COVID-19 Latest
Update for Parents: Tuesday 2nd June 2020
This update explores:
DfE Guidance re some face-to-face contact for Y10 from Monday 15th June
– Y10 LIVE online lessons – Noadswood goes live into your homes!
– Government Guidance for Parents and Carers
– Y7-9 Educational Provision
– Community Survey
– Student Survey
– Interhouse Competitions
– Stationery Top Up
– Music lessons
Details from the DfE Guidance re: some face-to-face contact for Y10 from Monday 15th June:
As explained last week, Headteachers were issued with Department for Education guidance on Monday
25th May 2020 about some face-to-face support required to take place in secondary schools for students in Year 10 from Monday 15th June 2020. All of this is subject to the Government’s 5 tests regarding the management of the Coronavirus continuing to be met.
We are excited to be welcoming more students back on to the site – we’ve missed them, apart from all the other considerations! – and we will do so with absolute adherence to the guidance with which I have been issued.
Key points from the secondary guidance are as follows:
– Secondary schools should offer this face-to-face support to supplement the remote education of Year 10 pupils, which should remain the predominant type of provision during at least this term (for us, as with all of the schools and colleges across the New Forest group with whom I meet weekly, this will blend live lessons, interactive PowerPoints and similar and assignments set through Frog.)
– Schools are able to have a quarter of the Year 10 in school at any one time (For us, this is 48 students at a time).
– Vulnerable children and children of critical workers in other year groups should be accommodated as of now.
– Secondary schools should aim to practise social distancing in line with the measures the
government is asking everyone to adopt in public and in workplaces, including keeping students
2 metres apart from each other wherever possible (We are writing our full risk assessment to include this and a host of health and safety measures which will be shared with you before Monday June 15th).
– Ensuring sufficient distance between pupils will mean group sizes at Noadswood of Y10s will be
12 maximum.
– Mixing between any different groups of pupils will be avoided in all our planning, and where rotas are used, secondary schools should avoid split day rotas within the same day and ensure that only a quarter of children are ever in the school on any one day. Our planning will reflect this.
– Vulnerable children and children of critical workers in all year groups should still be encouraged
to attend full-time provision as now.
Our plans for this face-to-face support, blended with live online lessons and other remote learning, are taking shape, and we look forward to sharing them with you.
Live online lessons: Y10
In the meantime, thank you for the support you have provided to your sons and daughters so that we have had really super turn out at our live, online lessons so far this week. We hope your children have enjoyed these lessons, felt supported with their learning and felt that connection with some teachers again that is so important right now.
If your child hasn’t yet joined these lessons, please refer them to the Frog Portal where all of their
work is set. There, they should click on the Year 10 icon where they will find an instruction video by Mr Hewitt and a copy of the Live Lessons timetable – as you and they will see in the video, the system depends on students keeping a very close eye on their school email box. They will get an email which will advise them of the time of the lessons to which they are invited, and the links in the emails are personalised to the correct groups, so your son or daughter can’t join the wrong class.
Should you have any questions about this provision, or any technical hitches, please don’t hesitate to message Mr Hewitt or your child’s House Leader or myself via ePraise so we can point you and your children in the right direction.
Link to the Government guidance for parents and carers:
The document has been updated for you in line with what I explained above and with the most up to date emphases in terms of guidance – worth a browse if you haven’t looked at it before or in a while so that you understand why we and all the schools and colleges across the Forest are planning in exactly the way we are:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents- and-carers
Educational Provision: Y7-9
Provision for these year groups will continue to blend assignments with interactive PowerPoints, all assigned through the Frog Portal as usual. We wish so much we were at a point of being able to invite groups from other Year Groups into school, but I know we have your absolute support of working to the letter of the Government and Department for Education Guidance to keep our community as safe as possible.
Please repeat to your children that they can reach out to their teachers/ELSAs/LSAs on ePraise at any time, or to me on ePraise or to headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk and we will come right back to them. A student messaged me yesterday and I am going to give her a call over Microsoft Teams to talk through her worries about her learning. For some, that’s the ideal. For others, ePraise or email will do the trick or maybe a phone call is their preference. All they need to do is reach out to someone and we will do the rest.
Lots of you have completed our Community Survey – thank you for doing so and more on this below – and Mr Crowley and I have read all of the comments. Some of you have touched on your children really benefiting when a tutor or teacher/House Leader or ELSA/LSA has reached out to them as an individual, for a check in and a boost, and that the reverse, has, obviously, been the case if your child has not received that personal contact, despite all the other info and group messaging there has been. I am grateful for the accurate feedback on our coverage of this part of our provision, and am pleased to tell you that, as a result of this survey, we are implementing a system of weekly personal check ins from the week beginning Monday June 8th for all students in Years 7-9.
For most children, it will be, as I say, an encouraging chat and a boost, but if they raise specific issues about their engagement with their learning or their wellbeing, the member of staff will either speak to you themselves or refer it to the correct colleague to do so. More on the detail of this system at the end of the week, when we have talked it through fully with colleagues.
Community Survey:
Around 65% of you have completed the Community Survey – thank you! As well as the follow up from this already in train as outlined above, we have also begun to put together further support for Year 11, as they grapple with their next steps from September and their uncertainty about all this.
