Online Learning  Provision – Early Years and Primary

Online Learning in Early Years and Primary

As you have been made aware this week, the Education Bureau has now suspended all classes until Monday 2nd March and is strongly advising (for health reasons) that children remain at home.  Online learning will be in place by 10 am on Monday 3rd February to ensure that all our students are able to access high-quality learning opportunities during the school closure via the following learning platforms:

Early Years – Seesaw

Primary – Seesaw & Google Classroom

Thereafter, it will be available from 5 pm on the previous day e.g lessons for Wednesday 5th February will be online from 5 pm on Tuesday 4th February etc.  If you have any technical problems, please contact our IT Help Desk ([email protected]). 

 

Our Commitment to Online Learning 

We are committed to ensuring that all online learning will be directly linked to the curriculum learning objectives the children would have covered had they been in school. We acknowledge that it may not be possible for all children to be supported to the same extent in their learning from home, but our provision will continue to be based around the assumption that all children will be accessing and completing the set online learning from home. This is important so that the children are ready to continue moving forward in their learning on their return to school, rather than having to re-cover areas that have been missed. Some excellent advice about how you can best support your children’s learning at home can be found HERE in an article and podcast from Expat Living Magazine. 

• Online learning will be of the highest quality by ensuring it is relevant, engaging and interactive and ensures coverage of the learning objectives that would be covered if school remained open. 
• Online Learning will be organised and posted by Year Groups and by Specialist Teams. 
• The online systems to be used will be Seesaw for Early Years, and Seesaw and Google Classroom for Primary. (From a safeguarding perspective, non-school systems will not be used for any student or parent communication.)
• Teacher-student and student-student communication will be via Seesaw and Google Classroom. The communications portal within Seesaw has now been opened and this can be used for communicating with parents, and by parents to upload children’s work where needed. This will be particularly useful for our younger children who may not be able to upload their own learning yet. 

You will receive a notification from Angela Moriarty directly through the Seesaw platform on Sunday 2nd February. This message will include a video which will detail everything you need to know about using the communication section of Seesaw and how you can support your child to use Seesaw from home. Please note that this video will be different for some year groups so if you have more than one child at the school, we recommend you check each video.  If you are not already accessing Seesaw as a parent, please email [email protected] and they will send you a new invite email from Seesaw.

• Where appropriate, audio recordings or videos will be posted by teachers so children can see or at least hear their teacher’s voice. A short video or audio introduction to the learning activity/task will potentially support higher quality engagement from our students. 
• Where possible, resources such as videos or other online materials should be downloaded and added as a resource inside Seesaw/Google Classroom rather than being sent as links to ensure that children working outside Hong Kong can still access learning materials.  
• Our Specialist Teachers (Inclusion, EAL, Mandarin, Music, Learning Technology and PE) will be setting learning activities and tasks for the children they usually teach. 
• There will be some level of interactivity in each learning activity/task.  This could be a reflection of the students learning in Seesaw or a photograph of them during the activity.  
• Teachers will be regularly accessing their student’s Seesaw or Google Classroom each weekday, responding to uploaded posts and providing timely feedback regarding next steps and responses to student queries in real-time wherever possible.  Feedback for students may include written responses, video or oral recordings group or other interactive tools where appropriate.
• Links to additional resources, such as Flipgrid, will be placed on Seesaw and Google Classroom so that all students can easily access the required tools.  Login details have been shared with parents by the IT Team and please contact them if you need more assistance. 
• We do not underestimate the need to ensure that we provide a balance of learning opportunities between ones that are completed online and ones that are completed offline. For our younger children, it is important to have more learning opportunities to be completed offline and teachers will plan for this to be the case.   
• We do acknowledge that the school closure may result in an increase in screen time for our students, over and above their usual use in school. With this in mind, we do ask that parents think about how they can help reduce this by perhaps limiting the amount of screen time children have in their downtime. 

