Dear parents/carers
As the school begins its plans to reopen, we will be making an amendment to the online learning. From the week beginning Monday 1st June, we will be using the lessons provided by the Oak National.
This is a government-backed scheme, where a group of leading teachers across the country have come together to plan lessons for every year group from KS1-KS4. In primary, they have planned three lessons a day – Maths, English and Foundation – and all of the resources for the lessons are all kept on the one website. Most also include some sort of demonstrative modelling of learning video followed by activities for the children to follow. The reason we are moving towards this model are so that we can ensure that any work done in the academy is aligned to work done at home, so we will be following these plans the days the children are in. Furthermore, the lessons are of a high quality (hence the government recommendation) and all resources are in one place. Also, in terms of teacher workload, with all teachers now in school two days a week with their groups, as well as on a rota to cover for the pupils of key-workers, it would be an unfair workload to also expect them to set online learning 5 days a week as well as keep on top of tracking and responding to the work produced.
As before, all we ask is that you do what you can each day. As I said earlier, we will follow these plans in the Academy as much as possible (please bear in mind that where feasible we will encourage outdoor learning as it is the government recommendation) so in terms of continuity for children coming in 2 days and being at home three days – as well as to ensure children not coming in are not disadvantaged by not receiving the same work – it is a fairer way to maintain equality for all.
As before, teachers will be asked to keep a track of the work completed each day, so please continue to upload evidence of any Maths, English and Foundation to class dojo. We will also be keeping Doodle Maths and English – as well as Hegarty Maths for years 5 and 6 – for homework, so please try to also keep up with these. Times Tables Rockstars and Readtheory are also still live subscriptions, so please feel free to dip into these too if you want to, along with the Seneca topics. However, we won’t be checking the usage of these; teachers will now only be tracking the Oak National lessons and evidence of these uploaded, so please ensure to upload a picture of the work completed daily.
Below are the steps to accessing the Oak National work:
Step 1: login to the Oak National website at: https://www.thenational.academy/ (or Google ‘Oak National’)
Step 2: select ‘classroom’ in the top-right corner
Step 3: select ‘schedule’ in the top-right corner
Step 4: select the correct year-group for your child
Step 5: choose your week, day and lesson (there will always be three lessons – Maths, English and Foundation – as well as PE with Joe Wicks)
Any questions or concerns regarding the work, please still dojo your teacher. However, please bear in mind they will be in school most of the week, so may not be able to respond until later in the day.
Yours sincerely
Mr Nocera, Head Teacher
