Good afternoon everyone (or good ‘whenever you may be reading this’). I hope you’ve all had a good week and not felt too overwhelmed with the whole situation – from our point of view, as I mentioned last week, do what you can, when you can, if you can, and try not to worry if you can’t. Just make sure you are looking after yourself and each other, grabbing lots of cuddles and doing some reading!

As usual, there’s quite a bit of info in this post – please stick with it until the end!

Pedmore Thrive

Mrs Robbins has done her second Pedmore Thrive newsletter, which you can read here. This week focuses on the ‘Take Notice’ aspect of Five to Thrive. Some lovely ideas, so have a read.

Blue Peter On YouTube

Maybe it’s just me reminiscing, but Blue Peter was a big part of my growing up and it’s great to see that it’s still going strong – it’s the longest-running children’s TV show in the world. Here’s some info we’ve received from the BBC:

“We have launched  at CBBC and we were wondering if your pupils and parents would be interested in this, for entertainment outside of home-schooling hours now we’re in lockdown.

Blue Peter is the longest running kids TV show in the world and we are uploading videos to it that are suitable for 5-11 year olds. We have world record breaking challenges, arts and crafts, environmental videos, cooking and baking how tos, inspirational films, gaming, celebrity appearances, dance routines and music performances. We also feature ways of getting a Blue Peter badge, behind the scenes footage and extra content about our incredible presenters Adam, Lindsey, Mwaksy, Richie and Henry the Blue Peter dog.

If you think your pupils would be interested in this, please do send this out to your parents and ask them to subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/bluepeter – (it’s obviously completely free to subscribe!) and don’t forget to watch the live programme on CBBC at 5.00pm every week, or on BBC iPlayer. 

Thanks so much for your time,

The Blue Peter Team!”

Parental Feedback

Thank you to everyone (well over 100 people) who responded to the questionnaire sent out earlier in the week. We have been overwhelmed, and quite humbled, by the positive comments and words of thanks that you have given – thank you all so much. I have passed these comments over to staff. The overall percentage responses to each question are below:

Statement	Strongly Agree/Agree	Neutral	Disagree/Strongly Disagree
#1	87%	8%	5%
#2	80%	15%	5%
#3	89%	9%	2%
#4	89%	11%	0
#5	88%	10%	2%
#6	94%	6%	0

Whilst we are obviously pleased that so many of you are happy with what school are offering, one of the reasons the questionnaire was sent was to ascertain if there was anything that could be improved upon or changed.

Please understand that for every parent who wants more work set, there are parents who want less; for every parent who wants more regular check-ins from staff, there are parents who have said that they are too much already; for every parent who wants live lessons, there is a parent who doesn’t. Having read and noted all of your responses, and spoken to and worked with staff in school, we have tried to have a complete overview of our home learning offer and put forward what we feel is best for everyone in our community. I have answered some of your questions below, and we will update these as and when required.

“We would like more live teaching.”

• It’s all over the media at the moment, the issue of live teaching vs recorded teaching. Currently, we are doing some live teaching for Year 6. There were a number of factors in this decision, one of them being the independence required by children for this to work successfully. Live virtual teaching is extremely difficult, especially the staff have had no experience of doing it previously, and that becomes increasingly more difficult the younger the children are. Screen time is an issue for younger children; sharing of devices with siblings is an issue; staff and children wellbeing can be an issue as well. We decided that Year 6 would be the only year in which we would attempt live teaching, and this is the decision that we will be continuing with. We had a couple of parents who requested live teaching for other year groups, but a bigger number of parents who asked that we didn’t do any live teaching for other year groups because of the issues mentioned above. I appreciate that this won’t be the answer that some people wanted, but these are the reasons why.

“We would like more challenging activities, especially in Maths.”

• We have spoken to all staff and from next week there will be more challenges available for your child to work through, should they wish.

“Can you provide the opportunity for us to submit work online?”

• We are looking at this and hopefully will be able to let you know our plans next week.

“Can you provide a direct email for staff?”

• We don’t provide staff emails for direct contact, as many questions that would be directed towards them they wouldn’t be able to help with anyway, for example lost passwords. We have always tried to ensure that staff have a good work-life balance and by enabling contact this way we can answer any queries that they do not need to be involved with. Any question you have can be sent through the hscontact email – this email is monitored regularly thought the day by myself and Mrs Dowen and any emails immediately passed on. Should you need to contact anyone urgently, please call the school office.

“Why are the catch-ups with the teacher at different times?”

• In order to involve as many children as possible, teachers have different catch-ups at different times so that those children at home who share a device with their siblings don’t miss out.

“Could there be more 1:1 or small -group sessions?”

• We are able to provide a small number of sessions, for children with specific needs, throughout the week. It is not possible for teachers to provide these for every child, unfortunately. Staff are juggling supporting the home learning and helping to support the learning of the children in school, which doesn’t leave time during the day to provide more than what we are doing already.

It is difficult to believe that 3 weeks ago it was still Christmas, and whilst we had a plan in place to deliver remote learning it has been nigh-on impossible to predict what would be needed, especially with the ever-changing directives and expectations from the government and the very short time frames given.

As mentioned earlier, we will continue to review and change our provision if we feel that we can make things better, or easier, for you and your children.

Change of Details

Please let the office know if you change any of your details: address, phone numbers, etc. Thank you.

Free School Meals

Please note that only those children entitled to benefits-based free school meals are eligible for any support, through vouchers or food, and not everyone in KS1 and Reception who are entitled to universal free school meals. If you think you are entitled to FSM, then look here:
https://www.pedmore.dudley.sch.uk/pupil-premium/

Take Care & Stay Safe

Mr Dunn