Before I share a couple of updates for Term 3, I would like to thank you again for the fantastic support you are providing for your child’s learning during this period of class suspension. We acknowledge that the remote learning format can create challenges at home and we fully appreciate how our parent community have responded so positively to this situation. I cannot thank you enough.
Since it has been announced that the class suspension will continue after the Spring Break, we have made a couple of decisions that I would like to share with you:
Three-Way Conferences
We know how much our community values the opportunity to meet teachers and enjoy finding out more about their child’s progress and gaining insight on their next steps of learning. The recent Year 13 online Three-Way Conferences resulted in very positive feedback and we want to offer the same opportunity for Years 7 to 12. For this to work well, we need to make some amendments to our original schedule and I would be grateful if you could take note of the following details:
- The appointments will last for 10 minutes per teacher and will be held through Zoom.
- Parents will be able to make bookings through Gateway. We will send through instructions for how to do this and how to access the Zoom meetings once bookings are available.
The dates and times are as follows:
- Thursday 23 April 2020. 1.30 to 5.30pm – Year 9 and Year 12
- Monday 27 April 2020. 1.30 to 5.30pm – Year 7 and Year 10
- Tuesday 5 May 2020. 1.30 to 5.30pm – Year 8 and Year 11
Please note, on each of these dates lessons in Blocks 1 to 4 will run as normal. If a teacher is involved in a Three-Way Conference, they will not be available for the lesson during Blocks 5 and 6, and will notify students accordingly. If teachers are not involved in the Three-Way Conferences, they will continue to deliver their lessons during the afternoon.
I will share more information regarding the Conferences and how to book meetings through direct email. Please look out for this over the coming weeks.
Planning for Term 3
As you may expect, we are now in a situation where teachers will be planning for beyond the Spring Break where we will at least start the term through the remote learning format. Our aim is to continue to deliver high quality learning experiences where students can be successful against our planned success criteria. However, this does need modifications in terms of mode of delivery, resources and approaches to assessments.
Our aim for next week is to enable our teachers with time to collaborate whilst also maintaining timetabled lessons for students as far as possible.
With this in mind, during the last week of term some teachers may not be available for lessons on a particular day. Students will be notified by teachers directly if this affects any of their lessons, otherwise they should assume lessons will continue as normal.
If students do have lessons where their teacher is not available we will advise them to:
- Complete any assessments they have not yet finished
- Act on any feedback they have received from teachers
- Complete any ‘must do’ learning activities they are yet to finish.
Thanks for your understanding with this approach and please let me know if you have any questions.
Have a good weekend and I hope you and your child have the opportunity to relax and refresh before we head into the last week of this term.
Best wishes
Mark Poulsum
Head of Secondary