January 2021

At Winterbourne Earls School, we have worked very hard at short notice to provide the very best for all of our home learners. Our practice is evolving as we review and constantly evaluate our provision. Our main portal is Seesaw which proved successful last lockdown, with work easy to upload both for parents and teachers. We have upgraded our subscription in order to provide the very best learning experience. Teaching staff are also now uploading videos via Loom so children can see their teacher in a small bubble working through a presentation explaining and modelling, exactly as would happen in their normal classroom. These 'floating head' videos (as one child named them) have a pause facility and they can be rewound and played several times to help reinforce learning.

The expectation is that all children complete at least the core maths and English work. Staff aim to respond daily to work uploaded on Seesaw.

We have been trialling live learning via Google Classrooms in Year 5 and in the next fortnight we are aiming to 'touch base' with all our home learners via Zoom. Details of how each class will manage and timetable this will be sent to families via Seesaw.  These sessions will probably be pastoral based, ensuring that the wellbeing of all our learners is paramount.

Overall, we have been thrilled with the level of engagement and are posting celebration certificates to children who have impressed us on a weekly basis.

Although most learning is via Seesaw, for brief details of each class' weekly focus, please open the class page and go to the Home Learning tab where you will also see some celebration of both home and class learning from previous weeks.