18th January 2021
Dear Parents
We hope that you have had a good week and that your child is adapting as well as possible to home learning. Many thanks to those of you who emailed us with examples of your child’s work or indeed to give us any feedback. We’d love to hear from even more of you next week!
Attached to this email you will find the learning resources for the next week of home learning in Year 6. This can also be found by your child in Microsoft Teams. You will find that the timetabled subjects and timings mostly remain the same, with just a swap for the days we are doing PE and PSHE to fit in with hall availability for the children who need to be in school.
In feedback from parents, we have been told that the learning packs provide a good structure for the day and are easy to follow. Some parents have let us know that their child has been completing the tasks very quickly, whereas others have said that their child has struggled to complete everything. As a result, after much consideration, we feel that the amount of work we are setting is about right. We know that some parents have found the amount of work a little overwhelming, and do not wish to add to this feeling by adding more. Equally, we know that some parents have wanted more work to be set. For these parents, we recommend using any of the additional subscriptions that school provide, along with any of the other online resources below:
- Abacus activities
- Times Tables Rockstars
- Daily Purple Mash tasks
- Any of the Oak Academy Y6 English tasks (we will not be setting these)
- An independent research project on a subject of their choice
- Extra independent reading
- BBC lessons
We would like to stress once more that there is no expectation that your child engages with every single learning opportunity provided. We know that some families have limited time to supervise their child’s remote learning due to work commitments or having multiple school age children, or even both! Equally, we know that some families will want lots of resources to use with their child. As their parent, you are the only one in a position to judge how much work your child should be achieving for their individual circumstances. Please do not feel pressured in any way by the amount of work sent out. We are aiming to provide enough work to keep your child busy for most of the school day, and have highlighted in yellow some of the activities that might be a particular focus for our discussions during phone contact.
Next week, we are planning to provide several 30 minute drop-in sessions in which the children will have an opportunity to ask any questions they might have. These will take place on Monday at 1.30pm and Tuesday and Thursday at 8.45am. Children will need to go to the channel for their own class (rather than year group) and raise their virtual hand if they would like to have the option to be unmuted and ask a question. We do not yet know exactly how these sessions will go as that will largely depend on the numbers who decide to drop in! Please be patient as we try to find the best way forward.
Please continue to send us your child’s lockdown goals – either as a video clip or in written form. As requested last week, these videos must be sent to yearsix@catherinewayte.swindon.sch.uk from a parent’s email address. We will take this as a permission from the adult that we can include the video in our montage to be shared on the website.
As a final thought, some children have been using apps such as FaceTime and Skype to work together on their learning. We are unable to organise this for them through Microsoft Teams, but this is perhaps something you could talk to your child about. This could give your child a little extra help as well as some much needed social interaction.
Many thanks for your continued support, and we hope you can enjoy a restful weekend. Take care and stay safe.
Mr Shammas and Mrs Tomlins
