St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

Just as school life was returning to normality and the children were settling back in, we find ourselves in another national lockdown and the resumption of learning from home. it's certainly a challenging time for all of us.

It has been a frantic few days as we changed plans to make remote learning and school based childcare available for Monday, it was a bit of a shock for all of us after such a quiet Christmas! I do hope that you and the family are well. We can certainly see that there are more infections locally, thank you to all those families who have contacted us about your battle with the virus, I hope that you are recovering well. Three members of staff contracted the virus towards the end of the Christmas holiday and others are shielding, it is most certainly a much more severe situation that the first lockdown.

We have a large number of children in school and there is a considerable demand for the childcare service. We will provide childcare if it is a last resort, please bear that in mind when requesting places, with the virus at such a high level in Sutton, one of the highest areas of infection in London, your child is much safer at home.

It is unclear on how this new variant of the virus is spreading through younger people, if your child is in childcare, please follow good hygiene when your child returns from school, washing clothing, utensils and your child thoroughly.

A few updates in the newsletter this month and news of our approach to home learning as we enter a second lockdown.

Take care and stay well, our thoughts are with you all.

Vince Burke

Head Teacher

Thanks for your patience, we are glad that it eventually arrived over the Christmas holiday. Good old Mrs Bharkhda from the office, along with her daughter Kanika sent them out to you all in the mail, many thanks to them both. They look lovely and were a good read, hopefully the children had fun with all the activities and puzzles. Thanks to all the children and staff for compiling the annual and providing us with a little light relief over the Christmas holiday.

During the first lockdown we advanced our initial plans for Google Classroom so that it was introduced earlier than we had planned. Teachers have continued to set their homework tasks this way so that skills have been maintained. This week, we also welcomed Year 1 children to the Google learning environment, now known as Google Workspace.

We now need to build on these skills that have been developed. At home we are all using video technology more frequently to keep in touch with family and friends, it is becoming more natural for all of us. In an effort to keep the learning process as close to the school process as possible, I have asked teaching staff to include and extend the use of live/video lessons over the coming weeks. You will notice that class teachers will be inviting the children to Google Meet sessions over the coming days. We will use these first few sessions to develop our own knowledge of managing large class meetings in Google Meet.

We fully understand that there is pressure on technology at home, our current processes were designed to allow flexibility in learning time at home, we understand that many families have several children competing for computer resources. Where a child cannot join the lesson live, the resources from the lesson will be saved in the assignment and classwork areas of the site.

Last term many children will have taken part in class meetings with their class teachers through Google Meet. We were encouraged by the response, however please make sure, during live lessons that:

• your child's camera is on and the microphone is muted
• your home environment is quiet, the tv is turned down, so that when your child joins in a discussion they can be clearly heard.
• family members are careful of conversations that may be taking place in the background, the class of children may be able to hear them.
• children need to be appropriately dressed, school uniform is not necessary
• your child behaves with the same respect and good manners that we always see in school, using correct appropriate language. The live lessons maintain the same formality as in school.
• what is behind your child is suitable for broadcasting over the web, remove confidential items for example, a blank wall often works best.

Whilst many lessons will move to a live format, others will be recorded live and put online through Classroom. Other lessons will continue in digital paper format. Teachers are also investigating how to include their voice and prompts on Google Slides and other work through Vocaroo and other apps.

Please remember that the Google Meet is for your child, it's not for younger ones or other family members. Parents can continue to contact teachers through Class Dojo if they have any queries.

We hope that we can bring the classroom closer to home over the coming weeks as all of our skills develop in these new areas. We are trying to meet the needs of all families and indeed all staff, many of our staff are coping with changing family circumstances too and our systems have to allow sufficient flexibility in our approach so that workload and demands on everyone's time is reasonable.

I have sat with teachers this week and looked at the flood of messages and comments that come in from the children each and every lesson. It's important that children regulate their comments to the teacher, please help us with this. The teacher can see when work is submitted for example, there is no need to message them. Teachers will not come back to children several times over one issue so children need to think before they message and write sensibly. I'm hoping that this will reduce some of the pressure. Please don't forget that on some days teachers can be both working in childcare in school and working with children at home.

As a primary school, we have to be careful that the language of communication is appropriate, slang or texting language should not be used with school staff.

We are pleased to send you links to our new learning labs which contain information about the curriculum for this term for your child's year group. Teachers were preparing these mini websites before the current lockdown, some information may not therefore be accurate, but for the most part learning is continuing according to the curriculum plan.

The labs will grow in content and style as the school year progresses. To access your child's learning lab please use the link below, parents can also access labs from other year groups.

Each of the labs will be edited by your child's teaching team and therefore over time they will all become a little different in style, to reflect the different phases of the school. They are not part of our main website as we wanted teaching teams to have editing rights for the own learning labs.

We hope that you find the information useful, please pop back to the lab every now and again to see if there is an update. Our new website has a full curriculum section with a lot more information about our curriculum plan, you can also see "Our Curriculum" on our current site.

For ease of use, each learning lab also has a link to each of the other learning labs.

Nursery

Reception
Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

We have British Science Week during the week of 8th March with a range of lovely science activities taking place, in school and at home. If you work in Science and would like to support us by sending us a short 20 second video about your work please get in touch and we will come back to you. We will then use the video with the children to show them all about the world of scientific work in an assembly. You can contact us at office@stcecilias.school Many thanks!

The Government have announced that SATs exams have been cancelled this year. We will be sending teacher assessments to our secondary colleagues.

As part of our work with Eco-Schools we will be taking part in the Big Garden Bird Watch this year, please use the link below to register for resources to support on the day. (29th January in school.)

We welcome Mrs Nash to the staff, she is covering Mrs Everton's maternity leave until July, we welcome her to the team, it;'s a very odd time to be joining the school. Many thanks to our staff for quickly supporting Mrs Nash with all our systems and processes.

Our staff training day on Monday 25th January has been postponed.

During the pandemic please make sure to only communicate with the school office and leadership team via office@stcecilias.school. It really helps us to have one main stream of queries that we can try and manage.

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566