Dear Parents /Carers
Update from Croesty Primary School 24/04/2020
We at Croesty Primary School hope you are all well and managing with the many difficulties faced by families in this period of lockdown. In many ways the coronavirus crisis can seem so very remote and unreal. Then suddenly, there is the news that someone nearby has lost a loved one to this awful disease and this reminds us why social distancing, the washing of hands and staying at home are all so important. In many ways I think this period has brought people together – there is that marvellous ten minutes every Thursday evening when we all go out to clap hands and bang saucepan lids for the NHS. I’ve never seen so many people going out for a walk, a run or riding a bicycle and there is a wonderful calm in the evenings when the traffic has at last died away for the night.
Continuous learning is the focus for this update. It has been five whole weeks now since our school was closed on Friday 20th March. Straight away, we set to work so that our online classrooms were ready to use the following Wednesday, so that continuity in learning for our children could be secured. We accept that for both parents and children this form of learning brings many challenges and that it cannot replace the learning experience your children have when they are in school. Those parents who have had children with us for many years will remember when Hwb was first introduced and how awkward and clunky it was. Things have moved on and the children of Wales now all benefit from a National, Government backed digital learning system which is safe and reliable.
Schools in Wales are expected to provide a comprehensive learning programme for their children over the lockdown period. This is to be achieved through Hwb and we have been asked to take all reasonable steps to ensure that our children engage and continue with their learning. We have therefore been providing four learning activities each school day to develop skills in literacy, numeracy and the wider curriculum. This is being delivered through our digital classrooms to you our families at home. You can be flexible with these activities; your children can complete these at a time and day of your choosing. A daily routine is good but will simply not be possible for some families. Handing in completed work can be quite a challenge. Some of our year 6 children are experts at this and their teachers are able to give them regular marking feedback. Handing in work, however, is not so easy a task especially with younger children and we applaud the tremendous efforts some of you have made to share your child’s learning with us. We are exploring ways to make handing in easier for everyone.
At this stage we are now asking for some feedback from you and your child about how you feel the online classrooms are working. Your feedback might help us to improve our programmes, but we may not be able to please everyone. What might be too little work for some children might be far too much for others – we’ve got to try and strike a balance and by completing our online questionnaire you can help us to achieve this.
You can access our questionnaire using the link bellow:
https://forms.gle/NJmVGD584QSutviF7
We would be very grateful if you could complete this for us by 12:00 next Thursday (30/04/20). The survey is very short, and we think it can be completed easily in five minutes.
We look forward to hearing from you
Kind regards
Mr M Kaye Headteacher