Dear parents, carers and children,
Our Wellbeing Wednesday focus this week is ‘What have you done today (or recently) to make you feel
proud?’ I can confidently say that you should all be proud of yourselves for working so well at home and
in school, and getting to grips with Google Classroom and Zoom sessions – I know that some of you have
found the use of new technology particularly tricky (Google Classroom has been a steep learning curve for us, as well!), alongside having to
juggle remote learning with your own work. Everyone (parents/carers, children and staff) has been working extremely hard and we have
been welcoming feedback and suggestions as to what has been going well and how we can further develop our remote learning provision to
ensure that it is right for every child. Next week will be sending out a parent survey about remote learning – watch out for this dropping into
your email inbox. We value a strong partnership between home and school, and welcome any feedback as part of this.
When everyone is usually in school, as part of the planning, teaching and assessing cycle, teachers use the knowledge of how
much support the children have had to enable them to plan the next steps. During this period of remote learning, some
parents have been providing comments as to how easy or difficult their child found the work, and this has been very helpful
for teachers. Therefore, when submitting work, where possible please could you make a note (either on the work or in the
private chat function) of how much support they have had; e.g. was it completely independent, did they have any support with a particular
word or spelling, or did they need guiding through the whole piece? This additional information will be really appreciated, as it will enable
the teachers to plan the appropriate support and challenge for your child. Many thanks for this.
Please can I add a reminder here about our ground rules during Zoom calls, and the fact that children should not be in their bedrooms when
participating in the calls. Thank you.
We know that losing ourselves in a good book is the perfect escape (if/when you ever get the time…!) and we are always
promoting the love of reading with the children. It may be difficult to get hold of books at the moment, so we would like to
remind you that we have a selection of books in our school foyer that you are welcome to borrow. Whilst many prefer a
‘real’ book that you can hold (myself included!), there are also hundreds of free eBooks on a range of websites, including Oxford Owl
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page/ and Oak National Academy https://library.thenational.academy/.
These books also come with additional fun activities and questions to help children’s comprehension. When reading with your
child (either reading to them or listening to them read) it is extremely beneficial to talk about the book and ask them
questions. Your child’s teacher will send you some questions that you could use. Enjoying and talking about pictures and
poems is also really good for developing children’s understanding and vocabulary.
Getting out into the big outdoors and enjoying nature is very important for wellbeing, and next week brings the RSPB Big
Garden Birdwatch that we will be taking part in. Watch out for further details!
We hope you all have a lovely, restful weekend, and we look forward to seeing you (in person or via Zoom) next week.
With very best wishes, Mrs Lennon and the Brighstone Team
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