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How Lent Rise School coped with the snow
Lent Rise County Combined School Buckinghamshire is a large and popular
primary school servicing a socially diverse area. The school has 420 pupils
on
roll, with two classes per year. About a third of the pupils have special
educational needs and, overall, pupils start with below average attainment.
A key drive for the school is to put families at the heart of the learning process – to involve families more actively with the education of their children.
Over the years, the school has developed an accessible learning platform, Lent Rise Learning World, to enable parents to share their child’s learning. The technology allows parents to share in the child’s class work. Real time reporting ensures that parents are kept up-to-date with their child’s progress and achievement at all times. Pupils also upload work to the learning platform to celebrate achievement. Parents now actively support learning at home and regularly check their child’s targets and progress, in fact this year parents are being encouraged to work with their child to agree one of the targets for the child each half term.”
(By combining the non-technological (Parent Packs, the Parent Partnership Room, Family Fun Days, etc) and the technological (after-school cyber café, the learning platform, etc), the school is building a strong culture and expectation of family involvement and learning.)
So what do we do when we have to close the school on “bad weather” days, not that that happens too often but with only 3 teachers living close enough to walk to school there are days when they really could not take responsibility for 420 children.
The first thing we try to do is to make the decision the evening before as this helps parents to plan their childcare for the following day.
We do this through a text / telephone cascade between staff who come from widely differing areas. If the decision is that the school must close we notify all staff and all parents through a texting system so that they have immediate notification of the closure and a reminder that an email will follow. The email then tells them what to look for as regards their child’s school work for the day.
All staff immediately access the Learning platform and remotely input their classes work for the day into the class section on the Learning platform. Through that day they monitor this and where appropriate begin marking the work.
Parents and children have access to the child’s portal and to the relevant sections of the platform and during the day will work remotely on work that has been set according to the needs of the child.
So to sum up. Everyone knows that education is no longer something that has to be delivered only when you are within the four walls of your classroom.
.jpg "Lent Rise Snow Menu")
Parents are very comfortable with using the platform as they do this regularly
for the following reasons:
- Looking at their child’s portfolio of work
- Accessing their “reports” each half term
- Sharing their targets and now helping to define one target each half term
- Supporting their child to do at least one homework each week through the platform
- Taking on a family challenge on wet and windy days so that they show they have worked together on a subject they are interested in
- Seeking to expand their own horizons through accessing local courses and links to further education
Children love their remote access to a new world of learning. They do so
much through this now that to access work on a snow closure day is almost
second nature to them. They love the variety of the offering made to them
through the platform:
- Homework each week
- Family Learning projects where they can be the lead learner!!
- The head teachers Hotseat which seeks their opinion on a variety of things
- School Council and Healthy School Council chat rooms where they can debate their own needs for the future
- Never Ending stories which each child can contribute to thus creating a school story each term
- Quizzes
- Competitions
So what the school has done is to create a rich and vibrant learning resource which makes learning accessible beyond the walls for children and parents and when the snow shuts the doors physically a new world is instantly accessible which allows learning to continue.
Parents love it! Some of the comments on Closure days show just how well our parents and children are using this resource.
Rebecca said “Alfie has been doing his homework every day after playing in the snow!”
Lois emailed to tell us, “I think the decision to close the snow was the right one and it was much appreciated that the closure was announced in good time, allowing us to make alternative arrangements. It’s really nice to already see teachers feedback on Lent Rise Learning World and we are making the best of it at home by also playing scrabble, chess and doing puzzle books etc (With the odd Harry Potter movie thrown in).”
Liz said “Totally understand and appreciate the emails and text messages keeping us up to date of the situation. Sophie has been doing the work set for 6A, albeit a bit reluctantly but it has been done!!”
Others merely responded, e.g. “Got texts and swathe school website. xxxxx is “happily” doing his work!!”
The nice thing was that the Headteacher also kept an eye on all that was going on and was able to respond immediately to need. E.g. a parent who had difficulty accessing the portal sent an email and this was sent on to the IT manager who immediately supported the parent by giving advice .and guidance on how to access the site and therefore the child’s work. The Headteacher responded to emails as they came in so that parents who had taken the time to express appreciation had an instant response.
There will always be the issue of the children who do not have access to the internet at home but there are always friends who live in the road who can be supportive and print off the work or a phone call to a neighbour will mean that the children can pass messages to each other. Everyone in this community has a phone so that keeps a supportive network alive and well.
Everyone is a winner but the biggest win of all is that all children with a little bit of thought and a network of friends can access learning now from wherever they are.
Brenda Bigland CBE
Lent Rise School
Coulson Way
Burnham
SL1 7NP
www.lentrise.bucks.sch.uk
Brenda Bigland is a Mirandanet Scholar.
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