Fairfields Primary School

Dear parents and carers, 

We have finally made it to the end of term and can now take a deep breath and relax for a week! 

Thank you for all of the hard work and effort you have put into supporting your child – it really has made a difference! 

The Remote Learning Survey sent out last week was completed by 151 of our parents.  We have spent time this week reviewing the feedback to evaluate what we can do to meet the needs of all of our families.   

The main feedback from parents was: 

• Parents have felt well supported by the structure of the Zoom sessions.  They feel that it has helped their child to continue to learn and maintain concentration. 
• Parents felt that their child was able to work with the teacher to ask questions which meant that they were able to work from home at the same time.  
• Parents recognised that teachers have put a massive amount of thought into the sessions and have made the learning fun. 
• Support from the school has been available for the majority of parents if requested and parents feel that they can ask for help. 
• Children have enjoyed sharing their work during the lesson; when given the opportunity. 
• The Zoom sessions have helped children to feel connected to their friends and to school. 

The main areas we needed to address in our review were: 

• Some pupils felt disappointed when they could not share their work with their teacher.  This sometimes led to disengagement in the learning. 
• Parents wanted the work to be more flexible as they were trying to balance it with working from home.  They felt that a pack of work would be easier and that they could then work at their own pace.  
• Some parents were worried that the lesson was moving too fast and that their child was not able to complete work. 
• The teachers did not always answer the questions, from their child, about the work.
• Parents wanted to have non-computer time with their child to complete other activities.   

As a result, we have made the decision to introduce Feedback Friday.  This will be a day where teachers will meet with small groups of pupils in the year group.  All pupils will have time with the teacher to share their work and talk about anything they are finding challenging. 

Children will be sent a Zoom invitation via their parents’ email for the Friday and will be asked to attend along with 5-7 other pupils.  The teacher will use the 30-minute session to go through work from the week and support pupils with anything they have had difficulty with.  The time for the session will be the same each week.

This does mean that after half term there will be no whole class scheduled sessions on Friday.  Instead, we will set Friday Challenges for pupils to complete at home before and after their feedback session. 

The challenges will be mostly practical activities and will be optional.  We understand that parents may want to take this day to do something else and reduce screen time and this is absolutely fine.  Mrs Hopkins and I will set the challenges through the week in assemblies and will also send these out to parents via email and the School Jotter.  Children in school will also be able to take part in the challenges. 

For parents wanting more structure on this day,  they can use this day to catch up from lessons in the week using the past video page.  They could also access the Superhero Challenge which is still available on the website: https://www.fairfields.hants.sch.uk/zoom-lessons/other-activities/summer-superhero

Another focus for this day will be for pupils to take time to read.  They can read a book from home or make use of the online library which can be found: https://www.fairfields.hants.sch.uk/zoom-lessons/other-activities

We will still continue to use the last part of lessons each day to assess pupils’ learning and to adapt the next lesson as a result.  Feedback Friday will be a chance to discuss pupils’ learning in more detail. 

As ever, thank you for your ongoing support and I hope that you have a wonderful non-screen week!

We will see you back online or in school on Monday 22^nd February.

Best wishes

Miss Kelly Dillon

Headteacher