23rd March 2020
“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down’”
The guidance set out in our parent and student guides is intended to give advice on how to support learning from home. The timetable examples in the guide provides advice on one way to structure learning around the timings of a normal school day, and the circumstances we find ourselves in, of course, allow the opportunity to explore learning beyond the confines of a school timetable. Start later, finish earlier. Have a long break in between. Include some exercise from Joe Wicks’ online PE lessons…
We have provided support which can help you to follow a structure, but you can agree the structure with your child(ren):
I have been really pleased to see the support being offered to one another by parents on our Parent Support Facebook Page – you are not alone (well, you hopefully are as a family unless you are a key worker!) and there is lots of useful advice being shared on the page. This also relieves the burden on teaching and support staff from answering lots of questions – many of them too have children at home or are unwell:
A combination of the websites provided to guide study will be plenty for students to work from over the next two school weeks (remember, next week and the week after are the scheduled Easter break). By the time that is up (17th April), I will have provided further guidance on keeping learning going while the school remains closed. Even if children don’t learn loads of new stuff, reviewing their knowledge and previous learning is all part of the process of preparing for assessment in the future. This could save time along the line, and so is time well invested. At the end of a session, what can they tell you about what they have remembered or learnt that was new for example? The three best sources that children can use without support are repeated below:
https://www.coombedean.co.uk/assigned-homework/ – ClassCharts link for assigned tasks https://www.coombedean.co.uk/home-learning/ – Specific web links to topics by subject https://www.coombedean.co.uk/curriculum-intent/ – Curriculum Intent Organisers
The key thing to keep in mind is that many professionals would struggle to teach subjects that are not their specialism, or that they have not studied to a reasonable level.
The best example I can give is with being confronted by my 12 year old daughter; “This maths homework is impossible”. I asked her to explain what she had to do, and I had to agree (but didn’t tell her this – children pick up so much from the way we react to, and cope with, situations), but I even surprised myself when, after a Google search and a watch of a Corbett Maths video, I was able to model clearly to her how she could follow a clear process of finding out, independently of me, to be able to complete her homework. A week later, I still remember that the exterior angles of an irregular polygon add up to 360 degrees – something I’m sure I was never taught 25 years ago (although I probably wasn’t listening in that lesson)!
The best way you can support is to guide your children to make a schedule that they put together themselves, combining work from the sources above, and then encourage them to work on their tasks as independently as possible – using the support and guidance that is available.
Just think, where would we have been 30 years ago before we had access to the answers that the internet can provide?!