Your child’s learning remains very important to us, so we’ll continue to help your child to learn. This will be difficult and will put a lot of pressure on parents – we understand that. But we’re here to help and urge you to get in touch whenever you need to if things get difficult – this letter tells you how to do that via email, by phone or in person.

Our plan for remote learning

Your child has brought home these items to help carry on learning at home while the school is shut:

• a fresh exercise book
• at least 3 reading books
• Maths No Problem textbook
• Maths No Problem workbook
  Your child’s teacher may send other items in addition.

From Tuesday, learning tasks will be posted to the class website page every day. Please help your child complete these in the exercise book provided. When we reopen we would like the children to bring back their exercise books and all the other resources.

Children already off school – these books have been prepared and are waiting for you to collect from school. Please drop-in between 10am and 12pm next week and we can hand them over.

Reading

Reading continues to be the most important thing your child can do at home. Children have all brought home several reading books. They can still log on to Accelerated Reader Here’s the link.

Daily tasks

Starting on Tuesday, children will be set daily tasks from Monday to Friday at 9am each day. These will be found on the class page of the school website (choose Year Groups from the main menu and then navigate to the appropriate class page where you’ll see the Home Learning links – it’s the same place we put spellings). Each day, we will set three tasks:

1. Writing task, reading comprehension or phonics activity (phonics only for children in Reception and Year 1)

This is so the children do a piece of writing every day. The teachers will explain what to do and may provide links to help. On Friday, this task will be spelling, as now.

2. Arithmetic task

This might be some calculations to practise or some number facts to learn

3. Maths No Problem task

Children will have brought their workbooks home. Teachers will detail what to do and refer to the lesson number and page. They will provide a short, parent-friendly explanation of what children should learn during the lesson and how much to do.

Additionally, we’ll set a topic-based task each week.

This is to encourage your children’s wider learning and will be drawn from a variety of sources including, but not restricted to, current learning topics in school.

Top Tips for helping your child at home

1. Don’t try to replicate school. It’s not. Do what you can, with the time, resources and capacity you have.
2. Develop a timetable that works for you – don’t worry what others are doing. You’ll need some breaks and to spend time outside. Little and often is best for some, others prefer to get things done in the morning and save the afternoon for more relaxed things. It’s up to you!
3. Start as you mean to go on. Set the ground rules early and stick to them. Children should expect to do some learning every day. It’s not optional.
4. Balance online time with reading, practical activities and exercising. We need computers to access learning but there’s lots of other great things to do away from a screen.
5. Get outside as much as you can. It’s good for everyone’s mental health.
6. Quite often, the actual learning is not as beneficial to your child (or you) as spending some one-to-one time together. Enjoy it. It’s a definite advantage of learning at home.
7. You know your children best. Don’t be frightened to change things. You know what motivates your children and what excites them. Use this to your advantage and tailor your approach accordingly.
8. Email your child’s teacher if you have any questions. They’re working from home and will be happy to help.
9. Other parents will have found resources and have ideas to share. Keep in touch with them (but bear in mind point 2).
10. Keep it in perspective. The whole population is affected. If it all gets too much, relax with a book (or some tv) together. We need you all in one piece when we come out the other side.

Make sure you keep in touch. Good luck everyone.