Wheatfield Primary School

Home Learning

The pages in this section provide everything families need to access our home learning offer. This offer has been developed to provide a continuity of high-quality education for all children during any period of school closure.

Our Remote Learning Offer

During any period of closure every year team will have access to the following resources to support home-learning:

• A daily English (including phonics for younger children) and maths activity – this task will be posted on the school website the day before it is taught. Each task will be supported by a pre-recorded teacher video input which will be uploaded to the year team’s YouTube channel.  
• A weekly learning overview covering subjects other than English and maths – this will be posted on the school website the Sunday before the week in which it is taught. There will be two accompanying pre-recorded teacher video inputs to support this learning. 

Video inputs may be from your child’s teacher or their year team partner. Please remember that, during the current lockdown, one teacher from each team is working in school full-time to support key worker provision.

Class Catch Ups

• Every class will have a twice weekly live catch up session with their teacher and class (on a Monday and Thursday). These will take place via Microsoft Teams. These sessions enable children to engage with one another, as well as their teacher, which we know many of them will be missing. If younger children are reluctant to join the sessions alone then parents are welcome to sit with them (and even speak on their behalf whilst they become familiar with the format).

Feedback sessions

These sessions will take a different format for different age groups in the school:

• Year 5/6 - children will have access to a daily 'live feedback' session at 12.10. They should access this session if they have a question about the day's learning or need clarification about something which is being taught.
• Year 3/4 - staff will record a feedback video which will be uploaded each Friday. This will celebrate success and introduce next steps for the following week based on feedback received by children and families. 
• Infant classes - Teachers will reach out to families each Tuesday and Thursday (via Tapestry or the WhatsApp groups) to explore any common misunderstandings or questions about the learning content. They will then record additional short demonstration videos to address this or build the feedback into future sessions. Infant classes will also record daily 'shout out' videos to promote engagement with the home-learning offer. 

In addition to the above, all teachers remain accessible to families, throughout the working day, via email (every teacher's email address is published on their year team's home-learning page).

The balance between live and pre-recorded content

There are a number of articles in the media about whether schools are choosing to use 'live' or pre-recorded content. If you have a child at secondary school the chances are they are running more 'live' teaching sessions which are generally appropriate to the age and stage of the pupils being taught. Like most primary schools, when planning our offer we have chosen to use pre-recorded lessons for the following reasons:

• They allow the content to be paused and re-played which is often useful with primary age children 
• Families can choose to work through the content at their own pace and in an order of their choosing (to fit in with children’s mood and preferences)
• They allow flexibility for families where there is more than one child in a household needing to share a device
• Where internet connectivity is intermittent due to faults or demands on the system, learning is not interrupted

If you have any questions about our home-learning offer then please feel free to get in touch. 

Additional Activities and Resources

In addition to our 'core offer' described above, we will continue to signpost families to experiences and opportunities that can be used to support learning and child development.

Depending on their age, primary children will need their day 'chunking up' in different ways. Concentration spans will differ and motivation will vary from day to day. There is also a need to conduct learning away from a screen and to ensure children are getting out and exercising (or exerting themselves) regularly. 

The section below will be updated throughout the lockdown period to provide additional ideas and support. Class teachers will add similar supplementary resources to their Year Team pages in an age-appropriate format.