I hope you and your family are well and safe.  Thank you for continuing to support and encourage your children to complete their complete their schoolwork whilst remaining in good spirits.  Each child is different and will require different levels of support from yourselves and from school.  At the end of our fourth week of remote teaching and learning, we are finding that some students have increased their engagement with schoolwork whilst others have become less engaged.

 

Virtual Assemblies

We have our first virtual assemblies available online for students to view in Year 7, Key Stage 3 (Years 8 and 9) and Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11). A big thank you to Key Stage leaders for creating these – I think it really helps for our students to see familiar faces and be reassured that we are still here for them.

These can be viewed on our website here.

 

Being Kind to Ourselves

Please encourage your child to look at two important sections on our website:

• The Wellbeing Resources page – where you can find tips about managing your mental health, as well as activities to support your wellbeing, plus links to lots of useful organisations on a range of issues. It also includes a video from the Student Support team with lots of good advice – particularly about being kind to yourself.
   
• The Extra-Curricular Activities page – where we are regularly adding suggestions for fun activities, both online and at home. It includes a Film and TV Club, as well as creative ideas for activities, suggested reading, virtual tours and much more.  Look out for Mr Ford's juggling lesson!

 

Remote Learning

We have listened to your feedback about deadlines for remote learning tasks sometimes being grouped together on the same day, and are making changes so that they are spread out throughout the week. It may take several days to see the full impact of this, as obviously some deadlines are already in the system. So please bear with us, but rest assured that we are doing all we can to try and reduce any potential anxiety for our students.

As mentioned in my message last week, we have also refined the amount of work set for students. The aim is for each subject to have 30 minutes of work per scheduled lesson, with the option to also undertake 30 minutes of extension work. It may be that it takes a student the whole hour to complete the main piece of work – that is fine. And, if you and your child are happy for them to do the main piece of work and then do something else for the rest of the hour, such as reading, exercising, listening to music, etc then that is fine too.

As I’ve already said, our main priority is our students’ wellbeing. Therefore, if your child has lots of previous remote learning tasks that haven’t been finished yet, please tell them to leave these and just concentrate on the new tasks. It would be helpful if they could also let their teacher know that they are doing this.

I hope you are finding Google Classroom a useful way to keep track of your child’s work. It’s been great to see students interacting with staff on there and certainly provides a clear way for students to ask questions about and submit work. Don’t forget we have a really helpful video on our website about using Google Classroom, which includes some useful tips about using Google Docs to make it even easier when submitting work. You can view this and other resources on the IT Support page on our website here.

 

Food Banks and other Support for Families

A community food bank has been set up by Madina Masjid Sheffield in partnership with Ship Shape. It provides a weekly service with essential items (including rice, bread, butter, flour, pasta, toiletries, tinned items and much more) to support the most vulnerable within our community.

To access simply text or call the number below to arrange a collection or suitable delivery time. If you wish to donate to support them, it would be hugely appreciated.

For more info contact Faisal on 07594 690 436

 

For details of other Sheffield Food Banks and services see:  https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/home/your-city-council/coronavirus-support-for-people

 

Thank you for your continued support. Have a good weekend and remember to be kind to yourself.

Best wishes,

Mrs Sarah Sims
Head of Silverdale School