Zoom meetings
We have, since the start of the first lockdown in Spring 2020, used a range of different methods to teach children during school closure, including: providing individual work packs, posting full lessons covering the National Curriculum for all subjects on our website daily with appropriate tasks which are linked to videos and other resources when appropriate, providing pre-recorded lessons on our YouTube channels ‘Learn it with Mapledene’ and ‘Move it with Mapledene’ and providing other activities on Facebook. We have also responded to queries via our email address: advice@mapledeneschool.com and made telephone calls to many children to discuss their work and provide additional direction when needed. All work received by the school via email is commented on and sent back to parents. The work we set is designed to be as close as possible to what the children would cover in school. Zoom will supplement the comprehensive remote education that we currently offer and not replace it.
Our children come from a variety of backgrounds and we must consider whether pupils have access to the right kind of device for digital remote education and whether this device needs to be shared with other family members. It is also important to note that ‘live’ lessons are not always the best; Ofsted (2021) makes the following statement:
There are some specific difficulties in doing live lessons. It can be hard to build in interaction and flexibility. This means that giving feedback can actually be less effective than when we use recorded lesson segments followed by interactive chats, or tasks and feedback. Using recorded lessons produced externally can allow you to easily draw on high-quality lessons taught by expert subject teachers. The challenge here can be to make sure they are integrated with the curriculum.
Because evidence suggests that concentration online is shorter than the length of a typical lesson, filming a classroom lesson may be ineffective.
Our Zoom offer will therefore be a mixture of class catch-up sessions and some teaching sessions for specific aspects of the curriculum. Our Remote Education Policy can be found at: https://www.mapledene.bham.sch.uk/covid-19-information/
If you would like your child to take part in the Zoom meeting you must read the information below and complete the form at: https://forms.gle/XTVE8fFJFJrDajVV7 so that we have an email address to send the Zoom meeting link to.