This information is intended to provide clarity and transparency to pupils and parents/carers about what to expect from remote education if circumstances require your child to remain at home.
At Birdwell, we pride ourselves on the high-quality remote education offer we provide for our children to ensure their learning continues to progress.
As curriculum leader, our Head of School, Mr Swallow has an overarching responsibility for the quality and delivery of remote education, ensuring that our provision meets expectations for our whole school community
For details of what to expect where individual pupils are self-isolating, please see the final section of this document.
The remote curriculum: what is taught to pupils at home?
We aim to take all necessary actions to prepare for remote teaching within 48 hours of a school closure so that learning can take place after the initial day of closure.
What should my child expect from immediate remote education in the first day of pupils being sent home?
Our remote education offer is delivered via Seesaw for children to complete their activities.
On this first day, school will prioritise ensuring that logins for platforms are shared with parents/carers and children. We have provided training for children to be able to use these whilst at school.
Will my child be taught broadly the same curriculum as they would if they were in school?
High expectation, high quality and high engagement are the key strands to home learning and we promote this throughout our remote education offer.
We teach the same broad & balanced curriculum remotely as we do in school wherever possible and appropriate. However, we have needed to make some adaptations in some subjects. For example, we are aware of some curriculum subjects may require specialist resources or equipment that would be unavailable to children at home such as a cohort currently focusing on basketball in physical education.
Therefore, adaptations will be made to ensure that all children can access the curriculum with the resources available to them at home.
Remote Education Overview
At Birdwell, we want pupils, families and carers to be excited to engage with our remote learning provision, furthering their knowledge at home. More importantly, being enthused to share that with their teacher and their peers. This is where we believe this approach will truly thrive!
How long can I expect work set by the school to take my child each day?
We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will mirror the timetable for a usual school day as closely as possible to provide teaching that is equivalent in length to the core teaching pupils would receive in school. This will take a minimum of 4 hours including :
- Session 1: LIRA or Phonics
- Session 2: Literacy
- Session 3: Maths
- Session 4: Wider Curriculum
We expect that the input for these sessions would take between 15-20 minutes depending on the content delivered.
Children will then complete their assigned activity on Seesaw and staff will provided individualised feedback to children's responses to tasks, which will approximately take 40 minutes.
Please Note: For younger year groups, input for sessions may be shorter but with more points of contact throughout the day.
How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?
Seesaw has been embedded throughout our teaching and learning practice in school so all children are comfortable with using this technology when accessing tasks
Individual children’s Seesaw QR codes will be emailed out to parents & carers.
If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?
We recognise that some pupils may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those pupils to access remote education:
All parents and carers will be contacted to establish if any digital equipment would be required for children to fully access our remote education provision.
We have iPads and laptops that are available to be loaned out for longer term needs. These would need to be signed for and collected to agree to the terms of use.
If you require any support accessing digital equipment, please contact school via:
- Telephone: 01226 742957
- Email: diane.sykes@hcacademytrust.education
How will my child be taught remotely?
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has found that the effectiveness of remote teaching is determined by many of the same factors as determine the effectiveness of remote classroom teaching. For example:
- ensuring pupils receive clear explanations
- supporting growth in confidence with new material through scaffolded practice
- application of new knowledge or skills
- enabling pupils to receive feedback on how to progress
These characteristics of good teaching are more important than the medium of delivery, be it in the ‘live’ classroom or through remote provision (whether or not that remote provision is live or pre-recorded).
In writing this policy, senior leaders have carefully considered how to transfer into remote education what we already know about effective teaching in the live classroom.
Seesaw classrooms enable important interaction between teachers and pupils through, for example, questioning, eliciting and reflective discussion. These complex teacher skills in the live classroom are not always easy to recreate in a remote environment, but where remote education recreates at least some aspects of this interactivity and intentional dialogue, teaching is likely to be more effective, support pupil motivation and lead to better progress.
Where remote education is needed, this is high-quality and safe, and aligns as closely as possible with in-school provision. Remote learning offers a broad and balanced curriculum to all pupils. Schools within HCAT will continue to build their capability to educate pupils remotely.
All remote education will focus on the National Curriculum subjects for the relevant year group with four key sessions: LIRA/Phonics, Literacy, Maths and a wider curriculum subject. These key areas are essential for all children to engage with their learning and provide the framework for learning in school to be enhanced.
We provide high-quality input which allows pupils to build on prior learning and make new connections by ensuring that pupils have time to demonstrate and consolidate their learning outcomes. Teaching staff will ensure that, whenever possible, collaboration is present. As with in-school provision, we will ensure that Learning Objectives are understood by pupils to ensure learners play an active part in lessons.
Pupils will have opportunities to discuss and reflect on new learning throughout the input and teachers will incorporate Assessment for Learning (AFL) strategies to: establish prior knowledge and skills, ensuring that learning is challenging for all pupils. In order to model the expectations of a task, teachers will ensure a clear model is included in the live input and pupils have a clear idea of expected outcomes, and all learners are challenged and able to achieve.
Below are examples of what activities on Seesaw will look like:
Here is an example of what remote education tasks could look like. Class teachers will set tasks tailored to their own class to incorporate what would have been learned about in school.
This is what remote education tasks will look like for the class teacher when the task is first set. Every pupil has a blank above their name showing that they have not responded.
Here is an example that has been responded to. Some children have chosen to write their answers on paper and upload a photo, others have responded directly on an electronic device. Using Seesaw gives pupils and parents flexibility to choose what suits them best.
What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?
As with in-school provision, we have the highest expectations of children's engagement. We expect all children to access our remote education provision for all sessions, and respond to tasks in a timely manner.
In regards to parental support, supporting school with setting routines to support your child’s education would be extremely beneficial in order to raise the engagement of your child with sessions.
All tasks will created, set and pitched at the appropriate level for each individual child to ensure that they can engage with sessions independently.
How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?
To reflect the same practice as in school, a daily register will be taken for each online session to check which children are:
- Responding and completing activities on Seesaw
If there are any circumstances arising where engagement is a concern, class teachers will contact parents/carers via phone call to discuss how we can support in raising the engagement of your child with our remote education provision.
How will you assess my child’s work and progress?
Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children. For example, whole-class feedback or verbal comments via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows:
- Have the highest expectations of all pupils in relation to quality of work produced.
- Following the marking & feedback policy to mirror in-school practice.
- Provide feedback on every child's work via Seesaw for each subject.
- Ensure that children are aware of the next steps within their learning.
How will you work with me to help my child who needs additional support from adults at home to access remote education?
At Birdwell, we recognise that some pupils, for example some pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families, and we will work with parents and carers to support those pupils.
Class teachers will provide opportunities for a personalised approach to learning for all groups including SEND so that activities are suitable to their abilities. Furthermore, our class teachers will work closely with families to deliver remote education for pupils with SEND, discussing how the personalised approach can be best adapted to meet the needs of those children as a dialogue between parents and practitioners.
Credits:
Created with images by rabbitti - "REMOTE LEARNING virtual learning concept with wood block letters on laptop. Distance learning, remote learning, virtual learning " • TeacherPhoto - "Wooden doll figures of people with notification icons of message"