Remote Learning FAQs for Parents

On the first day of home learning, your teacher will be in touch to agree plans for you to gain access to the live teaching Microsoft Teams platform. The vast majority of children should be able to access live teaching from the first day of absence.

In the event of technical issues email the help line on: computingcurriculum@thevictory.portsmouth.sch.uk

We teach the same curriculum remotely as we do in school wherever possible and appropriate. However, we have needed to make the following adaptations:

• For art and design technology, we have made adaptations to the practical parts to make sure that children can complete tasks using what they have at home.
• For science, we have adapted some of the practical work for the same reasons as in art and design technology.

We expect that remote education provision (including remote teaching and independent work) will take pupils broadly the following number of hours each day:

Nursery: 30 minutes remote with tasks to do offline amounting to approximately 2 hours

Reception, Year 1 and Year2: 3 hours Year 3, 4, 5 and 6 = 4 hours

We use Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Teams to support online learning. Your child has their own Office 365 account for emails.

Learning from Home Resources

Your child has been shown how to use a Chromebook (if loaned) and how to access Teams.

You will have received information to help you support your child with this.

We use a combination of the following approaches to deliver remote education:

For year N -6

• Live teaching (online lessons) oncluding powerpoints and sways.
• Pre-recorded lessons for PE
• Links to Oak National Academy lessons where these match what we are teaching in school.  
• Bug club e books
• Commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences

For pre-school:

• Live teaching and small group work
• Information for parents to support learning at home, including information on Microsoft Sway.

We recognise that some pupils may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those pupils to access remote education:

• If your child does not have access to appropriate technology, they will be offered a Chromebook.
• You will be given a time to collect these.
• You will be asked to sign for delivery and will have the opportunity to ask for support in setting this up.

• Your child is expected to complete the work set.
• Where your child is invited to a live lesson, they are expected to attend. Where they do not attend, we will make a phone call to you to ensure that this happens.
• We expect parents to support their child’s learning, including ensuring that they are available and online for any live teaching.
• You will receive information about what we expect during live teaching.

Please ensure that your child follows these expectations.

• There will be daily live teaching sessions which will allow teachers to check on your how well your child is doing.
• We will offer smaller group sessions to support some pupils.
• If your child is not online when we expect them to be, we will make a phone call home to check.
• If your child is not completing and submitting work, your child’s classteacher will call you to discuss this. They will talk to you about how you can help. School leaders will attend live lessons every week to monitor learning and behaviour.

Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children; for example, whole-class feedback or quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows:

• We might ask your child to send their work back via email. This might be through their email account or yours. A photograph works well for this, but your child’s teacher will let you know what we need.
• We will sometimes use online quizzes to check if your child has understood what they have been learning.
• Your child will have at least two opportunities during the week to speak to their teacher about their work. This might be during a live streamed lesson, or it might be in a small group tutorial time.

In most circumstances the teacher will ensure that the remote learning is accessible to all of the year group. We recognise that some pupils, for example some pupils with SEND, may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home.  

If there are circumstances where this is not possible, we will speak to you directly. You will be advised which curriculum year group would be most appropriate for your child to join and an invite will be sent to you. Some pupils will need an individual curriculum or interventions, you will be informed if this is the case.

If your child is not in school because they are self-isolating, we will follow the same approach as above.

We will contact you to discuss our child’s learning at least twice a week.