Friday 15th January
Happy Friday!
Happy ‘treat’ Friday to our wonderful community. We hope you’ve all had a good week. I am pleased to report that this week has been less frantic and we are, once again, settling into our new routines.
The staff have all been working exceptionally hard. The office phones are constantly in use! I dread to think what our phone bill will be. Mr Patel has been super, super busy as we now all rely on technology and, to be honest, it isn’t always very reliable. Everyone is always looking for Mr Patel. We are all quickly learning many new skills, although I am a bit slower than most and have yet to record myself. I hope you have enjoyed the videos your teachers have produced, none of them are completed in one take and they take a lot of effort to prepare. Personally, I think they really support your remote learning experience. Please continue to email your learning to us: children@olive.dudley.sch.uk. Your year group staff will provide feedback on what you have achieved. They also keep a daily register of who is engaging with the learning and we are hoping to provide you with some year group statistics soon. Will your year group have the highest percentage of engagement?
We are very excited for next week, when our live sessions will start. Miss Walters has sent out a letter to all parents and carers today via text, hopefully you have received it. The letter provides details of what to expect and how to set up Teams on your devices at home.
Children, you may have noticed that I’ve added the word ‘treat’ to Happy Friday. One of my many happy memories from when I was young, was getting sweets on a Friday. On a Friday my mum would pick me and my sister up from school and we would go to Mrs William’s sweet shop. Mrs Williams was REALLY old and she had big hands, or maybe they just looked big as she reached for the sweets. Anyway, on a Friday we were allowed a 10p mixture. 10p used to go a lot further than it does now, you’d be lucky to buy anything for 10p now! If you were really clever, you could get 20 sweets for 10p. But, this meant going for the smaller sweets as you could get two for a penny. My favourite were the miniature chocolate cupcakes, they cost a 1p each and I loved their chocolately deliciousness. So, I have always loved the idea of ‘treat’ Friday. Last week, I told you that we had hot chocolate and a cookie, today we had strawberry milkshake and a party ring. I hope that you can persuade your parents and carers to let you join in with ‘treat’ Friday at home. I would be delighted if you emailed me and told me all about your treat.
Parents and carers, I don’t know about you, but this lockdown feels very different to the last one. I’m putting it down to the weather and the dark evenings. Coming into school and being able to do my job is the highlight of every day, it is always tinged with sadness as not all of our children can be in. I am limiting the amount of news I watch to just once a day as everything appears to be quite gloomy. Parents and carers, I really admire the challenge that you have risen to. Overnight, you have changed all of your plans and made space in your day to support your children with their remote learning. For every family this is going to look different. I know from experience, that even getting my partner’s children to read on a Sunday evening can be battle! Bribery often works! How many times have you tried that in the past fortnight?
Just like a laptop cannot replace a teacher, school cannot be replicated at home. School and home are two very different environments, which let’s face it, until recently had two very different purposes. What the children will be experiencing at the moment is a blended approach to their learning. They will be experiencing learning in many different ways, some directed by the school, some directed by you and some self-directed. Some learning will be obvious and some learning will be more subtle. There are very few situations where we are not learning.
At this difficult time, we want to support our community as much as we can and where we have the capacity to do so. As we have a high number of children attending school every day, our teachers and teaching assistants are teaching as well as preparing remote learning, providing feedback and making phone calls. Please be patient with us if we are not able to get back to you straight away. Unfortunately, we don’t have an infinite number of devices that we can loan out, we are doing our best to provide devices for our families and we are having to prioritise need. We know that many of you want your children to be in school, we want that as well. However, we must all follow the government guidelines and reduce the number of people we come into contact with, we can only do this by limiting the number of children in school. Please only request a place if their is nobody at home who can look after your child. Lots of families will be finding it hard, but by following the guidance, hopefully, in the near future, the R rate will decrease and we will all be back together again.
A big thank you to all of the parents and carers who have taken the time to say thank you to us. It really does boast staff morale. I have had the pleasure of forwarding a number of emails to the staff from our community and I know that it means a lot to them (and me). We welcome your feedback on our remote learning offer - good and areas for development. Fingers crossed that Teams runs smoothly next week, otherwise we’ll all be shouting for Mr Patel!
From me and all of the team at Olive Hill, we wish a lovely weekend.
Stay safe.