Dear Parents,
OUTLINE OF PRIMARY ONLINE HOME LEARNING
I would like to take this opportunity to again welcome you to the start of the 2020-21 academic year here at DBIS. We have been working hard over the summer, taking into account the feedback we received from our parent body last term, to further build on our provision for online learning and continue to fully support our children’s learning.
As you already know, we will be starting this academic year with our online home learning programme. Whilst we remain mindful of the amount of screentime the children will be exposed to, we have worked hard to balance online teaching, live teacher-student interactions and opportunities for giving feedback to ensure this is both manageable and productive in supporting learning. We have looked to balance the screen time with independent activities the children can engage with and complete in exercise books and away from the screen whilst continuing to give them real-time access to their teachers if they need additional support throughout the school day.
The Primary school day will start for all students at 8:20 am with a daily live Google Meet where the class teacher will welcome students, register them and talk them through the planned learning for the day. The Google Meet link your child will need for the first day of their class will be shared with you next week.
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A daily timetable will be shared on Google Classroom showing the times for each lesson and links to all the learning activities.
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Activities will be shared in Google Classroom and Seesaw and will be accompanied with recorded or videoed explanations and examples for different areas of learning including Maths, Discovery, Reading and Writing. Class teachers will introduce these videos, model any further examples and pick up any misconceptions and support the children during these lessons in real-time.
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Live specialist lessons will be delivered through Google Meets according to the weekly timetable. This will include lessons for Mandarin, PE, Learning Technology and Music. These lessons will be recorded and shared on Google Classroom once the lesson is completed. Recordings will also remain available for the students after the lessons to access at a time that best suits them if working away from Hong Kong.
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Daily, small group, RWI sessions (Monday – Thursday) will begin in Week 2 (Monday 17th August) for our Year 3 students.
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A weekly Assembly with Mrs Walter and Ms Lees, including Better Than Before Celebrations will take place on a Friday afternoon. These assemblies will start on Friday 21st August.
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As part of the weekly Library timetable, children will be able to select a range of fiction and non-fiction books each week. This will be supported by our school librarian, Mrs Foti.
By adhering to the class timetables during online learning, we have ensured that the children will get breaks between their lessons. We fully appreciate that your child may need to take additional breaks or access their learning more flexibly, particularly if you are accessing school from outside Hong Kong. We will, therefore, ensure that all the main instructions are recorded and made available on the class Google Classroom. We would ask families who’s children may need additional breaks continue to prioritise their engagement with the English and Maths activities.
Logging into Seesaw and Google Classroom
We are currently creating a new page to specifically support all families with online home learning going forward, and this will be shared with parents next week. In the meantime, guidance for logging into the school platforms can be found on the Parent Hub HERE. The sections on Google Classroom and Seesaw are likely to be the most useful initially.
Student Chromebooks and Learning Resources
Should your Primary child not have access to their own one to one device at home, we are happy to arrange for you to borrow a Chromebook from the school to use during the closure. Please fill in the request jot form HERE and then we can get that arranged for you if needed.
Next week, we will be putting together resource packs containing new exercise books and stationery to support learning away from the computer screen at home. These will be ready for collection on Wednesday 12th August and we will share a timetable for this early next week.
You will be contacted by the IT Team about the collection of any requested Chromebooks, and by the Year Team about the collection of resource packs next week.
PARENT AND TEACHER, STUDENT CONFERENCES (PTSCs)
The relationship between children and their teachers plays a huge role in the trajectory of a child’s academic success and social development. The more self-motivated a student is to learn, the better prepared they’ll be to reach their potential, and one of the best ways to encourage this is by quickly building positive and meaningful teacher-student relationships. Establishing a positive relationship with their teacher helps children feel more comfortable and safe in their classroom environments, be that online or in the physical classroom, and as a result, the children are more likely to participate actively in class and challenge themselves academically.
Therefore, our first priority this term is to start building strong, positive relationships with your children and yourselves. To do this, we are pleased to offer online Student, Parent and Teacher Conferences (PTSCs) for all children during the afternoons of Thursday 13th and Friday 14th August.
Please note that students will be in online lessons with their teachers from 8.20am until 12 noon on Thursday 13th and Friday 14th August. Individual SPTCs will then take place during the afternoon. Full-day class timetables will resume from Monday 17th August.
We greatly value the knowledge you hold regarding your child’s wellbeing and their current learning, so these PTSCs will be a great opportunity for you to meet your child’s new teacher and ask any questions you may have, as well as sharing any pertinent information about your child with the teacher.
Prior to these 1:1 conferences, a ‘Meet the Teacher’ presentation will be shared with you. This will be made available on The Parent Hub, on Seesaw, and on your child’s Google Classroom from Wednesday morning at 10 am. The presentation will give you an introduction to your child’s class teacher, along with a detailed overview of the curriculum, timetable and other important information pertinent to your child’s class. The presentation contains a detailed overview of information, such as timings of the school day, uniform expectations and key dates etc. so please ensure you watch this video prior to your parent-teacher conference. If you would like to discuss any wider school matters, please contact either myself or Anna Lees, Deputy Head of Primary, to discuss these in a separate conversation.
Date and Time for PTSCs
Thursday 13 Aug 2020 – Between 12:30pm – 5:00pm
Friday 14 Aug 2020 – Between 12:30pm – 5:00pm
Meeting Time: 15 minutes
To make bookings:
Please follow the link HERE to the meeting booking system.
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Fill in your personal information: email, parent name and student name.
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Select your child’s teacher and choose a booking time.
Once the booking is confirmed, details of your meeting, including a link to the Google Meet, will be sent to your email address. The link for the meeting will be within the confirmation email – see the image below. Please join your meeting at the time of the appointment by clicking “Ask to join” and the teacher will let you enter the meeting.
Please keep the confirmation email handy. You will need to click on the link next to the booking details, at the time of your appointment. This will take you to the Google Meet link for your meeting. Please then request to join the meeting. We ask that you only click the link to enter at the time of your appointment, as the link may be in use with another family. Your teacher will be with you shortly.
We kindly request that you make your booking by Wednesday 12th August at 5 pm as the system will be closed at this time. Should you miss this deadline, please liaise directly with your child’s class teacher to make an appointment. If you have trouble opening this link, you may need to copy and paste it into your browser before trying to access it again. Please note that the link to your individual meeting time can be accessed remotely from more than one location, so working parents can both join the meeting at the same time from different locations. If you need any further assistance, contact the IT Department at [email protected].
I appreciate that I have again shared a lot of information with you in this letter, but I want to ensure that you have all the information you need for now in order to support your child positively in their return to classes. I hope the information I have shared has answered any questions you may have had about the start of year, however, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything further I can help with or clarify. I do hope you sign up for a PTSC next week when our teachers will be looking forward to meeting individually with you and your child.
I would like to extend a particular welcome to all our new families joining DBIS this term. We will be sharing a ‘Welcome to DBIS Primary’ video with you early next week, and confirm an opportunity to virtually meet the Primary Leadership Team at that time.
Our entire Primary Team would like to thank you in advance for your support during this period of school closure. Many of us are also working parents, so we are genuinely grateful for your willingness to support your child or children at home through this time of significant change.
Kind regards,
Susan Walter
Head of Primary
USEFUL LINKS
Link to the SPTC Booking System: https://www.schoolinterviews.
Jotform for booking a Chromebook: https://form.jotform.com/
IT Helpdesk: [email protected]
Digital Learning Page (Learning at DBIS) – Parent Hub: https://hub.dbis.edu.hk/hub-