The Challenges of Remote Learning

Time to reflect on our first week of Remote Learning. It has certainly been a rollercoaster week. A huge thank you to staff, students and parents for your combined efforts. We are all settling into routines, upskilling in many areas of I.T and learning a great deal about our Junior school Learning Community. I had the pleasure of joining the Year Five parent meeting on Tuesday night. Around 25 parents joined the meeting in which Mrs. Robertson, Mr. Lewis, Miss See and Mrs. Kelvy walked parents through how Microsoft Teams works and how they conduct English, Mathematics and Inquiry lessons. Parents used the Teams platform to access the meeting, post questions and connect with Year Five families.

There are a few online issues that have come to light of the last week. Where possible, we would appreciate increased periods of supervision and parents notifying staff when they see online behaviour that isn’t in line with College values. This should assist us in setting the bar high and maintaining online protocols;

*Students should not be joining meetings early. Often this is to chat. This is impacting on their ability to be fully present at the start of lessons.

*Students should not be individually posting messages to other students during lessons or Assemblies. These posts are not seen by teachers, as they don’t appear on the ‘feed’ on the right hand side of screen.

*Students should be in College P.E uniform at all times when engaging in online lessons.

In Sunday’s Age newspaper, Wendy Tuohy presented an article -‘Home School Jungle’. She outlined some interesting thoughts about home schooling. “This strange pause we are living through is a blessing gift of time to regroup, recharge and reset, or it’s the ultimate stress festival.” Wendy quotes a friend of hers “After 30 minutes both my kids are crying and my wife is angry at me. I now have a greater respect for teachers. Maybe the kids don’t need much supervision at school, but at home they need to check the answer for everything and have no capacity to think for themselves.”

Wendy Tuohy interviewed a number of educational academics on the subject of home schooling. They all had similar advice for parents working at home with their children;

*Each said the best we could hope for was to take an interest and engage at the edge with tasks set by schools, and the strong message was the best thing for children is to ensure the basics are moving in the right direction - Literacy and Numeracy.

*Keep Literacy up to speed by simply spending time reading with your children.

*Be ‘gentle’ with each other whilst working at home.

*Parental anxiety is the greatest ‘bogeyman’. The best thing parents can do for the general wellbeing of the children is to get their anxiety under control.

A Junior School parent survey was circulated via email on Tuesday evening. The Remote Learning survey should take 2-5 minutes to complete.

Junior School April Birthdays

In a time of remote learning, isolation and lockdown, celebrating a birthday with family and friends has certainly proved problematic. The following students and staff all celebrate a birthday in the month of April. We wish them all a very happy birthday and best wishes for their next trip around the sun.

Will Baker on April 2nd

Angus Reid on April 4th

Harriet Marson on April 5th

Mrs Drummond on April 5th

Zane Palmer on April 7th

Mrs Patterson on April 12th

Alveena Nadim on April 14th

Yolanda O’Sullivan on April 15th

Archie Young on April 16th

Mr Palmer on April 19th

Arthur Adamson on April 21st

Hugh Stratmann on April 23rd

Isabella Malseed on April 26th

Compass Awards

Home isolation provides a perfect opportunity for the Year Five and Year Six students enrolled in the Compass Award to complete the Hobbies/Skills component of Level 1. Students have many options in this area of compass. They can complete a minimum of three hours undertaking an art, craft, music or communication activity. Year Five student Amelia Bradbeer has come up with a novel idea to complete this aspect of her Compass Award. Amelia is looking to compile a ‘Missing Myrniong’ booklet where staff and students put together a paragraph on what they miss about the Junior School whilst working at home with remote learning. I look forward to contributing to, and reading Amelia’s compilation.

Junior School Challenges

Throughout the duration of remote learning, a number of extra-curricula challenge tasks and competitions will be set. I encourage all Junior School students and parents to ‘have-a-go’ over the coming weeks. In Week 4, Mrs. Patterson has proposed a ‘Dress as Your Favourite Sportsperson Day’ and plans on setting some physical challenges for students, parents and staff to complete. We look forward to some photographs.

Challenge One - Celtic Cross

Last week, students were emailed a video demonstrating how to draw a Celtic Cross. They were encourage to electronically send these in for display in the Myrniong homestead.

Challenge Two - Beep Test

This week, families were challenged to set up a flat 20m Beep Test course in their backyard. Using a free phone App, students and parents could run the Beep Test and record their times on an emailed record sheet.

Stephen Nelson

Head of Junior School

The Hamilton and Alexandra College Newsletter

Issue 11 · 23 Apr 2020

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