Early Years Online Learning Information

Dear Parents,

You will no doubt be as disappointed as we are to be informed that the Education Bureau (EdB) has directed all Kindergarten and Primary Schools to close, effective from Friday 14th January until the Chinese New Year break. At this stage, school is scheduled to resume for face-to-face learning from Monday 7th February 2022.

As a result of the imposed school closure, we will be reverting to our home learning programme. Given our extensive experience of school closure throughout the past two years, I can assure you that our home and online learning programme will ensure the children’s learning continues and that they will have every opportunity to succeed. Our programme has developed extensively throughout the last two years as a result of careful reflection and feedback from all stakeholders in our community, including students, staff and parents. The children will experience a range of live learning opportunities (both as a class and in small groups), online learning assignments uploaded to Seesaw, and activity packs. The children’s teachers and education assistants will be offering feedback to the children in real time as well as via the Seesaw platform to help support their progress. Specialist lessons will continue for all children in a live format, with the exception of Learning Technologies which will be a recorded learning opportunity. 

Home Learning Timetables

We recognise that in the Early Years, our children are at very different levels and stages of development and their ability to cope in an online learning environment will vary according to their age. Your child’s Year Group Leader and class teacher will be posting a letter on the Hub by 12pm on Thursday 13th January to communicate your child’s timetable and all other information pertinent to their year group. We are aware that it can be difficult for families who have more than one child at home to manage the live learning sessions and have therefore tried to stagger our live Google Meet sessions across the phase wherever possible. This is not, however, possible in all cases as we do have busy timetables of learning for the children to complete each day.   

Library

Our Library will remain open for children to borrow books. We will continue to operate a click and collect system on both campuses, further details of this will be communicated by our school Librarian, Melanie Foti.

Early Years Online Learning Workshop

We understand that it is going to be challenging for our families and children to transition to a home learning environment. Our Head of Learning Technologies, Angela Moriarty, will be running a workshop for parents and aunties to revise all the online learning tools your child will be using on Friday 14th January at 8.30am. Please note, children must access the live learning through their school Google account and for safeguarding purposes, will not be admitted to live sessions if they are logged in under a non-DBIS account; therefore, you must be familiar with how to help your child login. The workshop will be recorded for any parents or carers who cannot attend and posted to the Hub.

To join the workshop at 8.30am on Friday 14th January, please use the following link:

meet.google.com/dfs-ybdi-qcv

Should you have any technical difficulties throughout the period of closure, please contact our helpdesk at [email protected], where a member of our team will endeavour to assist with your queries. 

Key Dates and Activity Packs

Home learning will begin on Friday 14th January. There will be one live session in the morning, activities to complete on Seesaw and then a live session in the afternoon (timings for these will be communicated by year groups). Learning will begin later than usual to allow parents and carers time to attend the workshop and to prepare their children. The full timetable will then begin from Monday 17th January. 

Activity packs will be available for collection on Monday. Year groups will communicate when and where these will be available for collection on each campus. There will also be a designated collection point and time for children who live in Tung Chung. 

Emergency Childcare

The EdB requires schools to offer emergency childcare to those children who are unable to be safely supervised at home. We will be able to offer a small number of emergency childcare spaces to families who are in need. It is important to emphasise that we are limited in terms of space and adults to staff the emergency childcare, therefore it is kindly asked that you only request emergency childcare if you have no alternative options for childcare. 

When considering a request for emergency childcare, it is important that you consider the following:

• Emergency childcare will take place in the classrooms at the Early Years campus that are usually used as lunch eating rooms. This means the children will be sitting at a table, socially distanced from others and separated by screens throughout their time in childcare. 
• The children will be in mixed bubbles and be in contact with children from a range of year groups and potentially with children from the Primary phase in the school.
• Your child will be safely supervised by an education assistant throughout the childcare period. Whilst your child will be able to access their home learning programme by bringing their own device and headphones into school, the education assistants will not be responsible for ensuring your child completes their activities and will not be able to manage individual children’s class timetables. They will of course support wherever possible, however their priority and purpose will be to ensure the children’s safety.
• Depending on the number of children accessing childcare, it is possible that this will impact upon their ability to participate in the live sessions due to the background noise from other children. Your child’s teacher may ask them to mute their microphone so that all children can follow the lessons clearly. From past experience, teachers have found it challenging to engage with children in emergency childcare during the live sessions due to the amount of noise that is happening in the background. We do not have enough adults to supervise the children on a 1:1 basis when they are participating in their live sessions or completing their Seesaw activities.  
• The children will not be able to access the playground or the usual classroom resources as we are not allowed to be offering a normal school programme during school closure. Teachers will also be using their classrooms to deliver the online learning.
• The timings for childcare will be discussed with families on an individual basis and according to the number of adults we have available in school to supervise. Please note that class teachers and many of our class-based education assistants will not be supervising childcare as they will be delivering the home learning programme.  

My intention in outlining the above information is to ensure transparency and honesty regarding what we can offer for childcare. Please contact me directly at [email protected] should you wish to enquire about childcare and be reminded that this is for exceptional, emergency cases only. 

EY1 Immunisations

Our medical team will aim to rebook the immunisation clinic for later in the year. If you have already submitted your child’s medical records, you can collect these directly from the medical room at the main campus, where you will need to sign to say these have been returned to you. 

Wellbeing

I appreciate that disruptions such as school closure can provoke anxiety in our children and therefore ask you to please reach out to your child’s class teacher or a member of the leadership team should you or your child be in need of additional wellbeing support. Our wellbeing team will continue to be available and are here, along with the entire Early Years team, to support you and your child through this period of closure. Please also be reminded that there are a wealth of wellbeing resources available for you to access on the Hub.

https://hub.dbis.edu.hk/wellbeing/

In closing, I appreciate that we are facing yet more challenging times as an Early Years community. Having said this, these are not unchartered waters and I have every confidence in my team to be able to offer enriching, exciting home learning opportunities for our children. I can assure you that we will be doing everything we can to ensure the children continue to make progress with their learning and enjoy an engaging home learning experience. As always, your children’s best interests are at the heart of all that we do.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. 

 

Best wishes,

Hannah Cole

Head of Early Years