Dear Parent / Carer
Well, this has certainly been an unusual and unexpected start to the year! Firstly, I’d like to wish you all a happy new year and hope this letter finds you and your family safe and well. I would like to apologise for any confusion and anxiety caused by the reopening of school on Monday but we found out at the same time as you at 8pm on Monday evening that we had to close, despite being told that all Schools must open for the Spring Term as planned the previous day. It has been a very challenging few days to say the least, but a huge positive is that we got to see lots of our lovely children again for one day on Monday following the Christmas holiday.
As we approach the end of the first week of lockdown and home schooling, I just wanted to reassure you that you are doing an amazing job. Many of us, like many of you, are working, looking after vulnerable people and home schooling our own children so we totally understand the pressures you are facing at the moment.
School is open but only for Key Worker parents who have no other childcare options and for our vulnerable children as home is the safest place for everyone at the moment.
Thanks to a massive team effort from all of the fantastic staff at Grindon Infant School we have now started remote learning for those children at home and providing provision for some children in school. For those children at home, staff are working incredibly hard, as they did during the last lockdown, to teach Key Worker children in School and also support you with tasks for the children to complete at home to ensure they don’t have gaps in their learning. The children cannot afford to not complete the work this time as they missed so much learning last year-we really need your help to ensure the children don’t fall behind with their learning.
To make this easier we have created a new section on the website called Home Learning and every year group has their own page where a plan for the week plus resources will be placed to support you. This will be added on a Friday for the following week allowing any of you who are working to plan your week or maybe even complete some activities during the weekend if during the week is a struggle. Each week children will be asked to complete a daily Phonics, English, Maths and Topic activity. Spellings and handwriting will be a weekly task. There will be a mix of resources available; videos to watch, games/activities on Purplemash and some may be paper based activities. Reminders for daily activities will be sent via MarvellousMe daily. The work set is in line with what we would have been teaching in School to ensure the children keep up and staff will continue from where you last taught when the children return. I am aware that many of you are tasked with working on your own jobs from home and this is conflicting with your child’s learning needs. That is why we are sending the work as we are, so you can take your time and fit it in wherever you can. Videos can be watched over again to improve understanding. Remember, in school your child is required to learn alone for some of the time. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions with the work as we are happy to help in any way we can. Remember to also try to prioritise some ‘down time’; in school your child has lunch break and playtime so they need this break.
We would like you to keep all of the home learning that your child completes and when the children return they can bring it in to show us as I am sure they will be very proud of it. We are also asking you to email us each week some work that the children are proud of and staff will still be choosing a ‘Star of the Week’ and sending MarvellousMe badges to praise the children and keep them motivated. We have already received some emails and videos showing what the children are doing; this has really cheered us all up!
You should have all now received a telephone call from your child’s Class Teacher informing you of how we are going to support you. If you have not then please ring the School Office. We know lots of the learning is internet based so we have offered paper based copies of the resources and books for children to write in for those parents who would like them. We really are trying our best to support you and if there is something that we have not thought of that we can help with then pleased contact us.
The staff and I are really missing all of the children already and please remember that although we are closed then we are still available to offer help and support. You can contact us via telephone Monday to Friday between 8:30am and 4:00pm or if you leave us a voicemail then we will call you back. Alternatively you can email us through the school website. We are in the process of setting up new email addresses for each year group so that you can contact the Teachers directly. As soon as these are set up we will let you know.
Finally, I would like to thank you all for your understanding and kind messages of support. It has been a very turbulent few days where we had to respond quickly to government directives. However, we have received so many complimentary comments from you and this has helped us a lot to focus on ‘getting on with the job’ and meeting the needs of our children and their families. We are all here, working hard to support you all and will continue to do so throughout this period of lockdown.
Stay Safe and Kind Regards
Mrs A Charlton
Head Teacher
