Home learning information

Dear Parents and Carers,

We understand that this period of school closure will present significant challenges for everyone. At Offham Primary School we are committed to helping you all as much as we can to balance the demands of home education alongside working from home commitments. If you need any help guidance or advice at all please do not hesitate to contact you class teachers - their email addresses are listed at the bottom of this page.

Weekly Home Learning Planners 

Now that we know we are going to have to maintain home learning until at least May, we feel that it might be time to make some tweaks to what we are providing for you to do with your children at home. Many of you have asked for a little more guidance and structure as to what work to complete with your children and when. We hope that our new home learning planners - which will be uploaded onto the class pages every Tuesday - will help.

Instead of the 10 open ended home learning challenges, the teachers will now be providing a week overview of tasks - 'The home learning planner' -  tailored for their year group. The planner is broken down into 4 daily sessions for your children to complete. Some of these sessions will link to set tasks within the online resources you are already familiar and some will link to new resources, including videos.

We have not specified any timings for the sessions as we are aware that different children are able to concentrate for different lengths of time. Equally we have labelled the planner day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5, rather than Monday-Friday to provide some flexibility for when the sessions are completed. The guidance for what needs to be completed within the sessions is more detailed and can be seen on each year groups planner.

After completing a session we would encourage you to upload your child's work for the teacher to see using the evidence me app. If you are uploading written work it is useful for the photograph to be taken portrait and of single pages, uploaded as a multi photo. It is even more useful if you provide a parent note with both written work or photographs to help the teacher to understand how well your child did in during the session. Purple Mash and Active learn (bug club) tasks set for the children can be automatically seen by the teacher once completed.

Within the new structure some of the resources link to optional printable worksheets. I am afraid that it is not possible for Offham Primary school to print these for you for collection as we currently do not have the staffing capacity to do so. It should be possible, if you do not have access to a printer, for the children to complete the work directly into their homework books rather than having to use the template, by drawing out the pictures for themselves or numbering their answers.  A supply of books is always available in the brown trunk by the school front door.

This new, more structured planner format may not be for everybody. None of the resources we made previously available, other than the 10 open ended challenges, have been taken away and we are more than happy for you to continue using these, alongside a range of your own activities if this works better for you. Please still upload photographs of what you have been learning though, as we are really keen to see and support you in this. Equally if you would like to tweak the new suggested format and make it your own please do so. BBC bitesized has been added to the below list of home learning activity suggestions, as the BBC have recently made available a huge range of new video resources. 

As I said in my previous email the priority for us all is to ensure that our families are safe, happy and healthy and I am so grateful to you all for the amazing effort you are putting in each day to ensure this. We continue to be here for you to support you, as best as we are able, throughout this challenging time and will continue to be on the end of an email at any time. Thank you also for being so understanding of our limitations, we like you continue to hope for the children's return to normal as soon as is possible. 

Please see your own child's class page for the new guidance. (Linked below) which will be available each Tuesday. (This is because the English links are not available in time to publish the planner on Mondays)

Additional websites/links to support further learning at home:

BBC bitesized

A range of video lessons for every year group

ELSA

Resources put together to support the emotional needs of children during this time. These sheets may be particularly helpful for children who regularly benefit from ELSA support at Offham.

Twinkl

Home learning packs. Fantastic range of resources for all topic areas and all year groups. Usually a subscription site but offering free during this time. A fantastic resource used in all classes here at Offham. Offer code: CVDTWINKLHELPS

Phonics Play

Usually a subscription website for phonics teaching but Phonics Play are offering free logins during this time. EYFS and KS1 use this resource for a lot of their phonics planning and teaching at Offham. Username: march20 Password: home

Joe Wicks PE

Joe Wicks (fitness coach) is leading a workout (PE lesson) every morning at 9am via his youtube channel. A great way to start the day!

Switcheroo Zoo

Watch listen and play games to learn about animals.

Fun Brain

Maths and Reading skills.

National Geographic for Kids

Learn about geography.

Into the Book

Play games that practice reading strategies.

Star Fall Practice reading skills

Practice Maths and reading skills

Highlight Kids

Play science games

BBC Bitesize

Learning resources for all subjects.

Woodlands Junior School

Learning for all different topics.

Oxford Owl

Free e-books.