School’s success at online learning
As teachers and learners continue ‘blended’ learning at home and school Kirsty Retallick, head teacher at Ysgol Nantgwyn, a 3-16 school in Tonypandy, explains how she successfully introduced live online lessons
BEFORE lockdown we had begun to get ourselves ready for a new approach to learning with plans in place to start a blended approach for our children.
My amazing team of 3-16 staff (of a relatively new school) embraced it with the passion and dedication with which they embrace everything. We undertook professional learning to become proficient in the use of Google Classrooms and SeeSAw and a platform called Google MEET to be able to connect with our classes, children and each other as soon as the “call” was taken.
We went live with our timetable the week after lockdown. Our timetable of learning is released on a weekly basis, with all families receiving a weekly overview of expectations and activities supported by more detailed work and activities in Google Classrooms and through SeaSAw (for our younger groups).
Our learning programme is supported by live and pre-recorded lessons, and the learning activities that are supported by live and recorded lessons are released over the week.
Live online lessons (synchronous) allows staff to interact naturally with their pupils and respond to the questions and needs of learners as they occur, and this also provides an immediate wellbeing checkpoint.
To ensure both pupils and staff are safeguarded there are always two members of staff in a live lesson (teacher and non-teacher). This also serves a second purpose, allowing the second staff member to respond to pupils’ queries via the chat stream. Our asynchronous teaching (pre-recorded) allows pupils to work at a pace that is appropriate for them, and importantly, their wellbeing at any given time in these challenging weeks and months and providing a library of lessons/ resources for future use.
Our lessons are released across a week and allow pupils to go back and listen to teacher explanations or videos several times, if needed, in order to undertake their learning to the best of their ability and with clear understanding without live access to their teacher.
Our lessons are supported by screen casting, audio recording and filmed videos. This blend of using live and pre-recorded materials gives our pupils a balanced diet of learning strategies while they are away from school.
Members of staff engage positively with pupils in many ways: email, live lessons, online guides, YouTube channels, individual resources and frequent feedback. Feedback and communication from pupils and parents is good.
So what next? We continue to evolve and develop, as children return to school we will also stream some school-based lessons where children are unable to attend, we will be going live with online small group support for literacy and numeracy catch-up support, bespoke tuition and wellbeing and emotional support for targeted groups of pupils using a small group of academic and pastoral support staff. This team of staff will be supporting pupils when they are not at home for dedicated periods of time as well.
The wonders of technology are endless, and the creative use of the timetable will hopefully support us here. The uncertain stream of staff availability does make this a difficult thing to plan for, but is what we will aspire to do for our pupils and community as we move forward.
We supported many families with technology and wi-fi access at the start of lockdown and this has in the last few weeks been supported further by the local authority, Welsh Government and a charity called Moon Dance. This will remain a continued source of need, especially as we raise our expectations for home learning and our quest to move learning forward in the coming weeks and months.
During this unique time the Ysgol Nantgwyn community has kept forward together, we have been in constant communication with our children in our approach to learning supported by weekly wellbeing calls, hub provision for a wider range of pupils, online meetings and check-in, home learning packs refreshed and delivered, weekly newsletters, updated website and active Facebook pages for celebration and sharing, and all of these together are valued by pupils, parents and families.
■ Kirsty Retallick is a head teacher and an executive and council member of the Association of School and College Leaders Cymru.