Blythdale

Home Learning

Blythdale – Bubble 1

Dear Parents/Carers,

As you are aware, The Dales School is having to limit the number of children attending school each day to ensure the necessary health and safety measures are in place for both children and staff, to keep everyone as safe as possible. As a result, we are offering our children at home the opportunity to access high quality virtual teaching and learning.

This will take place on the following platforms:

• Zoom/Google classroom
• Tapestry
• Posted resources (at families request)

There are six key elements of our home learning offer:

1. Home learning packs
2. Personalised targets linked to EHCP, basic skills and life skills
3. Activity suggestions
4. Whole group and 1:1 face to face zoom sessions
5. OT resources and activities
6. Online learning sessions

Home learning will be used to support the transition between school and home and will encourage a healthy routine when the children are not in school. We will support this transition with visual resources.

Virtual home learning:

Home learning days will begin with an upload of a Bucket Time session for your child onto Tapestry for them to watch. We understand the nature of the children’s needs means they would find it difficult to interact with or respond to live Zoom calls, therefore we have made a decision as a team to upload our content and sessions on Tapestry or via email for you to access as and when you feel your child is able.

There will be daily uploads of a topic themed activity which is specific for your child’s level of learning. If you complete this with your child please upload a photo so we can see!

The day will end with an upload of a story with a familiar member of staff. We believe it is important for the children to still be able to see and hear us in order to maintain the relationships they have made, and also to make the transition back into school smoother. To also support this, at 2pm every Friday each staff team will lead a class zoom call. This may be a story, an activity or a Rhyme Time.

We ask that you ensure that an adult is in the same room as your child whilst they are on the zoom call, this is to safeguard both staff and children.

Throughout the day extra videos will be added. These may be something which is aimed at your child, such as a short phonics session, or a video demonstration of how to use some of the resources that we have made available to you, such as our visuals and Now and Next boards.

If you watch or access a video or any content that we put on, we are asking if you could please click the ‘like’ button on Tapestry, so that we know that you have seen it and we can monitor activity and troubleshoot issues.

Teachers have created life skills documents which include a range of targets that we aimed to work on with your children in school this half term. Teachers have added suggested activities to these targets for you to work on at home. This will form the bulk of the work you do with your child, and we are happy to support this as much as we can with video demonstrations, supporting with visuals or sending things home. We are here for you- you can let us know exactly what you need to make your time at home with your child easier for them and for you. Just let us know what you need and we can make things, send items home or even just be at the end of the phone for a chat.

If you are still having difficulties accessing Tapestry then please let us know as soon as possible.

If you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at school on 01670 352556 or by emailing sarah.harris@thedales.northumberland.sch.uk and your email will be forwarded to the relevant member of the home learning team.

Thank you for your continued support – we very much appreciate it at this very difficult time.

This week the children of 6B have been doing some lovely Christmas activities including putting together their Christmas hampers, and recording Christmas messages on the iPads to send home. The children have done some great Christmas crafts like making lollystick-Santas and hanging Christmas tree decorations, as well as printing and painting to make their own sheet of wrapping paper for a gift for someone at home. The children have also learned about the story of the nativity and created their very own stained glass style windows.

From all of the children and staff in 6B, all that’s left is to say we hope you have a wonderful Christmas and we’re looking forward to seeing the children back in the new year!

Class 5B have been celebrating Christmas this week. We made our Christmas Movie Night hampers ( we hope your family enjoy them), we had a disco in the snow in the garden and enjoyed a movie in the classroom.

We have also written some special letters to Santa and Santa delivered some presents to our classroom- it was very exciting! We finished our week by making Christingles to think about what Christmas is all about.

We wish you all a very merry Christmas.

What a wonderfully busy and creative start to the week! Class 2B have been reading ‘The Penguin and the Pinecone – A Friendship Story’ and learning about our emotions through the characters in the story. We especially liked it when Pinecone was cold ‘brrrrr’ and when Penguin and Pinecone were reunited at the end! 🙂 We have also been getting lovely and messy making salt dough tree decorations and Christmas cards.

This week 3B have been following the story of the Jolly Christmas Postman, they have loved being post people in our role play post office. Lot’s of fun and surprises with the Christmas buckets, including singing snow globes and snowballs.

We started the week off with a great visit to Plessey Woods. The children loved exploring and finding all the hidden artworks (and some not so hidden!). They’ve also learned about Stollen, a traditional fruit bread eaten in Germany around Christmas time and had a go at making their own. The children enjoyed their Christmas dinner on Thursday and have practiced their computing with the Spheros and the Kubo coding robots. Finishing off the story of Hansel and Gretel, the children have also done some writing to create fantastic ‘wanted’ posters about the witch from the story.

Class 5B have really got into the Christmas spirit this week. We put up our decorations in the classroom and hung the decoration we made on the tree in the entrance hall. In the Winter Wonderland garden we watched The Snowman in Santa’s workshop.

We have made Christmas cards and presents, but we won’t say too much about those yet! We have even made a present for our friends in Class 4B.

We all sat together to enjoy our Christmas dinner, pull crackers and have a thoroughly festive time.

What a creative and fun filled week we’ve had this week!

The children have thoroughly enjoyed retelling the story of The Gingerbread Man – there has been some beautiful writing to retell it in their own words, as well as some very enthusiastic puppet shows! Friday was finished off by making our own gingerbread men – fortunately, they didn’t hop out of the oven and we were able to ice them beautifully!

Christmas has started this week – Twinkle the Elf has made an appearance again! He’s caused some mischief, but as all the children have set such a fantastic example for him, he brought a Christmas tree to decorate on Friday. It was a pleasure to see the whole class work as a team to decorate it and hear them discuss where to place ornaments without any support.

The highlight of the week was visiting the garden. It has been transformed into a Winter Wonderland, complete with Santa’s Workshop, a life sized gingerbread house and even a wardrobe to Narnia! We were so excited! Everyone had a wonderful time exploring and playing in the different areas – the excitement was palpable!

We’d love to tell you what else we’ve been up to, but lots of it is a secret – all will be revealed at the end of term when children come home for Christmas. I can tell you we have a class filled with extremely thoughtful children and we’ve been even more proud of them this week (we didn’t think that was possible!)

We look forward to updating you with all of next weeks adventures next Friday!

4B

Class 10B went to Plessey woods on Monday and we explored the forest looking for micro habitats. On our trip we took advantage of the lovely scenery to take some photos for our photography project.