Mr Irwin's Message

Hi Families,

Before writing this week’s newsletter message I went and looked at what I spoke about before we commenced remote learning in Term 2. I think what I talked about still holds great weight.

So, the main message I wanted to pass on in today’s newsletter message is this; there’s no such thing as a perfect school day. There has never been at school, and there never will be at home. Some days the technology might not work for you. Some days an app might not work for you. Some days your child might not work for you!

A set of instructions might be difficult on a particular day. Children might go off on a tangent when completing a piece of work.

Let me tell you in every day I have been in a school these are all common occurrences. Whilst we would like every child to complete every task set to the best of their ability, the reality is this doesn’t happen 100% of the time for your child at school.

Please don’t make this the expectation at home. You will become stressed, your child will become stressed and remote learning will quickly become a sour experience. At this stage we have 6 weeks of remote learning to navigate, and I want to do this in a manner that supports everyone as much as we can.

There are some key pieces of advice I want to reiterate that have already been communicated to ensure we look after the well-being of parents and students during remote learning, which are;

no school day is ever perfect and no remote learning day will be either! Do your best, adapt and even move on if you have to. This happens in school each and every day.
We are conducting remote learning, not home schooling. Teacher support is available every day for your child via Google Meet from 9am until midday. We want students to access this and ask for support so they don’t have to rely on parents or siblings where possible. Use this every day, use this every session if need be as this is what it is there for!
The simple habits of re-watching a video or rereading instructions should not be overlooked before diving into help! This can alleviate a lot of confusion. If things still don’t make sense call your teacher on Google Meet for help!
Technology does not work at school 100% of the time all the time. It won’t at home. In these instances make do as best you can, move on, or even take a break and come back to it later.

There are some minor adjustments to our approach to remote learning I wanted to make you aware of. Some key feedback we got last time was students became harder to engage in the learning as the day moved on.

This time around teachers are constructing days with a midday finish for students in mind. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be the days students complete Literacy and Numeracy tasks. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be the days students complete specialist and discovery learning. We hope this eases the load on students and families whilst maintaining continuity of learning during this period.

Each day’s learning will once again be available via our remote learning hub. Assemblies will be ‘live' on Facebook on Friday morning and streamed on the learning hub for students to watch without needing to access Facebook.

I have already emailed all families with information regarding applying for on-site learning. As I stipulated in this email, this is a last resort in the few exceptional circumstances the government has laid out.

If you need any support during this period, we are here for you. Please make contact with the school and we’ll do everything we can to support you through this latest period of remote learning.

Catch you online!

eSmart