Friday 22^nd January

As a third week of lockdown draws to an end, I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone for negotiating the last few weeks of remote learning. Your feedback has been incredibly motivating for the staff while they have been getting to grips with a very new way of working.

Below is a link to a parent survey for Bridge Schools about the effectiveness of our remote learning provision. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially as this will be used when we are inspected by Ofsted. The survey will be live until next Friday.

Bridge Schools - Parent Questionnaire January 2021 

Best wishes,

Duloe staff

This week’s Faith @ Home Collective Worship looks at the topic of fear and how we can face our fears.

Collective Worship for Primary Schools - Fear (S2E5) | The Church of England

For support for parents and carers relating to the wellbeing of their children during lock down, please see the link below to 'Five Ways to Support your Children's Mental Health' by Dr Hazell Harrison on the BBC Bitesize website:

Five ways to support children’s mental health - BBC Bitesize 

Friday 15^th January 2021

Dear parents and carers,

Home Learning

Wow, as a school community you have all been amazing this week! It has been wonderful seeing the children via TEAMs, the work you have uploaded and sent to teachers and speaking to you on the phone.

The feedback we have received has been very positive about the way we are organising remote learning, which is great, as we are very conscious about the potential strains parents and carers are under.

The key message as always, is please don’t let home learning become stressful for you and your families. If you have any difficulties please contact your child’s class teacher – we are here to help.

Department of Education Expectations

As you may have seen in the media, there is a lot more pressure on schools during this lockdown than the first from the Department of Education. The staff at Duloe, have adapted very quickly to meet this criteria. One area that we need your support with is the requirement that schools do a daily check to ensure children are engaging with remote learning. I don’t think it is practical for parents and carers to upload their children’s learning and email it to the teacher every day, so we feel we have developed a system that is manageable for parents and carers, staff and children.

From Monday next week, when your child logs into Microsoft TEAMs, within the ‘posts’ section there will be a daily quiz. It will only be a few questions and they will link to that day’s home learning. By pressing the submit button we will have an electronic record that you have engaged with the home learning. Also, we can see each child’s answers, so we will be able to feedback if there are any misunderstandings.

Your support with this would be greatly appreciated!!!

Family Support

If anybody needs support in terms of digital devices to access remote learning or food to support their families, please contact me directly head@duloeprimary.co.uk

Live Music Lessons

Starting next week, each class will have a weekly live music lesson for 20 minutes with Mrs Butlin and their class teacher on TEAMs. If possible, we would like all children to attend these sessions.

Best wishes,

Mr Hannah

This week's collective worship episode for primary schools asks, 'How can we have hope for tomorrow?' Please click on the link below for the video:

Collective Worship for Primary Schools - Hope (S2E6) | The Church of England 

Tuesday 12th January 2021

Dear parents and carers,

Following our trial of Microsoft TEAMs, we would now like to offer more opportunities for parents and children to interact with their teachers.

Class 1

Mrs Andrew will be contacting families individually this week to organise TEAMs meetings.

Class 2

Mrs Dunn (and Mrs Wright on Wednesday) will hold a class story session on TEAMs, Tuesday to Thursday, this week between 1.10pm and 1.40pm. At the end of each session, there will be the opportunity for parents and children to ask any questions about the work that has been set so far.

Class 3

On Tuesday, if anybody in Mrs Wright’s maths group has any questions, please login at 11.00 am to 11.30am

On Wednesday, if anybody in Mr Hannah’s maths group has any questions, please login at 11am to 12.00am

On Thursday, if anybody has any questions about the writing that has been set so far, please login between 11.30am and 12.00am.

As always, if you cannot attend any of these sessions, or you have a question that needs answering more urgently, please email your class teacher and they will get in touch with you.

Best wishes,

Mrs Andrew, Mrs Dunn, Mrs Wright and Mr Hannah 

Monday 11th January 2021

Friday 8^th January 2021

Dear parents and carers,

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everybody for adapting to the situation this week so well. I really appreciate the challenges lockdown poses for parents and carers. Trying to balance your own work commitments with children’s home learning (both at secondary and primary school) is unbelievably difficult. The home learning we are providing is aimed at supporting you. Please do not let it bring any strain on you as a family.  

Hopefully, you have been impressed by the way we as a school have quickly responded to the situation: keeping the school open to critical workers and vulnerable children, providing home learning on the class pages and rolling out Microsoft TEAMs. I feel the way our staff have coped with this week’s challenges, following a rather hectic Monday evening, has been excellent.

Please keep continuing to communicate with your children’s class teachers if there is anything you need to know.

Best wishes,

Mr Hannah

Wednesday 7th January 2021

Tuesday 5^th January 2021

Home Learning

Dear parents and carers,

As a staff, our priority is to deliver a home learning experience that not only works for the children, but works for parents and carers as well. As parents ourselves, we fully understand the commitments you have and the need to balance your own work, the logistics of having different aged children who are home learning and even the amount of electronic devices you have. Therefore, our goal is to provide home learning that is flexible to your needs and does not constrain you regarding timings.

We have used the feedback from the parent survey we carried out after the initial lockdown to design a system that builds on the positives you outlined and have looked to act upon the areas for development you suggested.

The key priority will be maintaining communication between you and your children’s teacher. Class teachers will phone you at least once a week to discuss your child’s learning. There will be a daily drop-in TEAMs meeting where parents and carers can speak to the class teacher if they have any questions about the learning set. Furthermore, you will also be able to email class teachers if there is any information you require. At this point, I must also stress that all class teachers will still be in school delivering lessons to children of key workers and vulnerable children and therefore will not be able to respond immediately.

Teachers will plan home learning activities that can be completed as independently as possible, so that parents do not have to overly supervise. However, as you can imagine, this will be incredibly difficult to do for the younger children.

There is no need to print the worksheets at home. Please use any paper you have available. We would have provided textbooks and exercise books if we had been given more notice about the lockdown.

Each day, teachers will set one English, one maths and one wider curriculum task on the class blog. This will be differentiated to provide your child with the appropriate level of learning. The lessons set will follow the curriculum pattern we would have been following if we would have been in school.

Please remember that communication is a two-way process. If there is anything you are unsure of, please ask. We are here to help. If we don’t know your concerns, we can’t help.

I will be calling all families today to discuss remote learning.

Best wishes,

Mr Hannah