Remote Education

Remote education provision: information for parents

This information is intended to provide clarity and transparency to students and parents or carers about what to expect from remote education where national or local restrictions require entire cohorts (or bubbles) to remain at home.

For details of what to expect where individual students are self-isolating, please see the final section of this page.

The remote curriculum: what is taught to students at home

A student’s first day or two of being educated remotely might look different from our standard approach, while we take all necessary actions to prepare for a longer period of remote teaching.

What should my child expect from immediate remote education in the first day or two of students being sent home?

At Brooksbank, all classwork materials and resources should be available from a student's class on Microsoft Teams. Work will be provided for all timetabled lessons, so students are able to follow their usual timetable.

Following the first few days of remote education, will my child be taught broadly the same curriculum as they would if they were in school?

At The Brooksbank School, we teach the same curriculum remotely as we do in school. All class materials are posted on Microsoft Teams / Class Notebook and live lessons are scheduled in the Teams class. We may need to make some adaptations in some subjects. For example, in subjects with more practical lessons such as Performing Arts and Technology faculties, the curriculum has been adapted to better suit home learning. Changes will be communicated to students via Teams.

Remote teaching and study time each day

How long can I expect work set by the school to take my child each day?

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will take students broadly the following number of hours each day:

Key Stage 3, 4 and 5

Six 50-minute lessons.

Accessing remote education

How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?

At Brooksbank, the main platform for the delivery of remote learning will be Microsoft Teams. All lesson materials will be available for students in the files area and the Class Notebook within Teams. Live lessons will be scheduled in the class Team following the students’ timetable. Some subjects such as Maths and Modern Languages may utilise external resources. MyMaths and Linguascope.

If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?

We recognise that some students may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those students to access remote education:

Identifying students for whom access is a barrier to remote learning via parental questionnaires and school communication.
Requesting parents report any access issues to the ITSupport@bbs.calderdale.sch.uk email address.
Contact made by Progress Leaders at Brooksbank to ascertain the exact nature of the access issue.
Brooksbank Teachers to provide paper based/printed materials if needed.
Arranging collection of laptops or internet devices (e.g dongles) supplied as part of the DfE laptop scheme.
Maintaining a waiting list for devices when current supplies have all been distributed.
Providing access to in-school provision where access remains a barrier to learning.

How will my child be taught remotely?

We use a combination of the following approaches to teach students remotely:

Live teaching (online lessons)
Recorded teaching (e.g. Video/audio recordings made by teachers)
Knowledge Organiser tasks.
Printed paper packs produced by teachers (e.g. workbooks, worksheets)
Textbooks and reading books students have at home
Commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences.

Engagement and feedback

What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?

All students will be expected to follow their normal timetable remotely. We ask that parents try to ensure a quiet space in which to work and encourage their children to get into a regular routine with the learning.
We fully appreciate that not all students will be able to take part in all the ‘live lessons’, for example if their parents or secondary siblings are working on the equipment at the same time, and this will not preclude them from completing the work that is set. The timetable for live lessons will be made available in advance to help you plan, some lessons may be recorded and available on your child’s secure Teams channel to watch again at a different time that day. Alternatively, instructions and resources will be available for all students to work independently.
Students will have full access to all of their subjects and teachers throughout the week and will have six lessons per day of work to complete.

How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?

Engagement in remote learning is paramount to all staff and students at The Brooksbank School.
Teachers and Progress Leaders will check students’ engagement with remote education daily and use Bromcom to monitor positive and negative engagements. Teachers and Progress Leaders will phone to inform you of any concerns. Engagement will be monitored not just by attendance at live lessons, as we appreciate this may not always be possible. Therefore we will also monitor the submission of the work set as assignments in Teams and work added to the Class Notebook.
If engagement continues to be a concern, Progress Leaders will contact parents and carers to discuss the issues and look at how these might best be addressed.

How will you assess my child’s work and progress?

Feedback can take many forms and may not always mean extensive written comments for individual children. For example, whole-class feedback or quizzes marked automatically via digital platforms are also valid and effective methods, amongst many others. Our approach to feeding back on student work is as follows:

Written feedback on identified pieces of student or students’ work.
Whole class feedback on tasks produced and the modelling of answers to demonstrate a high-quality response.
Immediate, verbal feedback in live lessons and for answers to short tasks and quizzes which will be set to check student/students' understanding of the work covered.

Additional support for students with particular needs

How will you work with me to help my child who needs additional support from adults at home to access remote education?

