Year 7 Pastoral Guardian

Students of Year 7 have gained enormously through the support and strategies that parents have enacted for the wellbeing of their daughters.

A benefit of online learning is that, through your unwavering guidance as parents/carers, you have helped to provide an opportunity for your daughters to develop as independent and organised learners. You have been their facilitators in learning and, in some respects, a positive change in their learning habits.  Crucial to any good Learning from Home routine is structure.  As parents, you have played a pivotal role in ensuring this has occurred and the routine is as similar to school as possible.  Having structure from the beginning is very important, and parents who have facilitated a routine and organisation for their child have supported engagement and development of independence in their daughter’s learning.  Starting the day is hugely important and, by having everyone up, dressed, and ready to go, parents have set expectations in the right way from the beginning.

It is important that a schedule is followed that is similar to school, and to stop to eat and have breaks as timetabled.  I have heard many parents ensure that they were honouring that kind of structure and helped to keep daughter/s engaged and concentrated on work when they needed to.

It’s important to realise asparents that your daughter should not be working on the computer all day.  It was refreshing to hear that the Year 7s were able to do other work or activities away from the screen. “Any expectation that students are going to be learning online all day is unrealistic, the idea that they would simply be in class but through a screen all day and be fully focused is unrealistic.” (Dr Samuels (2020), Coronavirus: How to home school your kids during COVID-19 outbreak)  “It is more important to chunk what they do down into manageable periods of time which is what generally happens in schools anyway.”

The college timetable ensured that breaks happened between periods of learning.  Ten minutes of exercise, having the blooding flowing, and clearing the head is paramount to sustain engagement and therefore learning.  You have to have them off their seats and up, doing some exercise round the living room or in the yard, pouring a glass of water, and then they can settle down again.  There are many suggested apps on Community Zone that have supported movement during the breaks.

Parents are instrumental in making sure their daughters are staying on task.  Continual monitoring ensures ‘goofing off’ is minimal.  Year 7 students need guidance, monitoring, and feedback.  Again, this is shaped through routine.  Parents making themselves available, guided by the school timetable, will assist the teacher’s expectation to have tasks completed and submitted on time.  Many students have been able to achieve keeping up to date with the work and this is because of the tremendous support of parents.

Parentsare paramount to the success of online learning.  You have provided the routine and structure that support facilitation of progressive learning during these extraordinary times.  Thank you!

Michael Butterworth