“Home Learning” is our approach to maintaining learning during this difficult period. It is based on our primary objective of keeping healthy in mind and body.
Home Learning is about establishing working practices and lines of communication that provide stability, consistency and support for students whilst being flexible and sensitive to current family circumstances.
Online classrooms
With this in mind teaching staff have set up Google Classrooms for all subjects and tutorial sessions. Our Google classrooms are the vehicle for students and teachers to communicate with each other.
- Staff will outline the learning tasks for the upcoming week. In a few cases tasks may take longer than a week, particularly for more creative subjects.
- Deadlines for the completion of tasks will be clearly communicated, so students can manage their time effectively.
- Teachers will hold a “roll call” at the start of every timetabled lesson. This is to highlight that they are on line and accessible for students. Student do not have to join the roll call, but we have found this is often a very supportive activity.
- Students can organise their learning to best suit family life. We understand families have to find their own way through this and create their own routines.
- Teachers are only available to students during timetabled lesson. Teachers have families too, they are required to manage home life along with the needs of hundreds of students, and we want them to have quality time, offline, away from work each day.
Learning activities
Staff use a range of learning activities in order to achieve the learning they are looking to take place.
Short, structured tasks are often used when learning is related to 'committing information to memory' or 'understanding new or difficult concepts'
Longer, less structures tasks are often used when learning is focused on the 'development of skills' or 'exploring topics in more depth'
So broadly speaking you are likely to see subjects like Mathematics, English, Science and Languages setting shorter learning tasks that require regular feedback or marking. Subjects such as Art, Music, Drama and Technology use longer tasks to create the space for students to develop their own ideas and skills. Geography, History and RE regularly use both approaches.
Meaning making
Successful learning is when the learner "makes meaning". This is the brain understanding and making sense of the new material and experiences. This is hard work. We can help, support and structure the process but ultimately a learner has to go through their own "struggle" to successfully build new neural pathways in their brain.
At school teachers are constantly managing this "cognitive load", trying to encourage students to struggle the right amount. At a distance this is much harder and, ultimately, families are picking up this pressure. There is no right and wrong way just try to gauge levels of stress - don't avoid it but don't let it get too much, or else learning stops anyway!