via zoom and will allow children to ask any questions about the learning set and gain instant feedback about their learning.

As well as this, children are encouraged to submit their work to their teacher via their class email. The teacher will check this email regularly and will respond appropriately.

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 learning 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 take a register and make a note of the children who are engaging in the remote learning. Teachers will also keep a record of those children who are submitting work.

Where engagement is a concern, teachers or another member of staff (e.g. School’s Pastoral Manager) will contact parents via 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 shared via email.

Sometimes feedback will be instant and given during either the live teaching sessions or the drop-in sessions. Sometimes this feedback will be directed to individuals and sometimes it will be directed to the whole class. 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
• Where possible we will deliver separate sessions for pupils who either have SEN and/or find a particular subject challenging. These sessions will be targeted to the needs of those individuals and allow for a smaller group of children to work together.
• 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 learning each day in a range 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 isolation period.
• Teachers will send home the HAL for a week. The HAL will be broken down into days so children know what to complete each day. A suggested timetable will be shared with families so they know how they can structure their day.
• Essential core skills of talking, phonics, reading, writing, spelling and maths will be an important focus of the HAL. However we will also include daily exercise, activities which support mental health and well-being and fun activities (like cooking) which could be enjoyed as a family.
• Rather than live teaching, lessons will be made up of pre-recorded videos by the class teacher and recorded videos produced by Oak National Academy and White Rose Maths. These will be used to deliver new content and model new skills/procedures.
• A member of the school team will telephone the family each week to check in and offer any help, support as required.
• Children and families will know that they can contact their class teacher during the day via their class email.
• Children can join whole school/class assemblies via zoom if they wish.