On Frog, where all of the work is assigned, there is a Year 11 icon beneath which the students will find pre-reading materials for KS5 learning in a range of subjects that Noadswood departments have put together, as well as links to college information.
We will continue to populate this over the next few weeks with fresh information and ideas, along with a
weekly bulletin just for Year 11s covering the following sorts of topics:
– Thoughts for the week from me and other Leadership Team members/House Leaders,
– Preparing for College – input from each of our local colleges,
– Careers and next step tips from Gordon Lewis,
– Tips to prepare to study each subject (one covered each week)
– Updates to keep the students in touch with matters specific to them such as Prom ideas (promised for a time when this will be safe to organise, whenever that will be), plans for their GCSE Outcomes Day in August etc,
– Noadswood Alumni inspirational stories
I want this to help sustain the amazing connection we have had with this year group for 5 years at a time when they need us in a unique way – they are NOT out of sight, out of mind, and we want to go all out to show them this.
Student Survey:
On Monday 8th June, we will be surveying the students on ePraise to gather their views about their remote learning, their wellbeing, what they’ve learnt about themselves and has gone well during lockdown. We will also ask them about the worries on their mind about their education and wellbeing, both in lockdown and about more time in school, when the time is right and safe for them, depending on their year group and Government guidance.
I can’t wait to hear from them all and to come back to them and you with what’s going well and the actions we will take in the light of their comments.
Interhouse Competitions: See Frog Portal
The House Leaders have been working hard to devise and coordinate a weekly schedule of Interhouse Competitions for all students to join in with, to create, online, the spirit of competition and fun we always have at Noadswood.
All your child needs to do is go on to the usual Frog Portal, and they’ll see the icon about it at the top of the Home Page. Once they click on it, they’ll see the details of the first competition which is to encourage the youngsters to use ePraise as much as possible by downloading the app, if they’re able to, and to log
in regularly to read messages to them and to reach out to teachers or other members of staff they’d like
to connect with. As well as creating the spirit of competition between the houses, this will help with the all-important sustaining of adult/student relationships that is a real focus for us and of this update.
We’d love it if you’d support us and your children by prompting them to get on board with the competition each week, and I will promote it in my next letter to the students tomorrow.
Stationery Top-Up: Wednesday 3rd June 9.30-10.30am School Car Park
You may have seen on social media that on Wednesday 3rd June, we are hosting a drive through stationery collection opportunity. If your child is in need of a small stationery pack (exercise book, pen, pencil, rubber, paper, and a set of colouring pencils), we invite you to attend our drive through collection point. Mrs Loveday will be in the school car park between 9.30am and 10.30am to issue the packs.
In order to maintain social distancing guidelines, please do not get out of your car, and, obviously, this cannot be an opportunity for groups of students or parents to meet one another, or to go on to site to collect any of their property or books.
We have 80 packs available on this occasion and we want to ensure we are reaching our most vulnerable students and those families who would really benefit from these small extras, so if you’re in that situation, please pop up to the school.
If you are unable to receive a pack on this occasion, but you really need one for your child(ren), please let Mrs Loveday know via ePraise and we will do what we can to help.
Music Lessons:
The instrumental teachers we work with at Noadswood are now offering online tuition for this half term at a cost of £40 which our Finance Manager, Mrs Drabble, has made available for you to pay online. There is also a Safeguarding document for you to read, to reassure you about how this would work in
practice (click here to access the document). Lessons are available in:
– Drums
– Woodwind
– Piano
– Voice
– Guitar
If you would like your child to resume their music tuition, please could you make your payment using our online system, as usual, and then Mrs Drabble will pass on the information which you and your child will need to begin to access the remote learning and, of course, to liaise with the individual teachers.
If you have any questions about this, please pop them in an email to finance@noadswood.hants.sch.uk or to headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
Thank you for reading this letter through to the end!
I am thankful, indeed, for your communication with us, support of our school and inspiring us to be the best we can be for your children and each other, as these challenging times continue.
All the very best,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team.
Update for Parents/Carers: Tuesday 26th May 2020
This update:
– Wraps up Mental Health Awareness Week
– Invites you to share your thoughts, and contribute to our planning and risk assessment compilation via our Community Survey
– Updates you regarding Y10 online live lessons from Monday June 1st
– Explains the School Nursing Team’s support packages
Thank You – Mental Health Awareness Week
Thank you, on behalf of tutors, House Leaders and all of us to those of you who supported Mental Health Awareness Week and prompted your children to get involved in some of the activities, a selection of which are in my most recent letter to students. Do encourage them to send more pictures in, if they do any of the activities or similar in the break to headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
For me, the wellbeing agenda and a culture of kindness needs to be a matter of policy in our school and in our country; I am so keen for us do more overt work around this to support our young people and our staff still more consistently than ever before, now and in the new future ahead.
