Following the school closures across the UK in Spring 2020, the government provided guidance to all schools to ensure they had a remote learning platform set up and available by the end of September 2020. This would be used in the event of any further whole school closures, but also in the event of year group bubble closures.
All of our teaching staff have undertaken Virtual training on using Microsoft Teams, but felt that the format was very complicated and unsuitable for the age of the children here at the Infants' and Nursery School, and would be more useful for us to use as an administration tool. As a learning platform, Microsoft Teams would require far too much parental support and we are very aware that many of our parents would be working from home themselves.
We then arranged meetings with the advisors from the Herts for Learning technology team and decided to promote the use of our school blog, to continue to use class emails as communication ports for families, and to set tasks using Purple Mash, in addition to providing paper-based learning packs.
Purple Mash is a child friendly learning platform that uses the same software that we use in school, meaning our pupils are already familiar with the software. As a team, the teachers have all been trained in using Purple Mash to set and create tasks for pupils, and how to give feedback to them.
We are aware that many of our families will not have a device for each of their children to use at the same time, and we know that young children need practical tasks to complete, as well as virtual ones. We value the importance of children continuing to develop their fine motor skills, through real activities such as cutting, sticking, drawing and writing. We have therefore made the decision that we will create paper-based learning packs which will be linked to the topics taught in school.
These packs will be available to all children as well as any supporting materials or resources needed. Teachers will plan tasks and units of work taken from the Medium Term Planning. In the event of any closures, staff will also use the school blog to share examples of work, as well as upload videos through the school website to model activities.
Feedback will be given to pupils through the Purple Mash learning platform, by replying to emails sent to the class teacher, or comments on the school blog.
The expectation is that the children will complete the tasks set for them, and then send them in to the class teachers who will then provide feedback. We ask for regular contact with parents, to ensure these tasks are being completed.
Thank you for your continued support. Please read the 'Remote Learning Policy' for full details.