Learning During Lockdown

Posted on 5th June 2020 by Graeme Searle

I hope you are keeping well during this unprecedented and continuing period of lockdown. Even though certain restrictions have been relaxed since my last time of writing, I imagine that in terms of homeschooling, not much has changed at all – they definitely haven’t in my household.

The most difficult thing for me has been the juggling act between completing my workload, homeschooling three boys of very different ages / abilities and running a household and completing the domestic chores associated with this. I have managed largely to follow my own advice from my previous newsletter article, although this hasn’t been without its difficulties, but some days have been tougher than others in terms of organisation and completing tasks.

Coming into school twice a week to supervise the key worker children has been fantastic as not only have I got to know several students who previously I had not taught, but it has also given me a sense of normality in these strange times by allowing me to leave the house and attend my usual place of work. This week we have also seen selected Year 10 and Year 12 students attend school to focus on their studies, utilise our resources and have staff support on hand if needed. For your peace of mind, the 32 students who have been on site have been divided across four separate classrooms, each room has been provided with cleaning spray, hand sanitiser and wet wipes which have used to wipe everything down regularly, the desks have been spaced 2m apart and each student has been assigned a specific desk that they use whenever they are on site and all of the classrooms are deep cleaned every evening.

It really is nice to see children learning – either students at school when I am in or my own sons at home – and it reminds me how important it is to keep our brains active. Some children went into lockdown on 23rd March and will not return to school until September, so accessing and completing work set by teachers on a regular basis is vital. The staff at BMS are working together to provide some form of continued education for your children and this includes the setting of work using a variety of electronic platforms, looking at completed work and providing feedback, charting how much work individual students are doing and contacting home via email and telephone calls. Not only have subject teachers been asked to contact home, but Character Development Coaches and the Pastoral Team have also been supporting students by liaising with you and your children.

Please be assured that all of our communication stems from a place of caring and wanting to support your child with their learning and their mental health. Obviously if you have any questions at any point, you know where we are so please feel free to contact us.

My final thought relates back to a previous point about how important it is to keep our brains ‘ticking over’ between now and September and it is something I constantly remind myself of in relation to my own children. Everyday I ensure that my children complete four things:

exercise for 30min (Joe Wicks, bike ride, football match etc)
some form of relevant reading for 30min (book, magazine, website etc)*
handwriting of some description for 30min (writing a short story, completing a comprehension exercise, keeping a diary etc)*
some type of numeracy / maths for 30min

*Hopefully these things can be spread out over a variety of subjects.

On a good day they will do additional exercises, but the worst case scenario is they only do the above. However, if they do this everyday weekday between now and September then I will be confident that they will have made progress and will hit the ground running when school begins again.

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