Take a look at the article below by Mark Rowland, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation, who captures this brilliantly well, making sensible points about wellbeing needing to be a key point of all risk assessments and planning forwards from this time apart we are currently navigating through:
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/kindness-has-given-us-hope-during-coronavirus-now-it-must-be- in-every-government-policy-2857901?bblinkid=224720098&bbemailid=22038479&bbejrid=1512600331
Community Survey:
You will have received an ePraise message connecting you to a Community Survey for all parents/carers of young people in every year group, exploring your views on remote/online learning, communication and wellbeing during this long time apart. I am so keen to hear your views and to follow up on where you feel there are gaps or a mixed experience
There is also a specific question for those of you with Y10 students about your thoughts on their possible attendance in school later in next half term in small, socially distanced groups, supported by a robust risk assessment around hygiene and health and safety.
As you know, we are awaiting the Government update around the progress with their 5 key tests and guidance that will then come from this, still heralded to come our way on Thursday May 28th (and any other key scientific/medical/Department for Education that also emerges) before updating you further on our plans.
But we now know the following from the Government’s Daily Bulletin to schools yesterday, Monday 25th
May 2020:
‘The government has announced that secondary schools should offer face-to-face support for a quarter of Year 10 and 12 pupils at any one time from 15 June. This is in addition to the current provision for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers in all year groups.’
We understand the level of national interest and concern about this; we will ensure that what we deliver, at the right time, is in line with the latest national safety directives and guidance, in common with all our New Forest partner schools and colleges.
We continue to plan and prepare meticulously for more people to be on site, and we are compiling and discussing with our Governors the school’s risk assessment to help us to understand the best ways we can safely open to more Y10 students and colleagues.
We know that whilst no school can eliminate the risk that is currently out there regarding COVID 19, we can work to put in place health and safety measures to keep the risk as low as possible at Noadswood as we bring the appropriately organised groups of Y10 into school from around June 15th, whilst maintaining the following provision:
– Our Keyworker in school learning,
– Some further very small group interventions with some Y10s (new) and with some students in other year groups who need specific support (as throughout the lockdown),
– Remote learning/interactive learning/wellbeing support and check ins, and now some live learning provision.
Your views on all of this are now to be a key ingredient of this ongoing planning.
Y11 parents/carers also have some separate questions in our survey – we do not want your young people to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and I am keen to know what more we can do, in liaison with partner colleges and providers to help them prepare for next year.
We would therefore be incredibly thankful for everyone taking the time to complete this survey – you will play a powerful role in informing our ongoing thinking, with your thoughts to date and suggestions for the future. I can’t wait to see the outcomes of the survey, and there will be no concern/query that is a nuisance.
Year 10 Online Live Lessons:
On Friday 22nd May, teachers in safe, socially distanced pairs, came into school to get familiar with the technology and teaching approaches needed to deliver our schedule of online live lessons for Y10 from Monday 1st June, about which Mr Hewitt has written to parents/carers and Y10 students in recent days. I would like to thank publicly Mr Finn, Mr Wells, Mr Moody and Mr Hewitt for all of the work that has gone into preparing for this launch behind the scenes, as well as every member of staff taking the leap of faith they need to in order to develop this essential teaching and learning approach in our school.
We know you will support us with urging your sons/daughters to log in for all of the lessons that apply to them on the published schedule, and to get in touch straightaway by ePraise or email if they hit any technical buffers of any kind so we can help.
We will also be reaching out to those of you who don’t have the necessary kit to make accessing these lessons easy – another key reason for completing the Community Survey, as we ask questions about the equipment your children have available to them in these pressured times for everyone.
The letter issued by Mr Hewitt is below as a reminder – you and your children couldn’t read this too often or absorb it too deeply so they really can benefit from this schedule of lessons. We are excited to connect with the students in this way and to get feedback to continue refining our practice to make this work effectively for everyone:
School Nursing Service:
I have been sent a variety of support with wellbeing for us all from the School Nursing Service in the last couple of days.
The first is a family wellbeing pack, the link to which is here:
Family Wellbeing Pack – Click to View
It includes an update for you about the Service’s work at this time, and provides links to wellbeing resources and ideas similar to those on our Frog Wellbeing Portal but worth a glance if you’d like a fresh approach to this sort of thing, and it’s good to give a shout out to what all services are doing while we are all apart – it could be the one with advice that works for you or your child when nothing else has.
There is also a new parent advice service coming on stream on Monday June 1st – ChatHealth – a text messaging service for parents and carers of children aged 5-19, all the details and the text number for which are in the picture below. This service will be in addition to the service already established for young people which I will promote in my first letter to your sons/daughters after the break.
We hope that all of the youngsters have a happy, safe half term break, and that everyone has a good, peaceful week together – we will be back with you with updates following the completion of the survey and the Government updates on and around Thursday May 28th when we return for the next half term, still close and together while apart, on Monday 1st June.
With our best wishes and thanks for all of your support and forbearance, Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team.
Update to Parents and Carers: Monday 18th May 2020
This update explains:
– Provision for Y10 from Monday June 1st onwards and from later on in June
– Mental Health Awareness Week
– Update on our Year 6 Transition Project
– School support for your child’s wellbeing
Provision for Year 10 and update regarding Remote Learning:
As many of you will know, the Prime Minister’s announcement and ensuing guidance throughout last week included that, from Monday June 1st, ‘at the earliest, we are asking … secondary schools and colleges to offer Year 10 some face to face support to supplement their remote education’. The reason for placing our particular focus there is obvious – this year group face the culmination of their qualifications
in less than 12 months’ time from right now.
