Accessing remote education
How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?
All lessons with be structured through MS Teams using their normal school email address and login details.
If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?
We recognise that some students may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those pupils to access remote education:
- Walton will provide technical support and advice to aid families accessing online provision.
- “How to” guides and specific guidance will be given to explore alternative options, eg use of games consoles to access online learning.
- Where needed and available, laptops and wifi dongles will be distributed to households on request.
- Parents should contact school reception where details of the request will be taken
How will my child be taught remotely?
We use a combination of the following approaches to teach students remotely.
Lessons will be structured at normal timetable times through Microsoft Teams. Teachers will be available throughout the timetabled period and will make use of a combination of the following strategies.
• live teaching
• recorded teaching (e.g. Oak National Academy lessons, video/audio recordings made by teachers)
• textbooks and reading books pupils have at home
• commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences
• long-term project work and/or internet research activities (these will only be used where individual live lessons are not appropriate)
Engagement and feedback
What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?
• Students are expected to be online for each lesson as per their normal timetable.
• Registers will be called and students should respond through the chat function
• Students should be encouraged to reply using the required means in each lesson
How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?
• Attendance for remote learning lessons will be tracked using the normal systems. Subject teachers may make contact with parents where specific work or lessons have been missed.
• Where attendance becomes a concern, the pastoral team will contact parents to establish what support is required to aid future engagement.
How will you assess my child’s work and progress?
Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children. For example, whole-class feedback or quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows:
Feedback will given using a variety of different methods, including but not limited to:
- Verbal feedback to responses in lessons
- Feedback to work submitted as screenshots in Teams chat
- Written feedback to submitted assignments
- Feedback from self-marking online tasks
Additional support for students with particular needs
How will you work with me to help my child who needs additional support from adults at home to access remote education?
We recognise that some pupils, for example some pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families, and we will work with parents and carers to support those pupils in the following ways:
SEND provision is organised on a student by student basis. It is hoped that with correct guidance all students can access the work together. Where this is not possible, the SEND team will provide appropriate work for each student.
The Hub provision will remain open under all contingency models. Where Hub students are self-isolating, the Hub team will coordinate appropriate work.
Remote education for self-isolating students
Where individual students need to self-isolate but the majority of their peer group remains in the academy, how remote education is provided will likely differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges of teaching pupils both at home and in the academy.
If my child is not in school because they are self-isolating, how will their remote education differ from the approaches described above?
Most of the above will apply under these circumstances. Depending on the number of students absent, and the nature of the subjects involved, some subjects may “stream” their lessons home using the above methods, some areas may set independent work covering the same content as that day’s work.
