What does Remote Learning look like at Greenfield Primary School?

This information is intended to provide clarity and transparency to pupils and parents or carers about what to expect from remote education where national or local restrictions require entire cohorts (or bubbles) to remain at home.

At Greenfield, we pride ourselves on the high-quality remote education offer we provide for our children to ensure their learning continues to progress.

As Headteacher, Mr Ralph has an overarching responsibility for the quality and delivery of remote education, ensuring that our provision meets expectations for our whole school community.

Curriculum organisation and breadth of coverage remains the responsibility of our curriculum leader, Miss Hill, who in turn works with our team of subject leaders.

Our ICT leader Mr Milne has a key role in the deployment, administration and support of software, hardware and training.

For details of what to expect where individual pupils are self-isolating, please see the final section of this page.

What should my child expect from immediate remote education in the first day or two of pupils being sent home?

A pupil’s first day of being educated remotely might look different from our standard approach, while we take all necessary actions to prepare for a longer period of remote teaching.

We have provided training for children to be able to use both of these whilst at school.

Will my child be taught broadly the same curriculum as they would if they were in school?

High quality learning based around the same expectations and levels of engagement with our curriculum is our aim at Greenfield Primary School and we promote this throughout our remote education offer. The Curriculum will be broadly the same and follow a broadly similar timetable.

The schools planning and delivery in school is underpinned by the application of taught knowledge and skills and will be continued through remote learning methods.

Some adaptations in some subjects may be required, for example those requiring special resources or approaches that may be unavailable at home, eg investigating electricity in science or hockey in PE.

Therefore, adaptations will be made to ensure that all children can access the curriculum with the resources available to them at home.

Remote teaching and study time each day

How long can I expect work set by the school to take my child each day?

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will mirror the timetable for a usual school day as closely as possible. It is expected for FS/Key Stage 1 that pupils will access at least three hours of learning per day with Key Stage 2 pupils accessing four hours per day.

Foundation Stage

Phonics/English

Communication and Language

Maths

Wider Curriculum

Key Stage 1:

Phonics

English

Maths

Wider Curriculum

Key Stage 2:

English

Maths

Wider Curriculum

All age groups are expected to engage in sessions where:

• staff facilitate class/group social catch-up sessions with peers;
• additional staff input/support sessions and 1:1 support.

Accessing remote education

How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?

Microsoft Teams is used to deliver live input sessions following a daily timetable shared by teachers. Tasks are assigned by staff to children using the ‘assignments’ feature utilising other features of Teams, such as OneNote.

Children have had practice in school so all children are developing the use of this technology when accessing tasks.

Individual children’s emails & logons to Microsoft Teams have been emailed out to parents & carers.

If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?

We recognise that some pupils may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those pupils to access remote education:

All parents and carers have been contacted to establish if any digital equipment would be required for children to fully access our remote education provision.

We have a number of allocated devices that are available to be loaned out during remote learning. These would need to be signed for and collected to agree to the terms of use.

If you require any support accessing digital equipment, please contact school.

How will my child be taught remotely?

Where remote education is needed, this is high-quality and safe, and aligns as closely as possible with in-school provision. Remote learning offers a broad and balanced curriculum to all pupils.

We will continue to build our capability to educate pupils remotely.

All remote education will focus on the National Curriculum subjects for the relevant year group with four key sessions:

Phonics, English, Maths and a wider curriculum subject. These key areas are essential for all children to engage with their learning and provide the framework for learning in school to be enhanced.

We provide high-quality live input via Microsoft Teams which allows pupils to build on prior learning and make new connections by ensuring that pupils have time to demonstrate and consolidate their learning outcomes. Teaching staff will ensure that, whenever possible, collaboration is present through questioning and the chat feature on Microsoft Teams. As with in-school provision, we will ensure that Learning Objectives are understood by pupils and Success Criteria are developed to ensure learners play an active part in lessons.

Pupils will have opportunities to discuss and reflect on new learning throughout the live streamed input and teachers will incorporate Assessment for Learning (AFL) strategies to: establish prior knowledge and skills, ensuring that learning is challenging for all pupils. In order to model the expectations of a task, teachers will ensure a clear model is included in the live input and pupils have a clear idea of expected outcomes, and all learners are challenged and able to achieve.

We use Teams for remote education based on the success and feedback from teachers, parents and pupils during its trial use pre lockdown and the familiarity of its use within our teaching and learning approach.

What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?

As with in-school provision, we have the highest expectations of children's engagement. We expect all children to access our remote education provision for all sessions, and respond to tasks in a timely manner.

In regards to parental support, supporting school with setting routines to support your child’s education would be extremely beneficial in order to raise the engagement of your child with sessions.

All tasks will be created, set and pitched at the appropriate level for each individual child to ensure that they can engage with sessions, it is our aim that this will be as independently as possible.

How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?

To reflect the same practice as in school, a daily register will be taken for each online session to check which children are:

• Present and punctual during online sessions
• Responding and completing activities on Teams

If there are any circumstances arising where engagement is a concern, class teachers, support staff and senior leaders will contact parents/carers via phone call to discuss how we can support in raising the engagement of your child with our remote education provision. In some cases, support from Education Welfare Services may be beneficial.

How will you assess my child’s work and progress?

Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children. For example, whole-class feedback or verbal comments via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows:

• Have the highest expectations of all pupils in relation to quality of work produced.
• Be positive and place value of the effort of the pupil to engage the learning
• Reflect and take account of the circumstances of both the learner and teacher.
• Following the marking & feedback policy to mirror in-school practice.
• Provide regular feedback on every child's work via Teams for each subject. This may happen via live feedback in sessions.
• Ensure that children are aware of the next steps within their learning.

How will you work with me to help my child who needs additional support from adults at home to access remote education?

At Greenfield Primary, we recognise that some pupils, for example some pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families, and we will work with parents and carers to support those pupils. The vast majority of these children will be accommodated in school wherever possible, except in ‘isolation’ situations.

Class teachers will provide opportunities for a personalised approach to learning for all groups including SEND so that activities are suitable to their abilities. Furthermore, our class teachers and support staff will work closely with families to deliver remote education for pupils with SEND, discussing how the personalised approach can be best adapted to meet the needs of those children as a dialogue between parents and practitioners.

If my child is not in school because they are self-isolating, how will their remote education differ from the approaches described above?

Where individual pupils need to self-isolate but the majority of their peer group remains in school, how remote education is provided will likely differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges of teaching pupils both at home and in school.

We will aim to reflect their remote education as closely as possible to the approach described above and the curriculum offer their peers are receiving at school.

Using Teams, activities will be set for children to access at home (as described above) and will be similar to the activities that their peers will be completing in class so that they are maintaining a parity with them. This will support with their return to school so that they can integrate back into school provision easily as they will have received the same curriculum content.

Where it is possible, we will live stream lesson input via Microsoft Teams.