News

Dear Parents

I hope you are all safe and well at this difficult time. At least the sun continues to shine and we have been able to make the most of the slight easing of the lockdown measures.

As I am sure you can imagine, we have spent the last two weeks since I wrote to you making sense of and putting plans in place for the partial extension of school opening. The School Governing body met last night to approve these plans. In line with Government guidance, in this first phase we are opening to children in Reception ONLY, NOT Year 1 at this time.

We have set up the required “bubbles” of no more than 15 children to teach those in Reception who have expressed an interest in returning. At the same time, we have had to manage the safe grouping of the growing number of Key Worker and Vulnerable pupils from Year 1 and Year 2 who need a place.

We have completed a comprehensive risk assessment to minimise risks to the health of pupils and staff but there are no guarantees around this. The school governors have then had to hold a virtual meeting to consider and agree that the planning is in place to extend the numbers attending school.

We still do not have confirmation that the extension of school opening will happen on 1^st June as the government want to ensure that the data supports this action. I expect the announcement may well be at the end of half term.

Next week is the May half term holiday and the school will be closing to all pupils. This is to give school staff a well-needed break and to enable us to ensure that the site meets the new health and safety requirements for the possible increase in pupil numbers. Furniture needs to be rearranged and resources limited to those that can be easily cleaned. School is going to look very different to all of us who return in June at least for a while longer. Some of the routines around arriving at and leaving school will have to change along with the timings of the school day. These have been communicated separately to parents of children who may return in early June.

After half term we will continue to provide home learning through Tapestry and on the website for children who are not in school in all three year groups. Teaching in school will follow the same planning. We continue to be amazed by how hard our families are working and are so impressed with the Tapestry uploads. It is lovely to see the children learning and playing. Teachers will also make contact with the children still at home early in June to catch up with them and answer any questions that you all may have.

Hopefully the sun will continue to shine on us all. I will of course provide an update as soon as any new information is available.

Stay safe

Jo Davenport and the SWIS team

CORONAVIRUS Update 5 Friday 17th April

Dear Parents

We do hope you are all continuing to stay safe and well at home. The continued sunshine over the Easter holidays has helped us all to cope with our current situation. Hopefully, the children all enjoyed themselves and have eaten their fill of chocolate treats!

We have stayed open over the holidays for Key Worker children although the numbers have been very low. This has enabled us to keep everyone safe and I am pleased to say that staff remain healthy and well at the moment.

We shall start to set daily Maths and English activities again on Monday as well as weekly cross curricular learning activities. These will continue to be posted on Tapestry. Please do get in touch if you need any further support or guidance. If you need a new exercise book to record the learning in, we will put boxes containing new books outside the school for you to collect if you are passing. Mrs Chimes is rejoining the staff team on her return from maternity leave and will be setting a weekly physical challenge for the children in all year groups. Look out for these on Tapestry. The Department for Education has put together lists of useful websites and the BBC are putting together learning activities on their website. Staff will direct you to the most useful of these.

A skeleton staff will continue to be in school for the Critical Care of key worker children. If you do need us please either telephone the school between 8am and 4pm or email on head@southwootton-inf.norfolk.sch.uk.

If you are finding home learning a challenge, there is a factsheet on the school website under Home Learning which gives some useful hints and tips. Try to pace yourselves. We are not expecting all the work to be completed every day. Keep doing what you can and remember through talking and playing with your children, they will be learning.

Please do be careful to check that the parental controls are high on your devices. Some of the learning suggested will be through websites etc and it is important to really know what your child can and cannot access. There are various guides that can help with this. This is the link to the NSPCC website. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Stay safe everyone!

Jo Davenport and all the staff at SWIS