School’s closed: learning from home (22 March 2020)

Sunday 22 March 2020

We want to help you to make sure your child continues to learn at home whilst we all get through these difficult times.

Your child will be set three daily tasks…

To supplement the learning…

…we’ve prepared a list of over 30 websites that you can use, from English and Maths to PE and wellbeing activities.

You can email your child’s teacher…

Email teachers if you’re unsure about some aspect of the home learning. The email addresses follow the same pattern in Key Stage 1 and 2: joebloggs@spherefederation.org (If your child has two teachers, please email both of them.) Check the Homework section and you should find the exact email addresses today or tomorrow on there.

For parents of children in Early Years, you’ll be familiar with the addresses already:

We’ll aim to reply on the same day and no later than the following morning. To keep this manageable, please restrict emails to one per day, per child.

(This is a short-term measure and will not continue beyond the current period. Teachers are allowed to respond to questions, comments and concerns that relate to the learning and not to wider issues.)

And some other points…

The Learn More section of our website has two pages that you’ll find especially helpful: ‘Calculations and times tables’ and ‘Help your child’ – check them out.

Don’t forget that children should be reading at home every day – we encourage a minimum of 20 minutes. This could be quiet reading on their own, reading aloud with an adult, or an adult reading to the child (all are important, but that last one is an especially comforting end-of-day activity).

Other things that can be happening all the time are spelling practice (you could make up your own lists) and times tables practice (and set a regular time to test on a times tables – don’t forget the division facts).

Keep a look out for educational programmes from the BBC on iPlayer (they plan to increase these a lot).