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Academy Closure - Home Working Information

In an effort to maintain continuity of education for the period of school closure, we are putting measures in place to ensure that learning is ongoing and that contact between pupils and class teachers can be maintained. More than ever, we are reliant on working in partnership with parents in an endeavour to guarantee that this occurs and that we do all we can to improve the life chances of our young people, particularly in this time of uncertainty.

Your child will have received some paper resources with this letter to provide home learning materials for the short-term. From this point on, we would like to work electronically where possible, as outlined below. In order for this to be effective, wi-fi access and a computer with monitor and keyboard or a tablet will be necessary. Should these things not be available to your child, please contact the Academy at your earliest possible convenience so that we can provide an alternative means of access.

Either way, we encourage the establishment of working routines during the period of home learning and, wherever possible, the provision of a quiet and tidy working space.

Our teachers will be uploading learning activities by teaching group to the Class Charts application which we have previously used for homework. This will inform the pupils of the learning activity expected for each subject.

https://www.classcharts.com/student/login

Once the pupils access Class Charts, they may find a link which is likely to connect them to other learning platforms such as Sharepoint, GCSEPod and Seneca, all of which can be accessed through our Citrix portal. Instructions for accessing Class Charts and Citrix are included below and the pupils have been reminded of this and the additional applications access recently. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if they have mislaid their personal log-ins.

In addition, the mathematics department have adopted a new platform for learning called Khan Academy which will allow personalised feedback and remote monitoring by teachers. The individual log-in information for this is contained within this pack.

However, Class Charts will be the access point for pupils to check what has been set in which subject and the links to relevant platforms will be evident.

As well as the specific subject work, your child should read for at least 30 minutes each evening. Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures. In fact, reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background. Reading could be from a range of sources, such as newspapers, fiction or nonfiction.

We are determined to do all we can to continue our commitment to the education of our pupils in these ever-changing times and we thank you once again for your support in this.