You can read the official guidance here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents- and-carers/reopening-schools-and-other-educational-settings-from-1-june
At Noadswood, we are going to take a staged and careful approach to fulfilling this aim.
Provision for Year 10 from Monday June 1st:
From Monday June 1st, we will be providing all Y10 students with a timetable of at least one live online lesson, per subject, per week to supplement their existing programme of remote learning.
In this way, they will ‘see’ teachers live, hear their voices live and begin to re-establish that all important connection, as well as benefit from their input, their structuring of lessons, and an opportunity to ask questions on the screen during each lesson so they can get real time help.
This timetable will be published for you and for them, and will give a real impetus to the ‘school at home’ day and week – they will join the lessons via Microsoft Teams at the same time as their classmates and be taught for a 45 minute or so lesson that will include input of various kinds and time to carry out activities.
These lessons will be recorded and available to watch again or later should one have to be missed for other reasons and commitments in the home.
Mr Hewitt is writing to all of the students in Y10 with the detail of this plan, information about how to get set up on Microsoft Teams via their school email addresses and a video to help.
We will be following up the letter with support for individuals and as many shout outs to the students as possible so that they sign up and commit to this learning. Your support with this will be invaluable, as will letting us know if your son/daughter does not have access to the technology needed to make this work – we will do our all to help.
We will, of course, expect highest levels of engagement and good, sensible behaviours for learning during these live lessons, as well as appropriate safeguarding – photos/screenshots of the lesson cannot be taken and shared on any platform at all for good reason or silly! This work depends on the ultimate in mutual respect and safety, and we would follow up formally with any student who deviates from this in any way.
In addition to this provision, we will be inviting some Y10 students with specific educational needs to join the students who’ve been in school throughout lockdown for some help and instruction to support them with their remote learning.
We will not be inviting greater numbers of Y10 students than this in until at least around Monday 15th
June – date to be confirmed nearer the time, and this is for three important reasons:
1) There remains significant discussion amongst scientists, senior medical professionals up and down the country and Government about whether Monday June 1st is the appropriate date to admit wider groups of young people into the classroom. This is quite understandable in terms of risking any sort
of spike in transmission of the virus – we understand we cannot know on Monday 18th May how things will have progressed by Monday June 1st.
But as a result of this, we are to be advised on Friday May 28th, at the end of the half term break, and within one working day of Monday June 1st as to whether the science would suggest schools would be within safe parameters to do this.
We do not believe it is fair or right for you or colleagues to have to live in yet more uncertainty right up to the day before things could change. We are dealing in safety as well as educational opportunity and so lastminute.com should play no part in what we do. We want to announce now what the first stage of our plan is – the schedule of live lessons as explained above for Y10 plus specific students being invited in – and then be able to tell you with as much notice as possible when the second stage will be safe to roll out, according to the medical and scientific guidance we all must live by.
2) Secondly, I will be asking parents and carers of Y10 students whether you would be content to send your children to school, from approximately the middle of June onwards, in small, appropriately socially distanced groupings (according to guidance). We will want to know what your concerns and questions would be for you to feel as safe as possible about this. We will also be asking the students themselves and offering support to those who feel anxious or have queries.
We would not benefit as well as we need to from your views and concerns on this if we were
rushing headlong for a Monday June 1st start to significantly more students in Y10 coming on to site.
3) Finally, we recognise, as many of you do from the conversations we’ve been having, that there is a need for all schools to plan for a hybrid educational offer going forwards for none of us know how long. This offer, we can anticipate, would blend live online lessons with school attendance and other forms of remote learning.
There is no ducking this new reality at Noadswood, but, like all schools, we need time for our
colleagues to become confident and skilful with delivering live online lessons. They need time to feel safe with such a system, using decent kit in school, and not patching it together in their kitchen offices (with some unable even to do that because of lack of kit) leading to a messy provision.
So the roll out we are planning for Y10 will allow us to develop those skills, that confidence and that security so that, in the future, and in the right timescale, we will be able to offer this kind of provision to all of our students in a way that is consistent and professional.
Provision from around the middle of June for Y10:
Over the last few weeks, and prior to last weekend’s announcement, like many schools we have been planning what form things might take when we do welcome more groupings of Y10 students from around the middle of June. This will be able to commence if things with respect to virus transmission/work to manage the virus as safely as possible goes as we all dearly hope.
We are now in the process of completing all necessary risk assessment documents, protocols and other vital work for this stage of our plan.
In this stage, we will look to offer small and safe groups of all Y10 students the opportunity to come to school to meet their teachers to have a thorough conversation about where they’re at with their learning in each subject and how to make the best of remote learning combined with further such lessons in school and live online lessons.
We understand that some parents and carers of Y10 students may have concerns around sending students into school for this provision, depending on the state of play with virus transmission and other key indicators by this point; I would like to remind you that the usual formal attendance policies for schools have, of course, been paused at this time, and we will be respectful of families’ concerns regarding underlying medical conditions and other vulnerabilities. We will ensure there is a dialogue with you about this to plan how best to meet your child’s needs as well as possible if they do not come in
once this phase of provision commences.
In school lessons and live online lessons will follow a published timetable, alongside remote learning. There will be detailed information about this phase of our work nearer the time.
