Over the next couple of weeks, we will be supporting two important campaigns.

Children’s Mental Health Week: Feb 1^st – 7^th

We have lots of activities planned to bring our school community together and help support and look after the mental health and wellbeing of all pupils, at this particularly difficult and isolating time.

To help us to feel connected as a whole school community, we would like everyone to wear something blue on Wednesday. Whether families are attending school face-to-face or learning remotely, it would be great if you could wear an individual item or a whole outfit of blue, to remind us that we are all part of the same Bowmansgreen community, even if we cannot currently all be together at school.

There is a live assembly to launch the week – Monday morning at 9am. There will therefore be no morning meetings with class teachers on Monday so that all families can enjoy this assembly to launch the week and find out more about this year’s theme of ‘Express Yourself.’

Feeling Good Week: Feb 8^th – 12^th

To celebrate Feeling Good Week we will be focusing on the Five Ways to Wellbeing, which are:

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Learn
• Give

We are developing the Health and Wellbeing page of our school website, with information and resources that we hope you will find useful.

Thank you to Mrs Turner for recommending How to Stay Calm in a Pandemic by Dr Emma Hepburn which many families will find helpful and supportive at this current time.

Please could we remind all adults to wear face coverings on-site. Many members of our school community have underlying health conditions or other vulnerabilities which place them at greater risk of becoming very ill if they contract coronavirus.

The DfE has confirmed that schools will be closed to all pupils this February half-term. We ask that you email school (covidreporting@bowmansgreen.herts.sch.uk) if a family member tests positive during this week so that we can notify close contacts from school.

Enjoy your weekend.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that schools will remain closed to most pupils until at least March 8th, 2021. Whilst this news might not have come as much of a surprise to some, it has undoubtedly caused many families much disappointment and concern. We appreciate that this continued period of national Lockdown and partial school closure is a very frustrating and stressful time for individuals and families – we are all feeling the strain. We look forward to being able to fully open and welcome back all pupils when it is deemed safe to do so and we will continue to provide remote and face-to-face teaching for all of our pupils, in the meantime. We wish that we could ease some of the pressures that many of you are clearly feeling right now and we appreciate how particularly difficult it is for the families who are juggling work, busy households and teaching their children at home.

Thank you to the key worker families who are only sending their children into school when they really need the places – it helps to minimise the risk of virus transmission and keep our school community safe.

Fitter Future – all pupils have now received their log-ins. Mr Sanders is checking up on who is taking part in the activities as part of their regular exercise at home. Certificates will be awarded to pupils who impress with the number of workouts that they take part in. Come on everyone!

Enjoy this week’s music assembly, led by Mr Bronstein

Log-in to Oxford Owl for School with your child’s new class log-in details, to access a wide range of books in the eLibrary. This log-in is part of the school’s subscription to Oxford Owl and provides families and with a wider range of eBooks than with the free subscription. Your child may be set activities based on books from this eLibrary as part of their remote or face-to-face learning.

Childhood winter illnesses – knowing what to do  – this leaflet has been published by the NHS to help families spot common winter illnesses and how they can treat their children at home.

Step Up to Social Work – an opportunity to train as a social worker
Find out more information about this programme on the Hertfordshire County Council website. Online applications will open in February and will close on Wednesday 31st March 2021.
If you meet all of the eligibility criteria, register to attend one of these virtual sessions:
Tuesday 2nd February
Wednesday 10th February
Wednesday 17th February

This week, additional resources are available to support your family with remote learning. Please see below for how to access the resources on our school website.

From next Monday, all classes will again have daily maths and English video lessons. This week is a transition back to that format although some year groups have already provided those resources.

Your child’s new Home learning grid is now available. Grids will be updated every fortnight during the partial school closure.

We have updated the content on our phonics page which has resources for pupils of all ages. Phonics Play is one of the resources that we use to support the teaching of phonics at Bowmansgreen. It is currently free for families to use during Lockdown.      Log-in details.    Username: jan21    Password: home

We will be using Oxford Owl to support families teaching and learning reading at home. Families must register with Oxford Owl to access the free eBook library which provides access to a range of books, some of which can also be enjoyed as audio books.  We will shortly provide details of how families can log-in to the wider eBook library, which has more titles to choose from. More details can be found on our English page.

