Remote & Home Learning

The remote curriculum: what is taught to pupils at home

A pupil’s first day or two 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.

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

As part of the DfE’s guidance with regards to the return to school, they have clarified that remote learning will need to remain a key part of our provision. 

“remote education, where needed, is high quality and aligns as closely as possible with in-school provision: schools and other settings continue to build their capability to educate pupils remotely, where this is needed.”

There is clearly a need for Blue Coat Primary School to be prepared for children requiring Remote Education, should they be unable to come to school due to COVID protocols.  This could take the form of individuals, class bubbles or a school-wide lockdown.  The approaches that were highly successful prior to the return to school will need to be retained, including the schools use of Seesaw and Tapestry as a learning platform.  This will be in place immediately after a lockdown is introduced.  Information will be emailed to parents as quickly as possible.

Following the first few days of remote education, will my child be taught broadly the same curriculum as they would if they were in school?

• We teach the same curriculum remotely as we do in school. Those children who are in school as critical worker or vulnerable learners will follow an identical curriculum.

• The school curriculum may be adapted so as to best meet the needs of remote learning. For example, a topic area may be swapped with one that would, under normal circumstance, come later in the year as it would better suit remote provision.

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 take pupils broadly the following number of hours each day:

• Primary school-aged pupils 4-5 hours

Accessing remote education

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

We use two online platforms to deliver our remote learning. Tapestry is used in Early Years. This is used throughout the year and ensures a seamless transition to remote learning. This also means that parents and carers, as well as teachers and teaching assistants, can continue to contribute to assessment observations of children during remote learning.

Seesaw was selected for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 classes. Even though there is a cost implication to Seesaw, we felt that this was excellent value for money as it better supports the curriculum and the learning that we provide. Other platforms were less user friendly for staff and much less child friendly. As ever, choices were made based on what was best for the children and their progress.

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:

Devices are available from school for short term loans.  The school acted swiftly in order to ascertain any families with no suitable devices for children from the DfE device order scheme.  We have further netbooks available, should additional families request them.  Should, for any reason, a family not be able to have access to the internet at home, the school can support this provision through the DfE’s “get help with technology” scheme.  I

f there are still barriers to internet access, the school can provide paper copies of the learning for families. 

Live sessons are timetabled to ensure that all siblings are able to access their class’s provision each day, even if not each sibling has a device for themselves.  At Blue Coat Primary School, all children have access to a high quality remote learning curriculum.

How will my child be taught remotely?

We use a combination of the following approaches to teach pupils remotely:

The school uses a blended approach to remote learning provision. This approach includes, but is not restricted to:

• Live sessions for all children throughout the school. EY will have at least one live session with other year groups having at least 2 sessions. These are organised to “top and tail” the start and end of the day. The rationale behind this is to support good learning routines and ensuring that the children are accessing remote learning for the time expected each day. This also facilitates social interaction with teachers and peers. This was highlighted by children as an area for development following the previous lockdown and is designed to support children’s emotional wellbeing. 

• Recorded lessons. These can be in the form of lessons recorded by the teacher or teaching assistant, or in the form of a lesson recorded by a third party i.e. White Rose Maths. These are carefully selected by the teacher in order for them to sharply match the curriculum and the learning needs of the children. 

• Resources, such as games, tasks, quizzes and worksheets. These can be created by the teacher and uploaded to Seesaw or Tapestry, or they can be created by third parties. Again, they are only selected if they support the learning expected. 

• Online books. These are provided for children to read as part of their guided reading learning. They are accompanied with questions across the VIPERS reading domains (vocabulary, infer, predict, explain, retrieve, summarise). The Oxford Owls resources are utilized but these are complimented with other texts and/or short videos to support the learning. 

• Tasks and projects to be completed at home. This will include an introduction and an explanation (that may take the form of a live or recorded lesson, or a written explanation) and children will be able to complete them at home. They are designed so that all children have access to the resources required. 

• A combination of live and remote worships will take place in order to support the children’s spiritual development. These will ensure that collective worship continues to take place during lockdown. Content will be aimed at supporting emotional wellbeing.

