What can you expect?
In times when we need to switch to VSE, it is our goal that we provide opportunities to engage all learners and provide an exceptional virtual school experience. We will continue to work hard to maintain a climate where high quality, impactful learning is our priority and that students, staff and parents continue to feel connected to our community.
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.
All students have devices (iPads in Years 7-11, laptops or tablets in Years 12-13) and have been using these in normal lessons already. Teachers have all been in virtual school situations and are experienced in creating excellent learning experiences.
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 and based on our experiences this and last year, we identified good practice as:
- Maintaining structure through continuing to follow the school
- Using the ‘Teams Sandwich’ approach, whereby we introduce the lesson on Teams to provide a live, face to face element for students. This is followed by the main part of the lesson which may use one of the many apps that we have trialled e.g. Nearpod, FireFly etc.. this part may be online or offline. Lessons should then finish on Teams which would provide students with a chance to ask questions and for the Teacher to gauge the success of the learning objectives.
- Using various methods to assess understanding e.g. online quizzes, standard questioning in Teams, OneNote worksheets, video diaries etc will be used.
- Teachers will provide opportunities for online and offline tasks which have an element of independent learning built into the task.
- Teachers will be available on Teams during the lesson to answer questions and to provide guidance.
- In order to allow for collaboration, ‘breakout rooms’ in Teams will be used.
- In addition to the above ‘best practice’ there are some other things that will benefit learning:
We encourage students to have webcams on during the live part of the lesson as this improves concentration and the feeling of being ‘in’ the lesson. In PE this is essential for safety and engagement.
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.
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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|
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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