Monday 4^th January, 2021

Remote Learning Expectations

Dear Parents and Carers,

As you are aware, the start of term tomorrow will not look quite as we had planned before breaking up for the Christmas holidays! The vast majority of our children will now be at home, completing their learning remotely via PurpleMash.

Unlike the previous lockdown, the government has increased its expectation on remote learning and now all children are expected to access/complete 3 hours of high quality, teaching and learning daily.  The SASF staff have been working hard to ensure that your child’s lessons are ready for tomorrow and will support them to continue their learning journey.

At SASF, we always remind ourselves that children only get one chance at an education, therefore we do everything in our power to ensure every child has the best opportunities to learn and make progress – but we can’t do it without your support whilst in lockdown.  We are expecting 100% of our pupils to complete the daily work set for them and will be contacting you if this is not happening to find out how we can assist you in your child’s learning.

We fully understand that completing remote learning with your child is not always the easiest of tasks, and therefore we have put together some advice to support you. We will also be in regular telephone contact to help however we can. The children are not on holiday from their education as of tomorrow, they are ‘back at school’, albeit from home.

Please ensure you are establishing the following to support your child:

• Provide children with a suitable learning environment (e.g. not in front of the TV).
• Contact the school if your child is experiencing issues with their work – we will endeavor to get a member of staff to contact you ASAP.
• Structure and routines are key – you must establish a timetable for your child’s working day.  This becomes even more important if you have numerous children at the school and have only one devise for them to work from (please see example on next page). Please try to keep children’s timetables as consistent as possible – but we understand that these are difficult times.

Example timetable:

One child:

Two children, one device:

* Each week a task/activities timetable will be completed by the class teacher and uploaded to PurpleMash and the school website (this will inform you which afternoon subject you are doing each day).

Please contact the school is you are experiencing any technical issues, which are preventing your child from completing their work online, as we should be able to support you to overcome these.  Equally, normal absence reporting procedures are in place – there will be a member of the administration team in school every day to take your phone calls.

One again, we would like to thank you for your support and reiterate the importance of children continuing their education whilst remote learning.  Remember, whilst their education is vitally important, so too is childrens’ well-being and mental health.  Please ensure you are planning in rest/play times for them and ensure that they are safe whilst using the internet during their leisure time.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Sharpe

Headteacher