Spring Provision 2021

Friday 5th Feburary 2021

5th February 2021

 

Dear Parents and Carers,

 

We’ve had lots of feedback from you telling us how much the children are enjoying and benefiting from the lesson videos and live group sessions that we introduced a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been really delighted to hear this. I am also very aware of how difficult this lockdown is for so many of us in our extremely varied circumstances.  We are constantly reviewing our remote learning and will be implementing further changes from next week, which I hope will help further and I will outline in more detail below.

 

Firstly, please can I reiterate that we do understand how difficult home-schooling can be, whatever your situation is.  We are proud to be a community school and as such we have families with a huge range of different circumstances . One of our many challenges at the moment is to try to meet everyone’s needs as best we can. Please remember that, whilst we are happy that children are doing as much as they can,  we know and understand that it is highly unlikely that they will do everything that is set every day, and that is absolutely fine. Please also remember if you’d like to have a chat to someone about this,  either  drop them a line or send a message to admin@invictaprimary.co.uk and we will make sure someone gets back to you. 

 

Handing in deadlines

We’ve realised that the hand in “deadlines” in Google Classroom can cause stress for some children and families, not least when a reminder that work is “late” appears. For this reason we have removed the deadlines. If this causes problems for your child, please email their teacher directly who can give them a personal reminder if necessary! Please just be aware that, as before, work handed in more than 3 days after it has been posted may not be marked due to the level of teacher marking. 

 

Live daily registration sessions

Currently there is an hour online chat session daily for each class. From Monday this online hour will include a daily “live” 15 minute registration session on Google Meet. The timings of this hour are staggered to enable children sharing devices to attend their registration session.

The sessions aren’t compulsory, however we would highly recommend your children attending them. As well as a chance to connect with teachers and classmates we hope they will signify a start to the “home-school day” and help in setting a routine. The same rules as for our other live sessions will apply. 

Timings for these sessions are as follows:

 

UKS2 (years 5 and 6)	9.00-9.15 online registration with chat online until 10am
LKS2 (years 3 and 4)	9.15-9.30 online registration with chat online until 10.15
KS1 (years 1 and 2)	9.30-9.45 online registration with chat online until 10.30
Reception	9.45-10.00 online registration with chat online until 10.45

 

Please remember, as with all of our online learning, sessions can only be accessed via your child(ren)’s Invicta Primary School login

Classes who have live sessions during these times on any day will not have a live registration for obvious reasons. 

 

From Monday, you will be able to access these live registration sessions (and all live lessons) by going to the ‘classwork’ tab on Google Classroom and then selecting the ‘Live Lessons’ topic down the left hand side, which your child’s teacher has set up. Please see the photo below for an example of what this might look like on your child’s account. 

 

Show and Tell Club

Our drop in sessions of Ms Alexander’s singalong, Ms Power’s sketching club and Mr Waller’s PE club have been a huge success (albeit with some teething problems- thanks for bearing with us!). The children have clearly enjoyed connecting in this way. 

 

We are now organising another drop in session for everyone. Each child will be invited to a live Show and Tell session with approximately 10 children in their class and hosted by our wonderful support staff. This is an optional and informal session and the times and links will be posted in Google Classroom later today or early next week just like for other sessions.

For children who attend these sessions, which will last up to half an hour, the same rules apply as for our other live sessions. Children don’t have to “bring” something as they may prefer to see what other children would like to share. Children must also understand that everyone might not get a turn in the first session, but they will next time! As with all of our new initiatives, please bear with us if there are any difficulties to begin with! 

If your child(ren) does attend please be aware that:

• Children must only bring something which is age appropriate and it can be: 
• An interesting item
• A skill or talent
• Something they have made

Children in our provision for Vulnerable and Critical Workers’ children will have an opportunity to “Show and Tell” in school where they will be invited to bring something into school to show their class if they want to. This means that they will not automatically receive an invitation to an online show and tell group. However if they are attending part time and would like one please email their teacher directly. 

 

Other social contact

Some parents and carers have told us about how they are organising their own “out of school” group calls via Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or other platforms. If you would like us to help you connect with others in your class, please send us a message.

