Back To School

For more details on how we are preparing for a safe return to school this September, read our Back to School Guide.

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Academic

Our Online Teaching and Learning Programme is designed around the school’s existing curriculum

Academic

Our Online Teaching and Learning Programme is designed around the school’s existing curriculum

We recognise that learning from home will present certain challenges, with multiple family members sharing devices and space and parents needing to work and supervise children simultaneously. Having taken this into account, we trust that the programme outlined below will help to overcome some of these challenges and allow for patterns to be established within each home, fitting in with work and family schedules.

Work will be set by teachers each day, but the Online Teaching and Learning Programme is flexible and we understand that there may be times when pupils cannot be online. Please provide us with feedback as we value your comments. Your feedback could be via an e-mail to your child’s form tutor or subject teacher or via one of the questionnaires sent to you from the school.

Our Online Teaching and Learning Programme is designed around the school’s existing curriculum. This is the curriculum that your child would be working to when in school. Of course, we need to make adaptations to take account of delivering via the online platform. Our programme blends a mix of online and offline content and experiences, including:

Synchronous Online Teaching with the whole class

This is when a teacher connects online with a class group. This could be for form time or a specific class. Teachers may arrange this for part of a lesson in order to minimise elongated periods of time on the screen.

Synchronous Online Teaching with a group

This is when a teacher connects online with a smaller group of pupils. This could be for a specific aspect of academic work, e.g. an English teacher working with 4-5 pupils. It could also be for a wellbeing check in when a member of staff checks in with a group to discuss how things are going in this new way of working.

Synchronous one-to-one

There may be instances when 1:1 input is required. This could be, for example, for peripatetic music lessons etc. Individual teachers may also wish to connect with pupils 1:1.

Asynchronous teaching

This is when a teacher pre-prepares teaching input, often by a short video and uploads for pupils to view. This is an effective way of delivering short pieces of teaching content to support learning.

Asynchronous learning tasks

This is when a teacher sets tasks and activities for pupils to complete. These usually follow some teaching input. These tasks may reinforce previous learning or apply new learning.

The structure of a 'remote learning' week

Every class will have three sessions per day. These will vary in duration depending on the age of the pupils. Details regarding the timing of each session may be found on the class timetables.

Short breaks should be taken throughout the day with an additional 20-30 minutes in the morning and at least an hour at lunchtime. Where possible and weather permitting these breaks should be taken outside to give the children the opportunity for fresh air and exercise.

Games, the Arts and Activities will be part of the timetable to provide a balance to the school day.

•Work will be posted by 9.00am each day.

•Work will be able to be downloaded and printed from Seesaw or Teams.

In the Senior School, pupils will follow their normal subject timetable. Teachers are preparing lessons of 45 minutes instead of 50 minutes in order to give pupils a five-minute break between each lesson thus reducing their time on screen. Assignments are posted for pupils to complete during their asynchronous learning task time. Teachers can check and comment on work as it is being done by the pupil then mark and give final feedback when the task has been completed and handed in.

In the Prep School, Mrs Layland will host weekly assemblies on Teams with the classes, on a rota. In the Senior School, Mrs Hier, Mrs Smart and Mr Martin (Head of Key Stages 3 and 4) will host and join class assemblies, to keep in touch with all the students. All our assemblies will encompass our “Thought of the Week” programme, giving the students a collective point of reflection.

All lessons hosted in Teams are recorded and the video added to the body of the class team so that students can re-watch if needed. This service is hosted by Microsoft Stream and the content privileges controlled by the class teacher. Class teachers also provide the lesson materials in the “Files” tab of the class Team, so work can be caught up on independently.

In light of the transition to online learning, we have updated our Privacy Notices, these are hosted on our school’s website.

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