Remote Education Provision: Information For Parents

Cambridge School have worked with a company called Firefly to design a motivating, meaningful virtual learning platform for our students to use at home. The vision is to help bring our school community together and to make home learning fun and inspiring for the times that children are unable to be in school.

Our students need relationships, routines, familiarity and consistency to engage in learning. Our Firefly pod and class pages aim to support this through photographs, symbols and the class ‘voice’ in any text and instructions.

Teachers will work to engage students through interactive learning using Microsoft Teams, telephone conversations and recorded video and audio lessons.

The Remote Curriculum: What is Taught to Pupils at Home

Over lockdowns teachers are setting fun and active tasks with links to videos, games and activities that the children should enjoy.  We teach the same curriculum remotely as we do in school wherever possible and appropriate.

Students will also follow their BTEC and Exam route learning remotely. This is crucial as work that they do remotely will affect their final teacher assessed grade if all their public national exams are cancelled.

Remote Teaching and Study Time Each Day?

How long can I expect work set by the school to take my child each day?

We expect that remote education (including remote teaching and independent work) will take pupils broadly the following number of hours each day:

Accessing Remote Education:

How will my child access any online remote education you are providing?

• Students can access Firefly here
• Firefly parent guides can be found here

Please inform class teachers of any issues with Firefly or with access to computers to the internet.

Parent portals will be following soon to provide additional resources and lines of communication to support learning at home.

If My Child Does Not Have Digital or Online Access at Home, How Will You Support Them to Access Remote Education?

We recognise that some pupils may not have suitable online access at home. We take the following approaches to support those pupils to access remote education:

• We will endeavour to issue laptops to all pupils who need one, please inform your class teacher if your child does not have access to a laptop or device to learn on.
• In addition to online learning paper based learning packs and lessons via telephone are provided for learners who do not have access to technology or for whom technology is a distraction or trigger for behaviour. Teachers and class staff will support students and parents by phone to give feedback, praise, encouragement and support.
• Pupils can submit work to their teachers by posting to school if they do not have online access.

How Will My Child Be Taught Remotely?

We use a combination of the following approaches to teach pupils remotely:

• Firefly online lessons and learning pages
• Live teaching online lessons
• Recorded teaching
• Printed paper packs produced by teachers (e.g. workbooks, worksheets)
• Reading books pupils have at home
• Commercially available websites supporting the teaching of specific subjects or areas, including video clips or sequences
• Long-term BTec and exam project

How Will You Check Whether My Child Is Engaging With Their Work And How Will I Be Informed If There Are Concerns?

• Teachers will check pupils’ engagement with remote education each day and evaluate provision and process each week, rewarding excellence and effort and supporting where necessary.
• Where engagement is a concern, class teachers will work closely with parents and carers to support, motivate and engage learners. Senior Leaders, Family Support, Therapists and Learning Mentors will also support families and students that they work with.

How Will You Assess My Child’s Work and Progress?

Our approach to feeding back on pupil work is as follows

• Verbal praise, encouragement and feedback by teams and telephone conversations
• Marking and Feedback on submitted Firefly work
• Marking and Feedback on submitted paper based work.

If My Child Is Not In School Because They Are Self Isolating, How Will Their Remote Education Differ From The Approaches Described Above?

When the majority of students are able to return to school, individual pupils self-isolating will continue to be taught remotely, ensuring access to meaningful and ambitious work each day in a number of different subjects, including providing feedback.