20 January 2021
Mr William Bohanna Senior Teacher (Teaching & Learning)
So here we are again for a second round of remote teaching and learning. This is, of course, not where any of us want to be. I can say with 100% confidence that all my teaching colleagues would rather be in our valley. While sadly this not the case, we are determined for all our students to enjoy this temporary period of remote teaching and continue to thrive academically. Now, more than ever before, we need to work together; in the words of Mother Mabel Digby:
"The richness, strength, and beauty of life rest largely on the diversity of our gifts, the ideas, and thoughts that we all bring together."
Just like when we were in remote learning last summer term, our aim is to provide the best possible quality of learning. Indeed, the planning for this second round of remote learning has been continuous since the summer. We have taken forward everything learnt from last time and the feedback to improve and build upon our #VirtualValley learning. For example, we have kept students in their teaching groups and reduced the timings of each lesson to accommodate the differences in remote teaching.
In terms of staff development, since the last period of lockdown we have provided staff training for teachers to further improve upon their skills with Teams, support and on-going drop in sessions on a range of applications and technology tools, and teachers have experienced remote lessons from the point of view of learners. Taken together, they have extended our competences in providing high quality remote learning.
On Monday 19 January we held a live webinar as an update on our approach to remote learning. The feedback we received was positive and I would urge you to keep your feedback coming so that we can continue to improve remote teaching and learning. During the webinar we covered various aspects of our virtual school life including:
- How best to get the most out of Teams and OneNote
- Communication and assessment within lessons
- Explanations, and some examples, of how Mrs Clayton (physics) and Miss Whitworth (history) have approached, modified, and adapted lessons for effective on-line lessons
- Support and pastoral support in place during lockdown
- Modified extra-curriculum programme.
If you were not able to join us for the webinar, you can watch the full recording here (fast forward to 07:12 to go straight to the introduction from Ms Weatherston).
We will continue to provide regular teaching and learning updates from across our academic department. Next week will focus on physics, history and French and some of the work happening in our THRIVE programme. In the meantime, my message to our community of learners is simply, the more you put into your remote learning the more you will get out of it, so please continue to do your best. We can ask no more.
Leave every lockdown lesson with more than you went in with...