School closure - Tuesday 5th January

Tuesday 5th January 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

SCHOOL CLOSURE

You will by now have processed the news about school closures across the country; disappointing but expected. This communication, as promised, will outline the key information for the period of closure. It has been tabulated for ease of reading and future reference.

Expected period of closure:

Based on the Government announcement, we are expecting the period of closure to be Tuesday 5th January - Friday 12th February. Note that the scheduled half term break is Monday 15th – Friday 19th February.

Remote Learning expectations:

Class teachers will upload daily home learning activities onto the SeeSaw platform. Please continue to use the login you have already been provided. Please complete as many of the tasks as possible. Due to the volume of SeeSaw uploads by the children (sometimes up to 120 a day for one class), staff commit to responding to them within 48 hours. As wonderful as it is to see other activities that your child is engaging with, please only submit school related work. Please be mindful that staff could at any point become ill themselves in which case their availability to respond to work will be limited. The year group partner teacher will take on some of the workload in the interim period. Paper copies of learning activities are available from the school office on request, available from Thursday 7th and subsequently every Monday. On completion of the work, in order to be able to check on your child’s progress, we ask that you periodically return completed work to school or that you scan and upload it to SeeSaw so that it can be checked by the class teacher.

School to home contact:

During this period of closure, you will receive a welfare call from the Teaching Assistant assigned to the year group. In some cases this may be another staff member. This is to check that all is well and to offer additional support with any learning activities. Please be reminded that calls may appear as ‘no caller ID’. Should we not be able make contact with you or speak to your child during the fortnightly call, we will undertake a safe and well check by visiting your home. This will be undertaken by one of the school’s Designated Safeguarding Leads. Newsletters/Bulletins will be sent periodically with a view to keeping you up to speed with any school, local or national updates.

Home to school contact :

You can continue to use the SeeSaw platform to communicate with your child’s class teacher. If you have a more general question or query, please contact us via email at enquiry@chilcoteschool.com.

Free School Meals vouchers:

If your child is entitled to Free School Meals, vouchers will be issued in due course.

Music lessons:

Music lessons will cease for obvious reasons. The Music Service is hoping to move to online lessons in due course. We will advise you accordingly.

We fully appreciate how challenging the next few weeks will be for you and your children. We are here to support you where we can.

Please continue to stay safe and we look forward to having the Chilcote family back on the premises as soon as possible.

Best wishes for the next few weeks,

Debbie Doherty