Home learning Packs and the Class Blog
Dear Parents,
I hope you and your families are well. I am writing to update you on our arrangements for helping the children to learn at home over the coming term.
Home Learning Packs
We have finished making the home learning packs that I referred to in my previous message to parents. They will be distributed to your homes over the weekend, with the kind help of a number of staff members and parent volunteers. The packs will include workbooks we have purchased to support English and maths learning, along with supplementary booklets made in school over the Easter period.
Weekly Learning Schedules
Each week, your child’s class teacher will post a selection of activities for the following week in the form of a weekly schedule. As I mentioned before, all these activities are suggestions: optional, not compulsory. Dip into them as you wish, and do as many or as few of them as your particular circumstances allow. You will find the weekly learning schedules on the website by clicking on ‘Children’ then ‘School Closure Home Learning’.
Class Blogs
I am also pleased to inform you that we have also added a class blog section to the school website.
Class teachers will post a message to their class as a whole group once or twice a week on the blog, to touch base with the children in general terms and recreate something of the sense of community that makes class life so special. (The teachers are missing their classes, too!)
All children will receive a login and password for the class blog. We will be sending these via the Teachers to Parents email system. Once children are logged in, they will be able to message their teacher. They can send photos of the learning they have been doing at home, along with little messages. Teachers will need to approve all messages before they can appear publicly on the blog. They will aim to do this each weekday (not weekends), but please remember that teachers are also busy with other school work, both in school and at home, as well as looking after their own families and managing their own health needs, so there might be days when this is not possible.
Teachers will comment briefly on children’s posts where appropriate. They will also be able to answer questions about children’s learning to help them with their efforts at home. Please note that children should not be sending their teacher any photos or messages without your permission and without you checking them first. It is your responsibility as the parent to ensure photos contain nothing inappropriate. (e.g.pupils should be fully dressed.)
(Please also note that as with our Facebook page, we intend this blog be a positive, supportive forum for celebrating and assisting children’s learning. Any inappropriate use of the blog (by children or parents) will not be tolerated.)
To access the class blogs, visit the website, click on ‘Children’ then ‘School Closure Blogging’. Your child can then click on the link for their own class.
Teachers will be familiarising themselves with the new blog at the same time as the children, so we expect it will take a while for routines to settle into place in terms of how it is used. However, we are very pleased that we will be able to communicate with our children, and we look forward to hearing about the learning they have done at home.
If you have not received your child’s login details by the end of Monday, please email the office on enquiries@manorbrook.org.uk, and we will get the details to you. Set up arrangements are almost complete at our end, and we hope to have all class teachers active on the blogs by next Wednesday, April 22nd.
In the meantime, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your families all the very best, on behalf of all of us in the Manorbrook team.
Darren Stanley