Help

We continue to be mindful of the practical challenges so many of us are faced with at the moment. Don't forget to contact Kate Fry kate.fry@invictaprimary.co.uk directly and in confidence if there is help we can give either with household supplies or devices and access to the internet. For those who contacted us this week Kate will be in touch early next week about food collection or delivery. 

Thank you to those of you who were able to either contribute to  or shared our Go Fund me page. Donations are gratefully received, and we are using this money to support families facing additional hardship during this time. We are also still welcoming donations of old laptops, tablets etc with working chargers to pass on to new homes.

 

My very best wishes to you all, 

Vicki Cuff

 

Wednesday 27th January 2021

Dear parents and carers,

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ONSITE PROVISION FOR CHILDREN OF CRITICAL WORKERS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN

Firstly, sincere thanks to all our families for their continued support and engagement in remote learning during this current time. We know, and many of our team are also experiencing first hand, just how difficult it is to juggle work, childcare of young siblings and to still support your child in their engagement of remote learning. We are really thankful for the contribution you are making to enable your child(ren) to sign in for their daily schooling on Google Classroom. We also recognise and acknowledge that not everyone can do everything every day and recognise that everyone’s situation is different.

Thanks also to those of you who provided feedback for our remote learning offer - we hope that the recent changes have improved the remote learning experience and engagement for your child(ren) at home - it has been wonderful to receive positive messages about how you have benefitted in particular from the additions of live sessions and videos to accompany lesson slides.

For those families of critical workers and vulnerable children attending our on site provision, thank-you to those of you who have completed our booking forms on a weekly basis for your children during this period. This has been extremely helpful in enabling us to plan adequately for staffing of bubbles within school.

Unfortunately, we have now reached a point where we are at full capacity for our onsite provision. This is because as well as safely and effectively staffing our onsite provisions our staff have to be available to provide remote learning for the majority of children who are learning at home, which includes teaching live sessions, preparing lessons and videos, mark work submitted, support and feedback to these children on their work at home on a daily basis. Some children with special educational needs are also receiving individual interventions via remote learning and staff are working hard to support families via phone calls and through Google Classroom chat sessions.

Therefore, as from today we will be closing to new applications for the emergency on site provision unless families fall within the below criteria under no. 1, 2 or 3.

We will of course continue to make our best endeavours to ensure all families who have registered with our emergency provision during this time of school closure are able to access the provision on the days they require. However, should we have additional requests for children to attend onsite, we may only be able to offer families some of the days requested. We reiterate our plea that families ONLY request to book in for provision where they absolutely have no alternative for childcare. Please also remember that you MUST complete the booking form on a weekly basis by the deadline of Friday at 3.30 to enable us to make arrangements for adequate staffing of this provision.

To ensure we keep places available for our most vulnerable children and for those where there are no other family members available at home to keep children safe where there is no other option we will apply the following criteria to our onsite provision spaces :

1. Officially vulnerable children

2. Children with two critical worker parents/carers where both (or one in a single parent/carer household) are working to deliver prioritised services in essential roles where service resilience is at risk. (eg NHS, social care, education)

3. Children with two critical worker parents/carers (or one in a single parent/carer household) where at least one is working to deliver prioritised services in essential roles where service resilience is at risk (eg NHS, social care, education)

4. Children with two critical worker parents/carers (or one in a single parent household) as per government list

5. Children with one critical worker/ parent as per government list.

Although some schools introduced these measures from the outset we have been reluctant to and we remain so. However we feel that it is only fair to keep you informed of the situation as it changes.

As always, thank you for your on-going support and understanding during this difficult time for all. I sincerely hope we can all be back in school sooner rather than later.

Best wishes,

Vicki Cuff

Executive Headteacher

Friday 15th January 2021

Whole School - Free School Meal Support	Click HERE
Blackheath - Home Learning	Click HERE
Deptford - Home Learning	Click HERE

Friday 8th January 2021

 

Dear parents and carers

Offer of help and request for help.

Extra data for mobile devices may be available for children in Year 3 - Year 6 who are not attending school if you:

● Have no broadband access at home

● Cannot afford extra data

Children with access to a mobile phone on one of the following networks might be able to benefit:

● Three

● Smarty

● Virgin Mobile

● EE

● Tesco Mobile

● Sky Mobile

● O2

Other providers may join the scheme at a later stage.

