Dear Parents,
Following the government announcement of school closures, we wanted to let you know what our plans are.
Our plan is to continue to educate the children with your support. I often say that children only learn best when school and home work together, never has this been more true!
Teachers have been given the email addresses of every parent who has provided them to us. We will be emailing out activities for your children to do every couple of days. Teachers will be available by email to offer any advice and support you need to support your child to complete that work. This will continue up to the Easter Holidays, if schools are closed that long, and will then resume after the Easter Holidays, if we continue to be closed. We have sent your child home with some resources to enable them to do this work during this closure, we hope these help.
For those parents who do not have access to good internet or computer facilities we will print out packs of all the resources and planning we email out and we will have them available at school for parents to come and collect.
We are not expecting you to run a full school day every day at home. Please do what you can as not only does every little help but it will give the children a sense of routine. With all other activities shutting down children may well find themselves stuck in the house for days at a time. Not only will the activities we give you continue their education but we also hope that it will help stop boredom. The children will find it very tough at first adapting to this new situation. The best advice I can give is get into a daily routine. Have set times for the children to do bits of school work and times for them to play and relax. Once established it will make your lives much easier and it will give the children the sense of certainty they need.
For a daily routine we would suggest after breakfast doing about an hour of either Maths or English. Followed by a walk outside or time in the garden. Then about an hour of the other subject you did not do before. Have some lunch and after lunch, half an hour of quiet time away from computers, iPads and tv. Board games, puzzles or books are good activities.
Following that something creative, such as art activities with some more outside time. As I have said we will send out planning and resources to support you with all of this. One parent had the very good idea of still getting the children to wear their school uniform while doing this learning. This may well help your child distinguish between the home learning and normal weekend and holiday days.
Staff will continue to be in school for as long as we can and we will be manning the phones during the day. If you need any help please do ring. If you are in self isolation and you have no one to pick up basic groceries please phone us and we will do all we can to help you.
If you are concerned about your child or another child, then please also phone us and we will talk to you about how to help. If you need to get in contact with me directly please email me. My email is [email protected] I will respond to all emails as quickly as I can.
If you are finding this whole situation overwhelming then please do get in contact. We have a fantastic family support worker Sheena West who will be continuing to work throughout this period and will be available to talk to you on the phone or via email about any familyissues, children’s behaviour, sleeping routines or any other issues that impact on the children.
For those parents designated key workers school will be open as normal for you on Monday. We have been told the full list of who is a key worker will be out tomorrow. If you fall into that category then please contact the school. We have also been asked to support you by being open over the Easter Holidays. We are planning for this and we should be able to achieve this for you.
We are planning on the school kitchens being able to offer all children a packed lunch, which parents can pick up every day. This is only possible as all Infant children get free meals. This does depend on us receiving our normal delivery of food. If we can pull this off we will send you a text message on Monday morning with instructions on how to order one. If you are not well and are having to self isolate please ring us and we may be able to help get food to you.
We are currently looking at other ways we may be able to help and we will continue to use the school text messaging service to keep you updated.
In these unprecedented times we all need to pull together and support each other. As a school we want you to know we will continue to be here for you.
Thank you
Matt Greenhalgh
Headteacher
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