Learning and Support during Lockdown
Teaching, learning and supporting our families looked very different during Lockdown due to COVID-19. We worked on varous ways to continue to provide as much support to our school community as we possible could.
By the end of the Summer Term many of our children, keen to learn and excited to see their friends and school staff, were back in our schools albeit in just a few year groups with remote learning continuing to be put in place for those year groups not able to return to school.
Food Parcels
Our caterers, Nourish, provided school with food that staff were able to pass on to families each week. All families were invited to collect these each week. If a parent or carer was unable to collect a food parcel themselves, delivery was arranged. When food vouchers were made available to families and they were unable to collect, these too were delivered to families.
Belvedere Hub
For our most vulnerable children and those whose parents were keyworkers, Belvedere Hub remained open throughout lockdown, inlcuding the Easter and May holidays. We were very aware of the need not only for academic input, but also the need to ensure our children felt happy and secure during a very uncertain time.
Home Learning
We set up a dedicated web page for Home Learning (still available to access under Year Group tab) to provide access to a wide range of quality resources covering all areas of both the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 Curriculum. Resources, uploaded weekly, included the following:
- at least 9 video clips of lesson starters were filmed each week by teaching staff, covering maths, English including phonics, science history and geography. These video clips were also posted on twitter and then on to ClassDojo to reach as wide a school community audience as possible. These videos, along with those from our Pioneer Academy family of schools, were also uploaded to The Pioneer Academy website, so there were in excess of 500 video lesson starters covering a huge range of lessons and all year groups.
- power point presentations
- differentiated work sheets and prompts
- projects
- scaffolding materials such as word mats/alphabet and number mats
- ideas for further reading and challenge
Many links signposted parents and carers to free websites and resources that would support their child's learning. This list was added to often as new resources became available.
We tried hard to ensure that accessing our resources required as little printing as possible and that not all families would have access to a digital device, but we were always happy to print out packs for our parents and carers to collect or for them to be posted on to them.
For our children with additional needs we provided advice and resources, including some video clips as to how to use the early stages of Picture Exchange Communication System that is being used in school.
All lesson starter video clips were uploaded to Twitter as well as photos of children's work and challenges posted by class teachers. Support staff and teaching staff also posted clips of themselves reading popular story books which we hoped maintained links between all staff and the children.
Welfare Calls
Telephone calls to our most vulnerable families were made at least weekly. We were able to support with concerns, worries and mental health by either providing advice, resources, signposting the family to further help or just be a listenng ear. This programme of telephone support for our families whose children were not able to attend school during partial reopening was extended to all. If a family could not be reached we conducted home visit to ensure all was well and to offer support. The safeguarding team continued to attend Zoom or Microsoft Team meetings with multiagencies linked to some vulnerable families throughout lockdown and all holidays to ensure support was seamless and current.
Mental Wellbeing
It was extremely important to us to be able to support the mental wellbeing of our families; we endevoured to signpost as many agencies and groups, both local and national, on our website and on Twitter, linking them to ensure rapid access to the relevant website or contact details. A dedicated Mental Wellbeing tab has also been created to bring all resources together in a more easily accessible place. Our children, whether in the Hub or learning from home, joined together to promote Mental Health Awareness Week.
.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&scale=LIMIT_MAXSIZE "MH awareness week(1)")
Class Dojo
In addition to the school website, we invited all parents and carers to join our virtual classrooms on Class Dojo where, during partial reopening we were still able to provide home learning to our year 2 children.Class Dojo has proven popular for all classes from nursery to year 2, not only as a way to access learning but also as a way to receonnect with their class and their class teachers. Before the end of the Summer term, new parents and their children were also invited as part of our transition arrangements.
E-Safety
The wellbeing and safety of our children and families is paramount and we ensured there was an abundance of advice and guidance with regard to online safety during a time when digital usage had increased substantially on a daily basis. Online and physical safety support was updated and added to frequently and took priority on the front page of the website and at the top of each Home Learning page. E-safety also formed part of our home learning curriculum.
.png?width=1920&height=1080&scale=LIMIT_MAXSIZE "E Safety (2)")
Our wonderful parents and carers
Thank you to all our parents and carers who worked so hard during lock down to keep life as normal as they possibly could; we are very grateful for their stirling efforts to join in with our virtual learning and help keep our sense of school community.
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