Blended Learning

Blended Learning is the term used to describe the combined approach to pupils' learning that incorporates the school provision for learning at home, both online and offline, together with the school provision when pupils are in school, either full time or partially.   With the continuing uncertainty that the current pandemic presents, our whole-school approach to blended learning seeks to ensure that pupils learning is able to progress as effectively as possible across any combination of these situations.

 

During periods of home learning, class teachers will provide a weekly learning plan.   This is sent out to all families via School Gateway and will contain all the necessary information for parents, including hyperlinks to activities and external resources.

 

The plans highlight those activities which are priorities and to which pupils can expect feedback, provided they are submitted by a certain date.  Beyond that date, teachers will endeavour to provide feedback if they can, but this is unlikely as they will have had to move on to the next block of planning.

Those pupils who are in school, will follow the same plan as has been provided for home learning.

 

In providing this information, staff try very hard to get the right balance of "not too easy, not too hard", making sure that instructions are clear and simple, whilst providing enough information.  This is obviously a very hard balance to get right for everyone, everytime.

 

Teachers create at least a couple of videos each week to support pupils' learning and these are posted in the children's Google Classroom so that families can access these at a time that best suits each family.  Likewise, links to key tasks etc are also posted there.

 

In Foundation Phase, due to the more practical nature of their learning activities, pupils may be asked to submit (for example) photographs of activities, or tasks undertaken in J2E (in Hwb) which can be 'saved' directly within the software package.  In Key Stage 2, pupils are asked to submit work through the dedicated function in Google Classroom.

 

We very much recognise that circumstances vary considerably between different households and that the available time and support available for children to be supported with their activities at home will vary greatly.  For this reason, we have decided not to undertake any live lessons, and ask that parents prioritise their children's home learning as follows (1 being the most important):

 

Please ensure that your child(ren):

1. Has the relevant usernames / passwords (Hwb & other software according to age) to access all our online learning and contact school office if these are not working for any reason.
2. Can access J2E and/or Google Classroom within Hwb and their Google Meet sessions. (depending on age, younger children likely to need more support)
3. Undertakes at least one daily numeracy* activity and at least one daily literacy* activity plus regular reading.
4. Completes and submits the priority feedback tasks as indicated in the weekly planning.  These will usually have a strong literacy / numeracy focus too.
5. Any other activities as indicated in the weekly planning.

 

* Numeracy might be from ‘doodle maths’, ‘My Maths’ assignments or other planned activities.

* Literacy might be RWI sounds practice, spelling shed or other planned activities.  Reading from either physical books or reading planet ebooks.

 

With the current exception of the Nursery, all class teachers offer several live 'check-in' sessions each week through Google Meet (in Hwb) to support pupil wellbeing and provide the opportunity for some face-to-face interaction for the majority of pupils.  Staff also aim to make telephone calls to all our families each week to see how our families are managing and whether there is any additional support that we can provide.

Online Software Products

These are the online products outside of hwb that we have licenced and are available to pupils at home.

Many pupils will also be familiar with other apps that they use in school on ipads, but we have not specifically licenced any of these for home use, so this will vary according to individual home circumstances.

 

All pupils and parents have been provided with their password information, but please forward any password enquiries to the school office.

 

 

 

* All pupils in Wales have a Hwb account – this is web-based and should work on any platform (laptop, chromebook, mac, tablet, phone) and provides pupils with access off Office 365, Google Classroom, GSuite, J2E etc. Please contact the school if you don’t have your Hwb username or password.