Mental Health Awareness Week – Monday 18th – Friday 22nd May
Your child’s tutor will have supplied to everyone details for the week’s activities that we have planned. We would actively encourage everyone to take a look at the activities, to join in but also just to check in
really overtly with how everyone’s mental health and wellbeing are holding up in all of this.
We would also urge you to talk to your children about their online lives and really find out how healthy and happy these are. Mental Health Awareness Week is the ideal time to do this – if your child gets on board with the activities or they’re worried about something or you are, House Leaders and Mrs Loveday would love to hear about it and so would I at headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
If it’s a worry, we are all here for you and your children so do, please, reach out.
In addition, we have a Wellbeing portal on the Frog School Continuity Portal, where all students’ work is being set.
We are giving it a bit of a revamp at the moment, but it is a place where our ELSAs have put a wealth of information, support and advice, signposts to support services, and links to great reads for both young people and parents, covering pretty much every aspect of mental health someone could need help with, we hope. This will also soon be accompanied by a Wellbeing Pack.
If you have a question or a thought about something we haven’t covered or you find something particularly useful, let Mrs Loveday or any member of our pastoral team know – that’s our House Leaders and our ELSAS.
Year 6 Transition Project:
I am really excited to be working with friends from three other mighty schools, Applemore, Hounsdown and Testwood on our work to help Year 6s get to know their new schools in these unsettling and unusual times.
We are keen to work together to support all the families and schools whose children we share.
Our information gathering online forms (to parents/carers and one for primaries) have all gone out and we look forward to collating all of the information very soon.
We are also full steam ahead with our plans to make both learning based and welcoming films for the children to help them get to know us and how we work.
I am very keen to invite small groups of Year 6s to visit Noadswood in July and perhaps meet some of their Year 7 counterparts and some prefects if we are safe to accommodate this by then – we do hope so.
Support for your child’s wellbeing:
As lots of you know, our tutors, ELSAs, LSAs, House Leaders and Senior Leaders have been checking in with lots of students about their wellbeing but we are keen to connect with every young person who needs it.
It could be that your child is struggling with a worry, or is low, or is getting anxious at all the talk of more students returning to our schools from June 1st, and they’re wondering how it’ll all affect them – if that’s the case and no one is touching base with them at the moment, please let Mrs Loveday know via ePraise or by calling Loveday’s Lifeline on 07946 884 122 on any school day between 10am and 12 noon.
We will find the right person to get in touch with them, and we can arrange a phone call or a call via a safe platform so that their worries are heard and you are supported.
We are also in the process of writing a programme of work to support all students with their wellbeing now and over the next few months. We know that all of them are vulnerable to some extent or other as a result of the virus, the lockdown and the ongoing ramifications of it all. We are putting together resources and an approach to this which is about supporting the whole community to recover together, at what ever pace and over what ever period of time it takes, and we will want the students’ and your input into this via our surveys.
With my thanks for your enormous support of us all, the school as a whole and your children every single day and week,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Senior Leadership Team
UPDATE TO PARENTS: Tuesday May 5th 2020
This update’s main focus is our curriculum and teaching and learning offer:
Interactive learning:
At Noadswood, we have taken the view, throughout this crisis, that we want your children to have a rich diet of learning combined with the opportunity to have some variety in their day, time with family, time to be creative, time to go for some exercise.
We believe this remains fundamentally the right attitude to adopt – home school cannot ever be a replica of school, how ever it is done, and it should not become an environment in which academic pressure is brought to bear on the students nor yet on you as parents.
Please always remember: no one is ahead and no one is behind; we are all navigating the same storm as well as we can.
Colleagues are planning their curriculum with that in mind and sharing with us their rationale for doing so and the content.
We take seriously that it is for us and all schools to make responsible curriculum and teaching/learning decisions when schools begin to welcome more pupils back through the doors about how to prepare all of them the best, taking account of the time lost from regular, enriching and relational school, which will have impacted on everyone.
We work together, as New Forest Head colleagues, on a daily basis, and with colleagues from the Local Authority and the Regional Schools Commission regularly so that we can take unified decisions on all this as things progress over the next few weeks and months.
All that said, with lockdown extending the way that it has, we also recognise that learning needs to be an interactive experience as far as possible. We have access to the Oak Academy resources you may have heard mentioned on Government press conferences, which include a host of interactive resources for some subjects, and some of our own colleagues are developing lessons on various interactive platforms and sharing these with your children. We are asking departments to weave this sort of practice into the existing schedule for the week.
In addition, though we continue not to want children to feel burdened and stressed – this is all so hard for them – we also believe there needs to be structured follow up between them and teachers about key pieces of work each week in each year group for each subject. Follow up will not necessarily mean assessment as we might usually understand it, as this needs adjusting for the circumstances of home school, but it will ensure that all students focus on these key pieces and that the right people can contact you if they are not completed. There is more below on how best to support your children with their Assignments on Frog.
Why not online live lessons?
At the moment, we are not asking colleagues to deliver live online lessons from their homes, from where the majority of colleagues are still working, in line with Government instruction. We have a rota of colleagues going into school each day to support the children attending but the rest of the staff rightly continue to observe the lockdown and social distancing by working from home.