 

Timings for Online Learning 

• Monday 3rd February – Online learning for the day will be posted to Seesaw and/or Google Classroom by 10:00 am for all classes.
• Monday 3rd February by 5:00 pm all classes will have uploaded online learning opportunities ready for Tuesday 4th February.
• After this, everyday online learning opportunities for the following day are ready by 5:00 pm the day before

 

Technical support

• Parents will be sent reminder information about how to log into all the usual school online resources. 
• General student support resources should be shared via Seesaw or Google Classroom. 
• Parents can email [email protected] technical support where appropriate.

 

We are highly aware of the impact the school closure will have on everyone within our DBIS community.  We are working hard to ensure that the impact on student learning is kept to a minimum, and we are hugely grateful for the messages of support received from so many of you already. Please also be aware that the most recent directive from the EDB is that school staff should be able to work remotely during the closure. All DBIS  teachers will be available on a daily basis creating resources, supporting student engagement, responding to student questions and comments, assessing skills and understandings, and providing quality feedback to guide next steps to support the learning of all our children.

Please remember that so much learning already happens outside the school classroom. Any time you take sitting and reading with your children, hiking the hills of Hong Kong or travelling through different home countries are all excellent learning opportunities. If your child/children want to write about these experiences, or share pictures of themselves taking part in other activities, please do feel free to share this with us via Seesaw. We are always keen to hear about our students’ life learning.

Thank you all for your continued support and please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help in any other way.

Eleanor Loran                            Susan Walter.

Head of Early Years                        Head of Primary

 

FAQs:

• • Who should I contact with questions?  
    • For questions relating to online learning expectations please contact your Phase Leadership Team: Eleanor Loran or Hannah Cole in Early Years or Susan Walter or Anna Lees in Primary.
    • For any access problems or logging in problems, please contact the IT Team [email protected] 

 

• What if my child is in a different time zone?
• • • It doesn’t matter where your children are learning from. Work will be available from 5 pm Hong Kong time every day ready for the following day. Children can complete the learning activities in their own time and feedback will be given once the teachers have accessed it.

 

• Does my child have to complete the online learning activities?
• • • As the online learning activities and tasks will be addressing learning objectives from the curriculum, it is important that all children are supported in completing them. We appreciate that this is not always easy, but giving children a quiet space and regular, planned study time will make this easier for them each day. It is important that all students try to keep up with their learning so that on their return to school we can continue to move forward rather than having to re-cover missed learning. 

 

• How will I know when my child needs to be back in Hong Kong?
• • • It is currently expected that we can reopen the school on Monday 2nd March. Should there be any change to this date, parents will be contacted by Mr Stuart Bridge at that time.

 

• Who will deal with Parental queries regarding online learning?
• • • Parents should contact the Head of Phase or Deputy Head of Phase if their child is experiencing difficulties accessing the online learning opportunities and to avoid a delayed response from their teacher, as the teachers have been directed to be focusing on planning learning opportunities and giving feedback to students. 
    • Parents will receive communication if changes are made to online learning arrangements based on our ongoing evaluation of the ever-changing circumstances. 

• How will students and their parents know they are making progress in learning?
• • This will be communicated to the students through the comments and feedback teachers make on Seesaw or Google Classroom.  

• How can I support my child/children if we do not have our own or enough devices?

• • DBIS is happy to loan a Chromebook to Year 3 to Year 6 children to help support home learning during the time that classes are suspended at DBIS if there is not a suitable device for the student to use at home.

    If you are interested in borrowing one for your child, could we ask that you and your child read and complete the following Chromebook Loan Agreement form.

    https://form.jotform.com/200321288410947

    The IT Department will organise the Chromebook and any related equipment as quickly as they can once the agreement is signed and will email you to let you know when it is ready for collection.

• What will happen to events already planned e.g. Year 3 Show, Year 6 Camp?
• • It is likely that all additional events already planned during this closure period will be cancelled, but where possible, rearranged. The school’s Leadership Team will be looking at all upcoming events on Monday 3rd February and intentions communicated to families after that time.