Possible School Closure

Dear Parents/Carers,

If we need to close the school due to the Coronavirus, we would like to provide clarity now about how we plan to support pupils in their education during the closure period.

Your child’s learning is important to us, so, during the closure, we’ll continue to support pupils as follows:

You will find work set for them on the class pages on the school websites. See specific details below for each class.
There will be staff emails set up specifically for the closure so that you and children can contact teachers during this time. These email addresses will be sent out soon. Staff will be accessing their emails during school hours. These email accounts will be deleted after the closure. If we don’t hear back from you, we will assume that you are giving your consent for email correspondence during the closure period.
Leahy & Mrs. Levey (the Federation Inclusion Managers/SENDCOs) will also be available to contact through their emails: sleahy@pioneerfederation.co.uk & senco@easthoathly.e-sussex.sch.uk
Each child will receive an exercise book to be used to record work in.

Nursery

There will be a weekly updates for activity ideas and websites on the Nursery website.

Reception

Each week, the Reception teams will upload a weekly planner of activities to the website for you to complete with your child. This planner will be updated on a Friday for the following week. We have suggested a timetable with daily activities, however these can be carried out in any order and whenever you have time to complete them.
We have tried to include activities using resources that you are likely to have at home. We will also supply each child with a small home learning kit to support these. There are a range of activities to include daily household resources and clips of short learning, and all of these activities are designed to be short and manageable.
Please use your home learning book to record any written tasks. We look forward to seeing these as soon as we can. Feel free to email us photos or messages to the class email address and we will respond between 8.40-3.15, Monday to Friday. It would be great to receive a weekly update from the children so we can share their home experiences!

Year 1-2

There will be weekly PDF files to cover learning in Maths and English which will be put on the class pages on the website. From these, daily tasks will be set which will be linked to Purple Mash or work to be completed in their exercise books. The tasks will be across the both Year 1 and 2 grouped in challenges from cool to spicy for the children to access.

There will be ‘2Do’ challenges on Purple Mash and a home learning task sheet which will cover other subjects.

Year 1: Phonics tasks will be sent home alongside the sound mat and common exception words which the children are working on daily. You will find these in their exercise books and they will also be on the website. Please have a go at a section a day and practice reading and spelling a few common exception words each day.

Year 2: SATs question sheets will be sent home in their exercise books which help the children to revise all the learning they have covered so far and keep their new knowledge fresh in their heads. The children can do 10 mins a day on these sheets; please remember the children can use objects to count and draw their learning if they are stuck. They will also have a common exception word sheet for them to continue spelling and reading the words.

Year 3-4

A document with suggested activities for curriculum areas will be uploaded to the class page on the school website. Children should choose 2 activities for each area of the curriculum to complete at home over a three week period. These can be brought back into school (once the school reopens) for sharing with their teachers and other children.
Maths will continue to be set through MyMaths with a task being uploaded daily. There are also plenty of ‘lessons’ that can be accessed for assistance if the children are finding a task difficult to complete at home. Children should continue to practise times tables regularly (at least 3x weekly) and the times table challenge that the children use in class will be uploaded to the class page on the website.
For the first two days of a school closure, Literacy will be set through ‘2Dos’ on PurpleMash and extension tasks will be uploaded onto the class pages. After this, a weekly powerpoint will be uploaded detailing grammar and a writing task to be completed over a week. All Literacy work completed should be put into the exercise book that we have sent home with the children, or they can be emailed into the class teacher for some feedback.
Spellings patterns that would be the whole class focus are already on the website for the rest of Term 4 and children should continue to learn their weekly spellings. There are a variety of resources on PurpleMash under English – Spelling Resources and these are then listed by year group.

Year 5-6

A suggested daily timetable will be provided on the website class page.
A document with suggested activities for curriculum areas will be uploaded to the class page on the school website. Children should choose 2 activities for each area of the curriculum to complete at home over a three-week period. These can be brought back into school once the school reopens for sharing with their teachers and other children.
Maths will be set via MyMaths the expectation is to do a daily lesson and the task and aim to achieve a green percentage score before moving on. Pupils should also complete arithmetic practise on MyMaths – this is on the home screen.
Literacy will be set via a weekly PowerPoint uploaded to the website class page detailing a writing task to be completed over a week. All Literacy work completed should be put into the exercise book that we have sent home with the children. There is also a separate grammar & punctuation PowerPoint on the website class page, of which children should use to complete one of the activities a day.
Daily reading tasks will be based on ‘The Explorer’ – on the website class page you can find PDF of each chapter and accompanying questions.
Pupils should also continue working their way through the Year 5&6 statutory spelling list – recognising patterns, understanding definitions and using them within a context.
Pupils can also use the back of the exercise book provided to keep a journal, giving them the opportunity to share how they are feeling, how they are keeping healthy, what you have achieved each day, what are you grateful for, what problems have you solved today etc.
Year 6 – continue working through their CGP books regularly and you can also find a link to previous SATs papers and answers on the website class page.

If you need reminding about the logins for any of the programmes mentioned, please see your child’s Class Teacher as soon as possible.

The links below also have a range of free resources:

We appreciate that a closure will have an impact on you and your family and it’s a far from an ideal scenario. We will keep in touch with any updates as the situation develops. Please continue to check the Coronavirus tabs on each website. If you want to get in touch to share any concerns, please don’t hesitate to do so via the Office email, as usual.

Please use NHS 111 online if you or your child feels unwell and you want to know what to do next. For government updates: www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

Thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely,

James Procter
Executive Headteacher