Engagement and feedback

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

We understand the difficulties that many parents have with supporting children during their remote learning. Parents with busy lives are not able to spend considerable time helping their children to access learning. As such, we have designed our remote learning provision to be independently accessible to the children. We would ask parents to ensure that children are set up with their device at the point of their first live lesson in the morning. We also expect that they may need some support accessing live lessons in the first instance but they should soon become independent. However, just like within school there may be some times when children need support. Whilst we shall do everything we can to minimize these instances, parents should be prepared that all children will need some input and guidance along the way. For younger children, they may need support in recording their outcomes for example.

Expectations for children have been made clear. This includes the clear instruction that learning completed independently will be prioritised for praise by teachers.

Children will need simple resources including a pencil, a sharpener, a rubber, paper and a ruler. You may wish to print some learning out for them but we have selected Seesaw as it permits children to edit and write on any worksheets electronically for submission.

Teachers and teaching assistants will provide regular feedback on children’s learning, which you will be able to see via the comments alongside their posts. They will also make telephone contact with all parents around once a fortnight where any issues that need to be addressed will be as well as positive feedback on learning and engagement. A class email address has been created and details have been distributed to parents. Should you have any concerns or questions, we would encourage parents to use this communication device.

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

Children’s learning will be checked regularly by teachers and teaching assistants and at least daily.  Each milepost has organized staff to ensure that posts are approved and given feedback even when class teachers are in school supporting critical worker and vulnerable children.

Should the teacher have any concerns, they will bring them up during their regular telephone conversations home, this is also an opportunity for parents to raise any concerns.  Concerns or questions can also be sent via the class email. 

For any urgent issues, we would ask parents to telephone the school directly.  Please note, during school closures office staff will be taking calls from 8.30am to 1pm.  After this time please email admin@bluecoat.gloucs.sch.uk

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 quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows:

All learning will be continually assessed by teachers so as to ascertain progress made by the children. This is made challenging by the nature of teachers being unable to ensure that learning is conducted in the same or similar conditions, including the level of support provided. However, through ongoing parental communication, teachers will be able to analyse learning for assessment opportunities. These will then go on to inform the challenge and pace of subsequent learning.

Assessment can come through:

• Mini tests or quizzes such as spelling tests.
• Answers to questions within learning, such as is shown within guided reading or mathematics worksheets
• Explanations from the children as to how they answered the learning (providing evidence for deeper understanding)
• The quality of outcomes and the depth of detail or skills contained within it
• Discussions and comments from parents
• Verbal responses during live sessions

Additional support for pupils with particular needs

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

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 in the following ways:

As children are learning from home, the ability for teachers to provide some levels of support is diminished. For example, when a child is finding their learning difficult to access, we are not able to provide one to one or small group adult support for them. However, learning is mapped to the needs of individuals in order to provide accessible challenge for all. This includes:

• The differentiation of resources, for example providing different reading texts for different groups of children or individuals
• The differentiation of questions or tasks, for example providing different levels of questions within Mathematics
• The differentiation of questioning within live sessions. This involves gauging the level of challenge a question has or asking children to expand on their answer
• The differentiation of feedback in order to maximise subsequent progress.

There will also be some occasions when a member of staff working with an individual will provide a bespoke curriculum, that matches the content of that given to their peers but is based around their individual needs.

Remote education for self-isolating pupils

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.

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

It may be the case that individuals within class are isolating. This creates a different set of challenges as the class teacher and TAs will still be in class and, therefore, will not have capacity to set learning in the same way as previously described. In this situation, children will be asked to follow the curriculum as set out in The Oak Academy website https://classroom.thenational.academy/. This resource recommended by the Department for Education and provides daily lessons across the curriculum. Teachers will also be asked to post a video letting the child know what has been happening in the class, at least weekly. Children within the class will be asked to provide some videos explaining what they have been learning, or in the case of younger children, simply communicating with the child. These will be uploaded to the Seesaw or Tapestry account. Children will also be asked to use their Oxford Owls accounts to select age appropriate books to maintain their reading.