From Ms Allum

From Ms Allum

Dear Everyone                                                                                                         

I thought you would want to know how we are going in the first week of the ‘learning at home’ scenario.

It was lovely to hear the laughter coming from various classrooms around the School yesterday at 8.20am, as teachers were having a “Zoom” Form Time and Roll Call with the girls in their Form Class and girls were giggling away at various activities. I understand that a number of pets joined the group too! Yesterday, I believe that there were a few  “hat party” Form Time activities. And Academic Support have established a Zoom Room instead of the usual Learning Lab.

 

In the Primary School, yesterday was a day of physical distribution of laptops and iPads to our younger children, whose devices are usually kept at school. A number of books and art supplies and so forth were also picked up, and I understand that we lent over 1000 books from the Primary library!! Today, the Primary girls have begun to use their devices to support their at home learning schedule. Girls have tried zoom for the very first time (albeit with some technical glitches!) and have used Seesaw, Cognito and OneNote to access many of the wonderful learning resources the teachers have created.

To date, lessons are working well throughout the day. I thought I would share with you a couple of comments from parents:

  • Congratulations to you and all the staff on moving the school program to the structured online Zoom learning platform. This would have been a huge task and day 1 has been a very smooth transition. My daughter has really enjoyed this new way of learning and we all feel reassured that she can follow an almost ‘normal’ school day program.
  • Thank you! You have made the move to online learning look easy, although we can only imagine the work required to ensure a smooth transition! The girls are loving their new “offices” and are grateful for the support and care they received today.
  • A heartfelt thanks for the brilliant video on Seesaw this afternoon for Year 1! This is exactly what the girls need – to still feel connected to their teachers and learning community.
  • Just wanted to thank you and all the staff for making the transition to online so seamless and well planned.
  • I am working from home listening to a lot of home learning going on. It’s so good to see connections being made and no break in continuity.  It seems natural and dare I say it – fun!

So, you can see in this newsletter:  

In coming days, we have plans to send out other support ideas as well – ideas for physical exercise, movies to watch, non-screen based activities as well. We also know that we need to support girl’s emotional wellbeing. These are tough times for everyone, and people are understandably anxious, distressed and uncertain.

I wanted you to know that I continue to pray that you are all OK. I hope you stay physically well and also emotionally strong. These are very worrying times for everyone, and I hope we have collected some advice here, within the newsletter,  to help you to manage this “new normal” for yourselves and your daughter at home.

 

With love to you all.

Jenny