Being educated remotely might look different from our standard approach of in school face-to-face teaching. Lessons are pre-recorded by teachers and are posted in Microsoft Teams assignments along with all the resources required for your child to access high quality lessons.

Lessons will include explained content through a video or series of videos, and as said above, all pre-recorded. This enables the video content to be available for students to watch should they not be able to be online at the timetabled lesson time. We are giving students and families a degree of flexibility, especially if devices are shared.

We will endeavour to teach the same sequence of the curriculum remotely across key stages 3, 4 and 5 as we do in school, wherever possible and appropriate.

However, we may need to make some adaptations in some subjects; for example, to go back to prior learning to re-teach misconceptions. Some subjects will make adaptations for content to be accessible remotely without the need for specialist equipment, for example in PE practical lessons and Art lessons.

In addition, some subjects may need to adapt the tasks they would have delivered in lessons, such as science experiments, so these can be accessed independently from teacher input. 

We use a combination of the following approaches to teach pupils remotely:

• live teaching (only for year 13 starting on 25^th January)
• recorded teaching (e.g. Oak National Academy lessons, video/audio recordings made by teachers)
• printed paper packs produced by teachers for each year group (available at main reception)
• textbooks, revision guides and reading books pupils have at home
• commercially available websites (school subscribed or free) supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences.

We have a timetable for each year group that supports your child to complete 5 hours of learning a day and reflects the timetable that your child would normally follow in school.

It is important that your child engages with home learning and keeps, as much as possible, to the timetable that we have posted on our school website. Click here to view.

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will take broadly the following number of hours each day:

There is some flexibility in following the exact timetabled hours that would normally be followed in school. Pre-recorded lessons enable this flexibility so that students can access lessons outside of their normal lesson time. Click here to view the timetable.

We have also uploaded onto the school website knowledge organisers for each subject in years 7-11 to support your child to work independently.

• A device that can access the Internet, such as a laptop, desktop computer, tablet or smartphone (phones can be difficult to navigate to do work, so we suggest one of the others)
• It is ideal to have some pens, paper or a note book available to carry out learning activities
• A quiet space work without interruption is the ideal work environment; however, home life can be busy, so creating the best environment to learn in that you can provide is all we ask of you
• Access to our digital platform- Microsoft Office 365 and within it Microsoft Teams

If my child has his/her own device – If your child has access to their own device and the Internet, then we would expect him/her to be accessing their remote learning during school hours following the timetable for his/her year group and using the prerecorded resources.

If my child shares a device with other members of the family – If your child has Internet access, shares a device and is not able to log on all day, every day, we would expect him/her to access his/her timetable as close to the lesson time as possible via Teams, and to complete all lessons each week following the timetable for his/her year group using the prerecorded resources.

We understand that remote learning can be very challenging for parents and students for a whole range of different reasons. As a result, we know that there is likely to be a variance in the engagement of pupils with remote learning or their ability to engage independently with the work provided.

Wherever possible, please encourage your child to complete all of the work set to the best of their ability on the day that it is given. This will stop work from building up and students feeling overwhelmed.

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:

1. If your child does not have access to a device or has no Internet access, please let the school know. We may be able to obtain further devices through the government device scheme for student use and we can add you to a waiting list. We cannot promise a device
2. A tailored hard copy resource pack for each year group will be available for students by request. Please let the school know if you require a hard copy pack via our enquiry email. Copies will also be made available at main reception. Students can submit the work completed at main reception and it will be passed onto your child’s teachers

We understand that remote learning can be very challenging for parents and students for a whole range of different reasons. As a result, we know that there is likely to be a variance in the engagement of pupils with remote learning or their ability to engage independently with the work provided.

Wherever possible, please encourage your child to complete all of the work set to the best of their ability on the day that it is set.

We appreciate that home schooling may present some challenges for you. We kindly ask for your support as best as you can so that we can continue to provide high-quality education for your child during this time.

We do not expect you to watch your child all day, and we would not expect parents/carers to get involved in all remote lessons in place of our teachers. It would be really helpful if you can take an active role in your child’s learning by asking them about their day and what work they have done as well as encouraging engagement.

Our top tips to support your child to engage in learning:

• Try to encourage your child to be ready and dressed for the start of the school day (by 8.30am), and to keep to their timetable.
• Distinguish between weekdays and weekends, and make it clear when the school day is over, to separate home and school life.
• Plan breaks, lunchtime and exercise into the day to help keep your child active.

Lessons will last one hour, which may include time for students to complete tasks during the pre-recorded video (for example the teacher may ask students to pause the lesson for 10 minutes to complete a task before the student re-starts the video). Short breaks within the hour are fine to take and will help your child to focus better.

Click here to view the timetable.

Lessons will be placed in the relevant ‘Team’ in the ‘Assignments’ area each day and are available in time for your child’s lessons. Lessons will remain in the ‘Team’ after the lesson time (a period of time may be set for availability) so that students can access the lesson at a later time if needed or can go back and review their learning again.

Click here to view the timetable.

Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children. For example, whole-class feedback or quizzes marked automatically via Microsoft Forms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others.

Our approach to feeding back on student work is as follows:

Teachers will use a range of assessment and dialogue methods within the lessons in order to check engagement and progress including quizzes and questions. Lessons will also require students to submit work, which may include uploading a photo of work, a written task (typed in a document or a picture of a hand-written piece), responses to a quiz or a form. Deadlines will be set for some tasks and other tasks may be programmed to offer instant online feedback to the student.

The aim of any form of assessment and feedback is to enable the teacher to plan high quality lessons that target the teaching to the learning needs of the child, whilst ensuring that the school curriculum continues to be delivered.

The Secondary Phase Engagement Tracker

Each week your child’s subject teacher will complete an engagement tracker and will make a judgement about how well a child has engaged in work. This will never be used to penalise a child for non-participation in work; however, it will be used to inform welfare conversations so that the school can support students and families to access and engage in remote teaching as much as possible.

If the tracker shows that your child is not engaging in online learning, we will use the following strategies to provide additional support:  

• Phone calls home through our welfare calls or through our pastoral staff team
• Phone calls home from the subject teacher to enquire about any subject specific queries and support

We are launching a form tutor period (a live check-in/keeping in touch session) the week of 18^th January to year 7 initially and then we intend to roll this out to students in all year groups by 1^st February.

This will be a live session of about 20 minutes led by the form tutor staff during the form time period from 8:45am. It is an opportunity to check pupil welfare and to carry out work on personal, social and health education (PSHE), which will support all our students.

Please ask your child to look out for a Teams invitation to the session. The invitation will be sent out in their Microsoft Teams calendar and will also feature in their Microsoft Outlook calendar

We will keep you up-to-date with how we will roll out the sessions to all year groups.

We recognise that 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 in the following ways:

We have a significant number of students who are in receipt of an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in all phases. Due to the nature of the needs, many of the students are still attending school and are accessing classes on site. Within the secondary provision, the students still receive some online provision from staff. Their learning is monitored by attending teaching assistants. If students are not in school due to self-isolation or are shielding they attend the live streamed lessons via Teams. The teaching is recorded and monitored to follow all safeguarding protocols.

If a student is not attending the online or on site lessons, this is immediately monitored by the TAs and contact is made with the family to offer support. SEND students are a priority for access to devices. For some students there are 1:1 lessons to deliver core subjects. This is due to the requirements of their EHCPs.

Students who have a SEND but do not hold EHCP are taught via online. SEND students who are able continue to learn via the online format are able to speak to/communicate with staff if there are any learning issues.