Dear Parents/Carers,
I hope everyone is managing as best you can with these challenging and unsettling times that we are all experiencing. It is almost impossible to plan and prepare more than a day ahead as things are changing rapidly and who knows what is round the corner. All we can do is keep our families safe and healthy and support each other and pray we come out of this as soon as possible.
As promised when I last wrote to you last Friday (that seems a lifetime ago!) I will keep in regular touch with all our school community and I will be here every day to manage the situation as best I can. School remains open for now to vulnerable pupils and children of key workers and I will manage the staff who are able to be here each day to ensure that the children we have are safe and getting as close to a normal day as possible, while at the same time protecting the welfare of the staff and their families. How long schools will remain open is uncertain but while we are being asked to stay open we will do so. Of course the majority of our pupils are now being “schooled” from home so we have set out below some online resources and support that we can offer. This will be updated from school to allow our pupils to access as wide a range of resources as possible and to keep in regular contact.
What we’ll continue doing while your child is at home.
Your child’s learning of course is important to us, so we’ll continue to help your child to learn. Packs were given out during the week to the children who were in school containing work for at least the next two weeks. Teachers are busy preparing on-line consolidation teaching and tasks.
I cannot stress enough that ALL children must work at home on a daily basis to ensure that their life chances are not affected. The situation is fast changing and these circumstances are unprecedented so it is vital that we all play our part. We will be setting work and ask that parents work with their child every day. There is an expectation that the children will do reading for around 30 minutes per day, Maths and Writing as well as handwriting each day as a minimum. I have also encouraged the children to keep a regular diary to record their experiences and feelings about learning at home. They can do projects, art work, music and other creative activities. We have also provided a set of web links and this is available on the school website.
We are providing homework, specific to your class, using the on-line tools that your child should already be familiar with.
We will communicate details of this via the message board for each year group:
www.stjosephsjun.waltham.sch.uk >> Classes
( https://stjosephsjun.j2bloggy.com/classes/ )
The teachers will be posting notices most days, so please check regularly.
Each child already has login details for the various on-line resources they will need which are all accessible via our web-site
www.stjosephsjun.waltham.sch.uk >> Classes >> myUSO
( https://stjosephsjun.j2bloggy.com/classes/myuso/)
Children will be able to communicate about some of their work via j2e (one of the resources they will be using )
Parents and children will be able to communicate with their class teachers via temporary email boxes that have been setup, one for each class. Details are on each year group’s message board:
e.g. class-3k@stjosephsjun.waltham.sch.uk
These will be checked daily. These email accounts are only to be used for curriculum/teaching/learning matters. Please use the normal communication channels for any other communication.
On-line we are also listing some useful web-sites for you and your children to access.
Yours sincerely,
J Alexander (Head teacher)