So our reasons for not asking for the delivery of live lessons at this stage are as follows:
Firstly, many questions need to be answered about safeguarding both for young people and for our colleagues. Most of our safeguarding measures that we would employ in school cannot be in place in so many diverse locations. Of course, the risks are low but our advice has been to avoid such means of whole class teaching for the time being.
Secondly, we are concerned about the consistency of what pupils are able to access and what our colleagues are able to deliver. A significant number of our pupils would not be able access the platforms necessary on their phones/within their contracts and some of our teachers do not have access to the resources required to do this well from home. This would lead to a very inconsistent coverage of the curriculum that our colleagues are working very hard to make as consistent as possible during these challenging times.
Having liaised closely with the other New Forest schools, we are aware that some platforms are now being safely employed for live one to one and small group intervention for more vulnerable students, particularly those in Year 10, and this is something we will discuss this week and come back to you to about.
We have also issued laptops on loan from school to the extent we are able to from the equipment we have in school and have made contact with local companies to see if there are ways we can source any equipment for more students from them. Finally, we have completed the DfE application processes for their laptop schemes for specific groups of students and will keep you posted as these schemes roll out.
Our strategy on this will evolve in line with what we can resource brilliantly well for our young people as restrictions gradually loosen – we all await what we think will be Sunday’s Prime Minister’s update with particular interest in this respect…
How best to support your child with their school Assignments in Frog:
This has become a really hot topic of conversation amongst parents and carers nationwide. Many of us are battling with our own working from home while trying ensure that our children are doing what school ‘expects’. We know and empathise that as parents, some of you are trying to motivate reluctant
and even uncooperative teenagers whilst others are supporting the most conscientious children who are anxious that they might not be keeping up. You are doing this around your own work and responsibilities and often other siblings, too.
We have asked our colleagues to ensure that all assignments have a minimum of 5 days to be completed. There continues to be a mix of short ‘regular’ tasks in some subjects while others are more project based and can last from a fortnight to three weeks. However, the to do list for pupils will build up if they were
to have too many days without completing any study, of course.
Some of the assignments are just for fun or voluntary whilst others are key.
Your Dashboard is a good place to look to help your children plan what to do when:
On the Parent dashboard, there are two ways of monitoring the work set. The Assignment calendar shows when work is due to be completed but be careful: if it was set a couple of weeks ago, there might now be more than an hour’s work to complete for the next day. But generally speaking this is a good place to look to aid prioritising work.
The Assignment tab above will give you a fuller view of all of the Assignments. Children reduce the list by marking the Assignment as handed in. Now, if you are concerned that your child appears to have very little work to do it may be worth changing the view in Assignments to Handed In:
You can then chat to your children about what has been submitted, and check no one is hitting Handed in, even if what has been done is incomplete.
DfE update for parents and carers:
If you haven’t read this document for a while, it is worth doing so as it is regularly updated. Please contact us if you have any questions having done so. The link is below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents- and-carers/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers
Update for Y11 students:
Yearbook and Hoodies:
We are really pleased to confirm that our processes are underway for preparing both of these lovely
mementos of your child’s time at Noadswood.
We’ve also consulted our Head Boy and Head Girl, Ellis and Becky, to get a sense of the interest out there
for these products, and, not surprisingly the feedback was very positive.
Look out for separate communications about how to express interest and make payments in due course – these are on their way.
Leavers’ Prom:
I want to reassure you that our commitment to holding a Leavers’ Prom for the Class of 2020 remains an
unwavering one.
At the present time, as I know you’ll appreciate, it would be foolish to try to stipulate a date when we none of us know the ways in which lockdown will be relaxed, nor yet the length of time it will be before we can safely hold larger gatherings in our communities.
What you and your children need to know is: we will hold a Leavers’ Prom for them. We can’t wait to be able to do so. It doesn’t matter when it will be – they will still be the Class of 2020 and we will still be here for them.
There is an excited group of students beginning to think creatively about the event – if you or your
son/daughter want to join in with that, just drop me an email and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Update from Eastleigh College:
As you know, colleges are placing onto their websites a host of resources for pre KS5 students.
I received an update from just one of them – Eastleigh – at the end of last week to share with you today:
Support for your Year 11
We have developed transition materials for all Year 11 learners and will be updating resources fortnightly at a minimum. These resources can be used by current, or potential applicants to the College. The transition materials introduce the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed for each subject (e.g. Engineering) and for each level (e.g. L2) of qualification we offer at the College.
As well as being available on our website https://www.eastleigh.ac.uk/school-leavers/resources-for-year-
We hope these resources are helpful, and we will also happily consider developing additional resources to meet your needs. Please direct any queries you may have about support for your Year 11 pupils to Lou
Gittens (Vice Principal (Curriculum)) whose email address is: lgittens@eastleigh.ac.uk
Our planned open event on Monday 8 June will now take place online. The event will runs from 1630 hrs and 1900 hrs as per our website where registration can be made in advance through Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/eastleigh-college-open-event-tickets-72063581111. Please keep encouraging your sons and daughters to check in with their prospective college’s website or with their apprentice provider and let us know if you or they hit problems with their plans for September so we can help.
