What can you expect?
Our Virtual School Experience is delivered via safe and secure online platforms such as Microsoft Teams (Teams) and Firefly. We extensively use Showbie, Nearpod and other premium platforms to best engage our learners.
More than 90% of NAE parents, and 95% in our secondary school, said they're satisfied or very satisfied with the Virtual School Experience.
In the secondary section we have focussed on the following core elements for successful virtual school:
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Lessons are started on Teams with a live Face to face session of interaction between students and teachers.
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The middle part of the lesson we use: Nearpod, Flipgrid, EdPuzzle, Educake, Padlet, Wakelet, Kahoot, MS Office and there are discussions, Q and A sessions, and explanation during this.
We encourage students to have their webcams on during lessons as this promotes better connections with each other and the teachers and helps to foster a sense of community during the learning process.
3. The lesson then finishes with a plenary on Teams whereby the face to face interaction completes the learning.
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Students and staff share assignments and feedback either using online applications or via OneNote. For language subjects feedback in given in small groups via the channels facility in Teams.
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Offline activities are promoted to avoid spending extended periods of time in front of a screen.
Watch this fun video of Secondary students making rhymes about Periodic Table
We continue with STEAM projects for instance: The Rube Goldberg Challenge, Eco Awareness Campaign and Local Geography of Covid project. All such projects help students connect with our community and spend some structured time focusing on an offline project.
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All secondary students have a truncated Wednesday whereby everyone finishes school at 12:45. This will be put into practice if virtual school is more long term and affects a large tranche of the school.
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PSHCE sessions with the tutor happen every week.
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PE lessons continue allowing physical exercise to continue and for students to ‘let their hair down’.
A typical KS3 timetable:
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Period
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Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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1
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Lessons as normal
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Assembly
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Lessons as normal
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Lessons as normal
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PSHCE
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2
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Lessons as normal
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PE
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Lessons as normal
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3
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PE
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Lessons as normal
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4
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Lessons as normal
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Offline lesson/catch up
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Sports Leadership – lesson, Year 3
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LUNCH
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LUNCH
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LUNCH
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LUNCH
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LUNCH
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LUNCH
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5
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Project afternoon e.g. STEAM
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Lessons as normal
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Early finish – students offline
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Lessons as normal
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Lessons as normal
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6
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Offline lesson/catch up
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Our talented student Ejun from Year 12 drew her daily routine while staying home.
Other important elements of virtual school:
- Reporting will continue as per our reporting calendar, but any grades given also take into account work done prior to virtual school.
- We ensure every child has the resources they need to take part in the VSE by equipping all students with devices from Year 7 - 11.
- Parents are engaged in their child's learning and benefit from support and resources from their school as well as online parent/teacher meetings.
- Regular updates from your child's teachers on their progress and achievements remain. We have stuck to our reporting and parents/teacher conference calendar.
- Student, parent, teacher conferences will continue online using CHQ.
- Online meetings can be arranged on Teams or we can communicate via email. Technology self-help guides are also available on Firefly.
- Pastoral team are active in contacting students and parents when attendance and/or engagement is an issue. We offer a supportive, student wellbeing focussed approach to virtual school.
Student leadership initiatives have continued as follows:
The strength of our Virtual School Experience (VSE) has led to student enrollments at our school. Some key skills have been accelerated in the VSE, e.g resilience, creativity, collaboration and technology use.
Click here to get a sense of our Virtual School Experience