We will need certain information from you if you would like us to apply on your behalf.

Please either email admin@invictaprimary.co.uk or call the office (Telephone - SE3: 020 8858 3831/ SE8:02086929157) to let us know if you would like us to apply.

If you do not meet these criteria but would like some help do get in touch too and we will look into some other options with you.

Also, as mentioned in my letter earlier this week please let us know if you do not have access to a suitable device for your child(ren).

We still have some chromebooks we can lend you and have applied for some more from the government. All requests and discussions will be treated in confidence.

In addition, please can I repeat my request to anyone that may have a working device and charger that they don’t need to consider donating it to a family who would benefit from it. They would be most gratefully received.

We will also be contacting families who have not logged in this week directly early next to see about further help we can give , as we appreciate that if data is limited or a device is not accessible this letter may not be received.

I hope you all have a restful weekend.

Thank you and best wishes,

Vicki Cuff

Wednesday 6th January 2021

Dear Parents and Carers,

Firstly, I hope you are all as well as possible as we once again find ourselves under the most difficult circumstances. When I wrote to you on Saturday we were hoping the current school closure would be only for two weeks. Now we are beginning to digest the Prime Minister’s announcement from Monday evening, I am writing with some updates. I apologise in advance for such a long letter, but there is a lot to cover.

Critical Worker and Vulnerable children provision

Thank you for understanding and respecting the strict criteria for this provision. Thank you too to those who have registered as requested and provided evidence. Whilst we don’t like to ask I know that you understand why we need to. Booking will now be weekly as it was in the first lockdown. A form will be sent each Friday. Whilst we understand needs might change at short notice, please ENSURE that you inform us of this so we can plan accordingly.

Home learning for children with EHCPs

We will be directly contacting parents and carers of children with EHCPs who are not attending onsite as vulnerable children by the end of this week about additional arrangements we are putting in place to further support your children.

Free School Meals

Apart from the government’s indication that food, rather than vouchers, should be provided at this stage we are still awaiting official information about how this provision will proceed during this lockdown. While awaiting further direction we are independently trying to organise food deliveries for those registered for Free School Meals who did not refuse permission. We hope these families will receive a food package this week. We will keep you informed as and when we get more information.

Remote learning

At the Government’s direction we will be reverting to our home learning provision, we are in a different position this time with the benefit of experience and hindsight! This week we have been working hard on further improving our provision within Google Classroom, as well as providing direct contact with teachers. You can expect a call from your child(ren)’s teacher before the end of next week to check-in with the children and also discuss how much contact you would like moving forward. In addition you will have the teachers’ email addresses should you have any questions for them.

For those of you who supported your child with their home learning in 2020, you will be aware of the system we used. The engagement from the children was brilliant and we were really pleased that the children managed to produce fantastic work while retaining contact with their peers and teachers. Please know that we do not underestimate how hard so many of you and your children will be working throughout this lockdown period. We are also very much aware of how difficult this can be for so many reasons and I’d like to say again that we understand that each of your individual family circumstances are different, and the implications of this.

We are not providing live lessons at Invicta for a range of reasons including equality of access as well as staff capacity during the pandemic in a maintained LA school providing critical worker provision as well as remote learning.

Google classroom provision

Our staff have worked very hard on this and the feedback from families has mostly been very positive from the outset. If you need a reminder of how Google classroom works please follow this link for a presentation. There is also a video on our Reception webpages that shows how to log on etc that might be useful as a reminder to anyone.

This might also be a good time to discuss online safety with children, and remember that young children especially should be supervised online. There is lots of advice on our online safety webpage, including how to set parental controls on devices which we highly recommend.

It is important that the children sign into Google Classroom as this is where the teacher will provide work for you and will also share messages. We will take a register based on whether children are engaged in the chat and submitting work. We will contact you if it looks like there is a problem.

● Every morning at 9am there will be a video wishing the children good morning. You don’t have to be there at 9am to see it though, you can access it all day

● Each day you will also see an English and Maths lesson uploaded on Google classroom. There will be a task set for the children to complete and it will be differentiated so that it is accessible for all. If your child is struggling, please email the teacher so that they can ensure the learning is accessible. It will follow a sequence so if you miss a day, you can always go back to catch up. Please submit the work through Google Classroom and not via email.

