Over St. John's CE Primary SchoolHead Teacher Blog: Friday 29th January 2021
Date: 29th Jan 2021 @ 9:54am
This week we have published our Remote Learning offer on our website for you to have a look at here. I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ for all that you are doing at home to support your child’s learning. The teachers are really pleased with the work that they are getting back from the vast majority of you on a regular basis. We absolutely appreciate how difficult this is for you at home. Families face many obstacles on a daily basis in trying to complete the work – access to devices, trying to work from home as well as do remote learning, working with a number of children and therefore different sets of work, to name a few. We understand the pressures that you are all facing and continue to try to make things easier for you, such as the recorded voice overs and next week we will be adding a 1:1 reading session with your child and their teacher via Teams, more details about this will be sent home in an e mail. The Department for Education has said that all schools should have a system in place for checking on children’s learning on a daily basis, so we are obliged to contact you if we do not receive work that day. I understand that this causes further pressure on already stressed adults, so please do not take it personally when we contact you. Use it as an opportunity to have a dialogue with your child’s class teacher who may be able to offer advice and suggestions. You are all doing so well – be kind to yourselves!
Speaking of being kind to yourselves, next week is Mental Health Week and the staff have some things planned to support this, most notably we are going to be doing Well-Being Wednesday, a day when we step away from our screens (though you will have to have a look at them to see what the activities are in the first place as the screen is our form of communication with you!). Take it as an opportunity to do something different and to try to alleviate the pressure that you must all be feeling at the moment. Good luck – we look forward to hearing about your different day.
It has been confirmed this week that schools will close as usual over February half term. Unlike the first lockdown in the summer, schools are not open for childcare this time, but for education and families now have access to child care support bubbles which they did not have last summer. We will finish for half term on Friday 12th February and Remote Education will begin again on Tuesday 23rd February as Monday 22nd February is an already planned and published INSET day at Over St. John’s. The government have said that Remote Education will continue for now after the half term holiday but schools will be given two weeks’ notice of a return to face to face teaching, possibly from 8th March, but this is not yet certain. I will communicate any information with you as soon as I can after I receive it.
It has also been confirmed this week that food parcels for those in receipt of free school meals will not be provided over the half term holiday. There is wider government support in place to support families and children outside of term-time through the Covid Winter Grant Scheme. Please use the link to find out more information and apply to Cheshire West and Chester Council.
For contact tracing purposes of those in school, you should notify us via positiveresult@overstjohns.cheshire.sch.uk if your child receives a positive test result up until 3pm on Sunday 14th February so that we can track back the 48 hours previously to notify anyone that we need to. This address should continue to be used during term time if you get a positive result for your child outside of school hours.
Final piece of Covid news this week! You may have heard in the media about testing of staff in primary schools. This week, we have begun twice weekly testing at home for any staff in primary schools, not just teachers, to try to break the chains of transmission should there be someone who is positive but does not display any symptoms, so they wouldn’t ordinarily know that they can pass on the virus. Hopefully this is something that will add to the work that is going on across the country to help bring infection rates down and we will keep adults informed of any action that needs to be taken should we receive any positive results.
#WakeUpWednesday
WeChat has got almost a billion users and it’s among the five most popular social media platforms on the planet. In fact, WeChat is probably the biggest app that you’ve never heard about. Not only is it comparatively unknown outside China, but some nations’ governments have taken steps to ban WeChat outright in their territories, claiming it’s a risk to their national security.
Why are other countries so frightened of WeChat? Do young people really use it to arrange hook-ups and deal drugs? Or is something even more sinister happening? Get the story on WeChat this #WakeUpWednesday with National Online Safety’s free guide below.
Confirmed Dates for the Spring Term 2021
Wednesday 3rd February: Well-Being Wednesday – further details in your daily e mail next Wednesday.
Friday 12th February: School closes for half term at usual bubble times
Monday 22nd February: School closed for INSET
Tuesday 23rd February: School re-opens for those currently in school at usual bubble times
Thursday 1st April: School closes for Easter with bubble closure times as follows:
Blakemere at 1:45pm
Linmere at 1:45pm
Oakmere at 1:50pm
Delamere at 1.55pm
Sandymere at 2pm
Hatchmere at 2.05pm
Please remember that your child’s class teachers are only at the end of an e mail all day. We would prefer that you contact them via this method so that, for safety reasons, they leave their bubble environment as little as possible and avoid sharing the phone in the area that Mrs Rutherford is working.
As last week, thank you so much for all the positive messages that we continue to receive from so many of you. Every staff member gets to see every message and we really appreciate that we are in your thoughts and as always, you continue to be in ours.
Take care,
Mrs E Snowdon