January 12th 2021

 

Dear Parents / Guardians

 

Thank you for your support of Home School today.

We are currently resolving some problems in SIMs, which will allow us to monitor student attendance to Live Online lessons throughout the day, rather than at fixed points through the day. We believe that Live Online lessons will enable students’ learning to proceed as near normally as possible and prevent learning loss through the period of closure. For these reasons, we very much wish all our students to participate in all lessons, though all assignments are posted in the Google Classroom.

Where students do not meet the eligibility criteria attached to the loan of IT equipment, which we are due to receive from the Department of Education, we remain determined to support students, who may be encountering difficulty with accessing online education through lack of IT resources. In such circumstances, we may be able to lend some of the school’s own previously held equipment. Our 2 wonderful technicians are dealing with requests as quickly as they can but please be aware this may take some time and it is entirely possible to access the Google Classroom and Live Online lessons via smartphone.

If you are a critical worker, please do keep your child at home, unless there is genuinely no other realistic option for you. Whilst we are mindful of Guidance in respect of provision for children of critical workers, school closures intervened on account of the rapidly rising levels of Covid-19 infection, both in the community and in schools themselves. Brockhill fully reflected this picture: we had just 1 confirmed case up to November 23^rd and a further 27 by the end of term.

Today’s video from the resources designed to support parents with the maintenance and development of resilience of their children in the current circumstances is:

How to Support Your Child to have Good Health

 

Each day this week, we will send you just one of the videos, which generally last 2 – 3 minutes.

All the materials though, can be found together on the

 

Kent Resilience Hub

 

The BBC have published their Lockdown Learning Programme Schedule, where Secondary students will be able to watch two hours of programmes supporting the curriculum on BBC Two every weekday. These will be complemented by drama adaptations, as well as relevant BBC science, history and factual programmes. These programmes can all be seen on demand on i-player and we recommend these as a complement to Live Online lessons, after the school day and Live Online lessons have finished.

 

Lockdown Learning: BBC Bitesize

 

Today, we have activated Kent County Council’s WONDE system in respect of Free School Meals and the system has already dispatched a £15 meal voucher for last week.  On Thursday you will receive a further mail with a further £15 meal voucher for this week. We will be watching the system carefully this week to identify and resolve any problems, which may arise. Please note you will not receive a meal voucher if your child attends school. Please see our Parent and Guardian ordering document.

 

Tomorrow, Wednesday’s Daily Tutor Time activity posted in the Google Classroom is:

 Wednesday: Numeracy

Students should access these materials and submit their work to their Daily Tutor at the end of each day.                                                                         

We want all our students to remain safe by following the National Lockdown Guidance

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home

as well as to remember social distancing, hand washing and face coverings, so as to play their part in the fight against the spread of COVID-19.

 

Yours Sincerely,

Sonette Schwartz 

Principal 

 

Charles Joseph

Senior Vice Principal