Take a look at our maths page to find games and activities to support your children learning maths. Here, you will also find links to the log-in pages for Numbots and Times Tables Rock Stars to support pupils practise mental calculations.

We are continuing to build curriculum content on our school website so that families can be supported with remote learning. We will update families when new resources are available.

We look forward to seeing you all this week, via the remote catch-up meetings. Please book an appointment if you have not already done so. Bookings close at 4pm today.

Daily morning meetings for your children will begin tomorrow. Later today, you will be sent the link for how your child will access these meetings.

Read about our new remote learning expectations here.

EYFS families, please read this additional document which provides details and information specific to your children’s remote learning.

Next week, all families are invited to a ‘catch-up’ meeting with class teachers, as an opportunity to see how you all are, to discuss remote and face-to-face learning and any other support needed, during this difficult time. You will have received a text earlier today, with a link to the booking system which will be live until Monday afternoon. Please let the school office know if you have difficulty booking an appointment. During this meeting we will also ask whether families need resources and equipment to support remote learning, such as exercise books, pencils, pens etc.

On Tuesday, our morning meetings will start for all pupils learning remotely. Families will receive an invite and link to the meetings which will take place via Microsoft Teams. These daily meetings will take place as follows: KS2  8.45am    KS1  9am

From Monday 18th January, weekly feedback and discussion meetings will take place for all pupils. Again, families will receive invites and links to these meetings which will take place via Microsoft Teams. Pupils will meet with class staff in small groups so that peer discussion and interaction can also take place.

Although there will be planned opportunities for reading during the weekly English lessons, we are looking into how we can provide more opportunities to support pupils’ reading whilst at home. We no longer have access to the programme that we previously used and we are currently looking at alternatives. Please read and share stories and other reading material with your children as often as you can as it is a great way of broadening vocabulary and developing other language and communication skills. We are also looking at how we can offer families a regular, safe opportunity to change and borrow books when needed.

We are continuing to build curriculum content on our school website so that families have a bank of resources that they can refer to and re-visit when needed.

A questionnaire will be sent to families next week about access to technology, to gain information about when and how pupils are accessing remote learning, to see if we can support any families where this is a barrier to successful remote learning.

Follow this link for information about increasing data allowances on mobile devices. Please let us know if you think you are eligible and we will apply on your behalf.

Enjoy your weekend.

Thank you for all of your recent comments and queries regarding our remote learning. As mentioned in Tuesday’s communication, we have been reviewing our remote learning policy and provision.

Since September, we have provided daily, remote learning for all pupils who were not able to attend school, including due to self-isolation. In the autumn term, anywhere between 5 – 20 families were self-isolating per day and our school attendance averaged 95% for the term. We amended the model and resources that we published for remote learning, reducing the number of videos and changing our planning format.

The situation has clearly changed! The new national Lockdown means that currently, around 80% of pupils at Bowmansgreen are learning at home. We reviewed our provision, anticipating a possible change in DfE policy and to better meet the needs of the majority of pupils who would again be learning remotely. We also sent home workbooks for pupils in Y2-Y6 so that additional resources were immediately accessible for pupils, in the event of further restrictions.

There have been lots of questions about and requests for live lessons – this will not be part of our provision, at this time.  Although there are many obvious benefits of live lessons, they do come with some restraints and added pressures for families who have, for example, several children needing to access live lessons at the same time; limited devices; and working parents and carers, some with hectic or anti-social shift patterns. We hope that recorded lessons provide a level of flexibility and will create a bank of resources that families can access via our website, when it fits in with family life. There will however be daily opportunities for remote face to face interaction with teachers, which will be explained in our policy.

Our updated Remote Learning Policy will be sent out to families tomorrow and published on our school website, detailing our provision from next week.