Monday, 23 March 2020

Dear Parents,

Here is the latest information about how we plan to support the children to continue their learning journey at home. We are at an early stage of doing this, so it’s likely our plans will evolve over time, but we think this is a good start.

Last week we sent home a suggested daily routine – we think it’s really important that you establish this routine at home to support the children through this unusual time. As such, we are going to continue setting activities through what would have been the Easter Holidays – albeit they will be slightly different.

To support you with the routine I wanted to highlight three things that we will be doing, effective immediately:

• Daily PE workout with Joe Wicks (on his youtube channel). Start the day, the right way…
• Brilliant Bedtime Stories – 6.30pm every day, on our school Facebook page. What a great time to develop a love of reading in all our children – we are going to be sharing lots of stories.
• Mr D’s Weekly Challenge – At midday every Monday, I will be on Facebook live, on the school’s Facebook page, setting a weekly challenge. This will be tested on a Friday with an online activity either on Facebook or on Zoom (more details to follow).

Phone Calls:

From tomorrow, staff will start phoning you, to speak to children and see how they are getting on with their work and to offer advice and support. We know that some children are shy when talking on the phone, but we are going to try to develop this skill in the coming weeks. This week, the calls will be as and when, but staff will then agree a date and time for a future call with you.

Home Learning: www.holmeschool.cumbria.sch.uk/home-learning

Each week the teachers will be posting a weekly learning overview to our school website (link above). This will include links to videos, activities to complete online, practical tasks and important times when they will invite them to a ‘conference call’ on Zoom - where they can get together as a class and have a chat/do a quiz. The overview document will contain links that explain what to do and when to do it.

Class Dojo:

We are encouraging the children to upload their photos or work to Class Dojo, in their portfolio. Teachers will be regularly posting messages, reviewing work and giving the children encouragement. It’s a great communication tool between the children and their teachers.

Kahoot!

One of the apps that we are going to use during our ‘conference calls’ is Kahoot! A quiz app. If possible, we’d ask that you download this to a device so that the children can use them during our broadcasts. It’s a great interactive way for them to still do activities with others. During our conference calls/Facebook live sessions, we will give a ‘game-pin’ which will allow them to access our quiz.

Please don’t panic about any of this technology. It’s pretty simple and we are on-hand to support. If you struggle at any point with technology, remember that we are offering a laptop loan scheme which can be initiated by emailing the school office: admin@holmeschool.cumbria.sch.uk, we only have a limited number available though, so please only request this if absolutely necessary. You will need to arrange a convenient time to collect this from school.

Finally, I want to thank you for your continued support and understanding. I was appointed as substantive headteacher a month ago, and at that point, no-one would have envisaged that we’d get to a point where we needed to close schools down. It’s been a challenging few weeks for us all, but it has confirmed why I wanted to be headteacher at this very special school: we pull together, we encourage one another, and we put children first. In the most challenging of times our school motto, ‘Happy Children Succeed’ is a great guide for everything we do in this period. Children will not look back on this time and remember the specific activities that they did, they will remember how the adults in their life pulled together to make sure that they were happy, resilient and able to continue their learning journey.

Keep smiling, we’re in this together and we’re here to help in any way that we can.

With best wishes and stay safe,

Craig Dewar-Willox

Headteacher

Emergency Number: 07503 543507