I’m going to a funeral today so am out of school. I’ll be back tomorrow. This morning I’ve been busy setting up the ‘Virtual School’ pages on our school website which will go live in the event of a school closure. In case it’s helpful to anyone, here’s what we’re planning: 1/n
1. We’ll use our usual system (Show my Homework) to set students daily lessons. These will follow a set timetable (e.g. the whole of Year 8 will have the same five subjects on a Monday) to make setting work easier. 2/n
2. We will set lessons/tasks in advance but won’t make them visible to students until the day they are timetabled. This avoids students feeling overwhelmed by a barrage of work on day one. 3/n
3. We are looking at putting measures in place to support students who don’t have internet access at home, or can only access platforms on a phone (possible lending of laptops etc) 4/n
4. We have set up a new email account ‘loginhelp’ that I will monitor to support students with passwords etc while school is closed. As well as SMHW we have online platforms for maths, English, science and Spanish. 5/n
5. We have checked that every student can log in to Show My Homework, and had some students in computer rooms for tutorials last week if we felt they needed extra support. 6/n
6. We have created a new temporary class of SEND students who will be set differentiated tasks. 7/n
7. Most teachers will set lessons or videos, along with quizzes. We have told them not to use PPT as many students can’t open them at home (PDF fine). 8/n
8. In maths we will continue to use Hegarty Maths. We will provide extra guidance to students (eg insistence that they watch the videos) because we are asking them to teach themselves whole topics using Hegarty. We will also be setting MemRi and FixUp5 tasks. 9/n
9. We were meant to be doing Pythagoras with Year 8 next but we have reordered the scheme of work to chose a topic that lends itself better to self-teaching. 10/n
If anyone wants to know anything else about our plans please ask. I’m also interested in what other schools are doing. If ever there was a time to collaborate, it’s now. 11/11
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A couple of issues that are worth considering if setting lots of online work:
1. Websites might get overwhelmed with traffic, particularly in the first few days
2. Families with say 2 children and 2 parents working from home will struggle with shared access to devices.
1. Websites might get overwhelmed with traffic, particularly in the first few days
2. Families with say 2 children and 2 parents working from home will struggle with shared access to devices.