More on College Preparation and Careers Resources:
Mr Hewitt wrote to Year 11 students over the weekend explaining the following to them:
The KS5 preparation site in FROG now contains resources and activities for more subjects areas, notably sports and PE.
There are now also links to some personal development and careers courses. Follow the links to CareersPilot or to the Saints Foundation. These are great activities for building your CVs in order to stand out from the crowd!
If you intend to study maths courses at college please fill in the form on the maths page to let Miss
Towsey know. The form is now working!!
The FROG site will be open all summer so please do encourage your sons and daughters to take advantage of the resources to get ready for starting their studies again.
In the meantime it’s been lovely hearing from Year 11s during lockdown about what they’ve been doing to keep busy and creative – there’s been some incredible work out there. But if you’re in any way worried about your son or daughter, about how they’re feeling with college or an apprenticeship on the horizon
in such uncertain times or about any aspect of their wellbeing, please don’t hesitate to contact me at headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk or contact Mrs Loveday, Assistant Headteacher via ePraise or on the lifeline phone on … between 10-12 each school day, or, of course, their House Leaders and Mr Lewis, our careers advisor, are still out there for them, same as ever. Don’t sit on a worry or a question.
Competitions and activities:
Please draw your children’s attention to my letters aimed at them if they haven’t seen them – there are a host of activities available to them, from Music to VE Day Commemorating and from story writing ideas
to a Thank You Keyworkers banner design competition …
Reaching out through the letters and the activities in them is a brilliant way to sustain community and enrichment activities at this time and the response has been superb. I’d love to hear from your child at headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk and you can also send your questions and comments about anything about our provision and I will ensure it’s addressed by the right people.
With all best wishes and enormous thanks for your ongoing incredible support of the young people and of the school,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team
Update for Parents/Carers Monday April 20th 2020
Staying closely in touch while we’re still apart:
A warm welcome to the very unusual Summer Term 2020 – one where our plan is to stick together, to communicate with each other as openly and consistently as we were doing before the Easter holidays and where our pledge is that we will be here for your every single query and concern, even though for now we still cannot be together.
So keep passing on to someone any and everything that is on your child’s or your minds – don’t sit on any worries or questions.
You will be aware that there has been an extension to the country’s lockdown for the next three weeks, pending further review at that point which will be 8th May, and therefore the school site remains closed except for the children of key frontline workers and other specific families – if you need to get in touch with us about any aspect of this provision please use: keyworker@noadswood.hants.sch.uk which we monitor all the time.
How else to keep in touch?
You can reach me at any time by ePraise and at headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
You can get a message to a particular teacher, House Leader or member of the Leadership Team on ePraise or by emailing info@noadswood.hants.sch.uk if you don’t already have their email address.
You can do the same for our business or premises support staff teams, or our ELSAs and LSAs – everyone is reachable via their ePraise or forwarded on from info@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
If you cannot get access to ePraise or your emails, you can ring the school and leave a voicemail and a member of the business support team will forward it on to the right people.
Educational and Wellbeing Provision are well and truly Open!
Though the site is closed other than for the students highlighted above, education and looking after your children’s wellbeing are definitely open for business, as before the holidays. Tutors and teachers, House Leaders, ELSAs, LSAs, and our SENDCO, will continue to check in regularly with your children and to support you as you need it. Loveday’s Lifeline continues to be open for any wellbeing worries or questions you may have between 10 and 12 every school day on 07946 884 122.
Work will continue to be provided via our Frog portal and some important messages remain key as we go into the new term:
Your child is following a curriculum that has been carefully considered by their teachers and team leaders, and we will continue work, this week, to ensure the best, easiest to use resources are available to your children and that we’re considering closely what’s most important and most enjoyable for them to be doing at this point in their learning. But this cannot be the same as school, and nor should it be.
We all want you to continue to take the approach that we have taken since the start of this, which is to encourage your child to plan a structure or a shape for their day that includes some school work, and has a sequence to it that feels good for them. If it can include some exercise, some r and r time, and some time spent connecting with someone else or doing something for someone else, then that’s really great too.
That might be reaching out to connect with someone they know or joining in with one one of the competitions/ideas laid on by us or another organisation you hear about during lockdown, or it might be doing something in the garden or the kitchen, or helping a sibling out with their activities – all that is as important as the school work, so we’re not aiming at following a school timetable like we do when we’re on site together. We’re looking at weaving a decent amount of school work into a day that has a good shape to it, that looks after everyone’s wellbeing and ability to juggle all the demands in our homes right now.
Teachers want to hear from your children via ePraise – when they’re stuck with their work, wondering if they’re doing enough or if they’re prioritising in the best way, they can get in touch, directly, with their teachers. That’s not a nuisance or awkward in any way; that’s what they’d do if we were on site together, so they’re just doing it electronically right now.
Should you have questions or worries about any of the above, you can ePraise message their tutor or House Leader (Learning) who will definitely be keen to help, too. Lots of you did this which was really great, and never feel you can’t, shouldn’t or you’re making any kind of fuss. We want to be here for you with the questions as they arise.
Equally, if your child really is doing nothing at all, slowly (remember, lots of us are parents, too, so we can imagine it!) then let someone know by an ePraise message or email – it isn’t your job to battle this one out alone, but nor is it something that should be left, because it won’t be doing their wellbeing and sense of purpose about life any good at all if that’s the case.