● There will be a weekly menu of lessons including Science, Art, Design and Technology History, PSHE, Mandarin or R.E - 1 per day.

● The teachers will be available online in Google Classroom to answer queries, make comments and help your child online between 10am & 11am and 2pm & 3pm every day.

● In addition, there will be P.E. with Mr Waller twice a week and Music with Ms Alexander once a week.

● Your teacher will not be available from 11am-2pm daily so that they can prepare learning for the next day. The teacher will also share a video (not live!) with storytime at around 3pm daily. Again, don’t worry if your child is not online, it will be available later.

● We will be looking out for good effort and hard work and will celebrate this in Special Mentions each Friday.

If you do any work, please submit on Google classroom, do not email this to teachers individually - they might miss it in amongst all their emails! You should expect your teacher to give feedback on any work submitted within 2-3 working days.

Google classroom organisation

The classroom is organised into the following topics:

● Home Learning- Daily messages, daily maths, English and other subject lessons

● Story time- Daily

● P.E. with Mr Waller - posted on Tuesday and Thursday

● Music with Miss Alexander- posted on a Friday

● Special Mentions - posted on a Friday

● Messages from the Head of School (Mrs. Cawte/ Miss. Gallagher)

● Holiday learning - during half terms / holidays only

Support

We recognise that many of you have children in more than one class and understand they may not be able to be online all at once, but please do try to enable your children to access their Google Classroom across the week at some of the times when their teachers are online. There is no pressure or expectation on parents/carers to do all the work every day, just what you can manage each day. Don’t forget there is a Google Classroom App that can be downloaded for phones and other devices, so access doesn’t have to be only on a laptop, chromebook or computer.

We have a limited amount of chromebooks that we are able to lend to families. We have been promised more by the Government but can not rely on these arriving in the near future. Please contact admin@invictaprimary.co.uk if you would like to borrow a chromebook and we will distribute them as fairly and as quickly as we can. If you are unable to access Google classroom for other reasons please speak to your class teacher, email us via admin@invictaprimary.co.uk or call the school office so we can discuss alternative access. In addition, we will contact you early next week if your child has not attended a home learning session or submitted any work by the end of this week. Can you help? If any families have an old laptop, chromebook or other device that is in working condition and has a charger that they would like to donate to a family who may need it please email us as these would be most gratefully received.

Thank you again, and in advance for your understanding and cooperation!

With my very best wishes,

Vicki Cuff

Executive Headteacher

Saturday 2nd January 2021

Dear Parents and Carers,

I am sure you will have heard last night’s announcement that Greenwich Primary schools will remain closed for a further 2 weeks to all children except those who are vulnerable and children of critical workers. I am sorry and sad to be starting the new year by writing this letter to you, however the new strain of coronavirus and the alarming rise in numbers of cases call for such drastic measures.

Important information:

Online Learning

Given the lateness of the announcement, our full online learning provision will be in place in your child(ren)’s Google Classroom by 9am on Tuesday 5th January. A reminder of how to access Google Classroom can be found here. Families may choose to visit The Oak National Academy or revisit areas within their Google Classroom for online learning on Monday.

Free School Meals

We are currently arranging provision for children who are in receipt of Free School Meals and will be in touch with those families directly.

Emergency provision

We will be operating our provision for vulnerable children and those of critical workers. If you are a critical worker and have no other means of providing childcare this provision will be in place from Monday morning. We are not able to provide Breakfast or After School Club provision for the next two weeks. If you are already on our critical worker or vulnerable children list you will shortly receive an email with more information and a survey. If your circumstances have changed and you need to be added to this list please email: emergencyprovision@invictaprimary.co.uk with your request and critical worker evidence (we understand you may not be able to provide this immediately but request you send it on as soon as possible and thank you for understanding why we need to ask for it.) Similarly, if you are no longer a critical worker please email to be removed from the list.

At the moment it is suggested that schools may fully reopen on 18th January. I will, of course, keep you updated.

Best wishes,

Vicki Cuff

Executive Headteacher