We recognise that some students, for example some students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), may not be able to access remote education without support from adults at home. We acknowledge the difficulties this may place on families, and we will work with parents and carers to support those students in the following ways:

Regular scaffolding of written tasks to support students with their writing.
Careful selection of text used in online lessons to ensure accessibility.
Use of Microsoft accessibility tools, assistive reading, picture dictionary and the dictate feature.
Differentiation of resources to enable SEND students to access the work set. Use of Class Notebook to send individual tasks to SEND students.
Regular contact from the key workers of SEND children to check on their progress and any concerns parents may have.

Remote education for self-isolating students

Where individual students need to self-isolate but the majority of their peer group remains in school, how remote education is provided will likely differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges of teaching students both at home and in school.

If my child is not in school because they are self-isolating, how will their remote education differ from the approaches described above?

The approach for students who are self-isolating will be very similar in that all work will be set in the same way, with similar expectation of engagement for self-isolating students who are not suffering any symptoms.

Class resources will be uploaded to each class Team. Conversations can be made to teachers through Teams. Regular contact will be maintained to check on progress and wellbeing.

Advice for parents

Many students have broadband internet access at home. They will use services such as MSN Messenger and may have their own profiles set up on social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. A huge growth area is on-line gaming, not just on a computer, but through games consoles.

Whilst many Internet Service Providers offer filtering systems to help you safeguard your child at home, it remains surprisingly easy for students to access inappropriate material including unsuitable texts, pictures and movies.

Locating the computer in a family area, not a bedroom, will enable you to keep an eye on your child as they use the Internet. Don’t deny them the opportunity to learn from the wide variety of material and games available on the Internet. Instead discuss with them some simple rules for keeping them safe and make sure they understand their importance. Use these simple guidelines in your discussions

Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends they do not know offline.
Explain to your children what information about them is personal: i.e. email address, mobile number, school name, sports club, arrangements for meeting up with friends and any pictures or videos of themselves, their family or friends. Small pieces of information can easily be pieced together to form a comprehensive insight in to their lives and daily activities.
Make your children aware that they need to think carefully about the information and pictures they post on their profiles. Inform them that once published online, anyone can change or share these images of them.
It can be easy to forget that the internet is not a private space, and as result sometimes young people engage in risky behaviour online. Advise your children not to post any pictures, videos or information on their profiles, or in chat rooms, that they would not want a parent or carer to see.
If your child receives spam or junk email and texts, remind them never to believe their contents, reply to them or use them.
It’s not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don’t know. They won’t know what they contain—it could be a virus, or worse – an inappropriate image or film.
Help your child to understand that some people lie online and that therefore it’s better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
Always keep communication open for a child to know that it’s never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.

It is also a good idea to regularly check the Internet sites they are visiting e.g. by clicking on History and Favorites. Please reassure them that you want to keep them safe rather than take Internet access away from them. Create a dialogue and a relationship of mutual respect as far as the Internet is concerned.

CEOP have produced a new website with information on eSafety “Purely for Parents”.

http://ceop.police.uk/

Some other useful websites

Think U Know: www.thinkuknow.co.uk

Digizen: www.digizen.org

Everyone is making increased use of ICT in all aspects of their lives. This is equally true for students in school, where ICT often provides a modern alternative to more traditional approaches to learning. Whilst encouraging this approach, we take e-safety seriously at The Brooksbank School, and it is essential that students and their families understand some of the dangers of working, playing and communicating online. At school, students discuss e-safety in assemblies, tutorial sessions and in their ICT lessons.

Before they are permitted to access the school’s network, students are required to sign an Acceptable Use Policy. This document can be downloaded from our policies section. The key points contained in the full policy are as follows:

Make sure that you don’t share your username and password with anyone else.
Always log-off your station before you leave the classroom.
Keep our network safe! Don’t open suspicious attachments or download unknown files or attempt to install your own software onto the school network, you might unintentionally be installing a virus.
Only use the ICT equipment and internet as directed by your teacher.
Use the school e-mail address you are given to communicate with your teachers e.g. to send work, ask for extra help.
Make sure that you use your school e-mail account appropriately – students who are unable to do this will be blocked from accessing these facilities.
The school now uses Teams for remote teaching of lessons with students.
Don’t waste your time adding teachers as ‘friends’ on social networking sites – they’re not allowed to accept your request!

Report any eSafety incidents or concerns:

Talk to an adult you trust – your form teacher, a subject teacher, your parents … it doesn’t matter who, just tell someone.

If it’s something that’s happened in school then send an e-mail to esafety@bbs.calderdale.sch.uk

If it’s something that’s happened out of school hours and you feel that you need to report the incident then look out for the following logos:

To help families understand e-safety issues and how to protect children at home, we have collated the following resources for parents:

Useful Links

The Brooksbank School Sports College is not responsible for the content of external sites.