Educational and mental health writer and speaker, Mike Armiger, circulated this message via Twitter this morning:
There have been various versions of this message over social media of late, but this is the one I liked the best, because it captures what we have seen so many of you doing as you’ve grappled with getting through each ‘school day’ with your children, with immense calm, love, connection, humour and care. We need to reassure you that we do, indeed, thank you for the learning you’re making happen at home, and we’re here to support you with it.
We also want to provide reassurance that no one is getting ahead, no one is falling behind, and no one will be left behind depending on this work now, because, as Mike puts it, ‘we will use all our skills and expertise to support your children’, all of them, when we come back.
Updates for Year 11s:
Please note the ePraise message that Mr Hewitt sent to Year 11 students last week – it draws their attention to two new sources of information in the Frog School Continuity Portal:
– Link to pre-reading for those students planning to move to Brock College, but will in fact be of use to all of them moving to any college next academic year. We will have more resources and ideas for pre-KS5 work over the next few weeks.
– Link to a video published by Ofqual that explains how GCSE grades will be awarded and the info we are preparing to pass on to the awarding bodies, further to the links to written documents about this from the DfE and Ofqual we provided you with before the break.
Do draw your sons’ and daughters’ attention to these links and take a look yourselves.
Updates regarding Year 6-7 transition:
If you are the parents/carers of Y6 children, or you have friends and family members who are, please be aware that we are about to launch our online information gathering process, as well as reach out to anyone for whom this will be difficult in any way.
In addition, Mrs Loveday, Assistant Head, and Mrs Rollett, Research and Pedagogy Lead, are leading our transition work and our partnerships with our primary school friends to ensure that a wealth of information about children’s learning, wellbeing and all aspects of their progress, strengths and areas we need to support will be gathered in a timely fashion.
We know it is a worrying time for children and parents in year groups who are moving up to the next phase in their education, so we want to reassure you that all of this is happening in ‘virtual school’ world just the same as if we could be together in person.
I will continue to write to you regularly with updates, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch in between times with your questions, ideas or comments – you may well stimulate something that many people want to know about, and no question or worry is too small at this or any other time.
With all best wishes,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team
UPDATE Friday 3rd April 2020
Thank you so much for your ongoing support and engagement with us during this period of closure, whether that has been as a parent of a child attending our provision or working with us as a school from home – you have been knock out!
Parents/Carers of Year 8:
Mr Hewitt has issued an ePraise message to you today, pointing you to the Option Blocks and Choices Form for 2020-2023 which are now live in the FROG site. There is some information on the site including all the deadlines for submissions of the form – please note, first come, first served plays no part in this, so don’t put yourselves under pressure to get the form back before the deadline of Friday 24th April.
Please get in touch with us if you have a question about this process or the information available to you. We understand that this process is more challenging for you and your children than normal so please make sure you do raise your questions to the right people – it might be your child’s subject teacher, their House Leader, Mr Hewitt or myself. Just don’t leave the question unasked.
Parents/Carers of Year 11:
This lunchtime, Ofqual set out how GCSEs/all KS4 qualifications (and indeed AS and A levels) will be awarded this summer and published useful guidance for education staff, students, parents and carers:
They also published a letter for students themselves – please draw your sons’ and daughters’ attention to this information designed for them, and read it yourselves because it conveys a lot of answers to key questions you will all have:
We have this afternoon begun our consideration of this information and will ensure that the work we do follows to the letter the requirements that are spelt out to us.
Activities over Easter:
I have pointed the young people to several activities available to them over the break in my letters (have a look if you didn’t look at yesterday’s, and there are a few more in today’s that will go out soon), and I know many of my colleagues have done likewise. There is a further suggestion below from the Travel Planning Team at Hampshire County Council:
We have been busy putting together some ideas for families to use at home during this period of lockdown and, in particular, how to put your daily exercise time to good use whilst focusing on your mental health. There are also more ideas for families to access at www.myjourneyhampshire.com/wellbeing and we will be adding to this page over the coming weeks so keep an eye out for more initiatives and ideas.
The My Journey website has lots of information about active travel which you are welcome to access, including curriculum resources linked to travel choices and their impact on the environment.
Colleagues will not be setting work during the Easter break – it’s ever so important that these two weeks feel different for you all and us all from our term time working from home – but we hope the activities we’ve been pointing the students towards will keep them busy some of the time.
They’re really welcome to carry on sending me what they get up to: headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
You can also just use the ideas in the letters and messages tutors and teachers have been sending them to nudge them towards something nice to do if boredom, or a bit of low mood or just regular teenager whining set in! I will drop the students a line once per week during the holidays, and then more regularly again, of course, when term starts. Make sure they check their ePraise so they don’t miss out on messages we have been sending.
When we return from the break, we will write to you again with an update around the work we will be setting, helping us all to manage expectations of each other during this time that is ‘school yet not school’ as well as we possibly can. We have been so proud of the students for their hard work and so grateful to you for the way you have engaged with the work we have been setting to date – the hugest of well dones and thank yous all round.
I wish you a happy and safe break, and we remain in this together, so if you need us, you know where we are,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team
