Dear Parents and Carers,

As you may be aware, from announcements made by the First Minister and from the Scottish Government’s Routemap out of lockdown, staff will be returning to school in June (although there is no set date yet for this to happen) in order to begin planning and preparing for the reopening of school for the new academic session in August.

As you can imagine, this will be a time-consuming task.  To assist in the work that teachers will be doing in preparation for return, we need to make some changes to the way we are working online to support home learning.   We will still be available to help and will continue to provide support for tasks, challenges, and ideas. It will just be in a different format.

• Firstly, from the 8^th of June, teachers will work in teams to provide learning grids for year groups rather than for individual classes. Learning Grids will continue to provide you with a range of suggested ideas and activities which will continue to support learning at home and cover key areas of the curriculum.

 

• Secondly, although teachers will still be available to ask for help and will continue to review the work that you share with them, they will not be able to do this as frequently as they have been doing since they will be required to be in school too.

As deputes, we (Mrs Loughran and Mrs Rogers) will continue to oversee home learning across school and to respond to messages relating to your child’s learning. Mrs McLellan, as Headteacher will continue with the strategic and operational running of the school taking account of Scottish Government and Local Authority guidance as it continues to evolve and deal with any safeguarding concerns which have arisen since lockdown began.

As part of the transition, we are having a special themed week next week 1^st-5^th June, which is for the whole school to take part in.   In line with other schools across the region we are having a ‘Laurieknowe Sports Week’.   A Learning Grid for the whole school will be posted on Monday which has a range of activities all related to our annual Sports Day.  We hope that many of you will take part in the suggested activities and send us photographs of what you have been doing.  Families will still be able to access all the activities and challenges that teachers have set up till now, including things like Sumdog etc.

We appreciate that any change can cause concern, so please get in touch with us (Mrs Rogers or Mrs Loughran) if you have any questions relating to your child’s learning. Our whole staff will continue to offer you as much support as we can, and we very much appreciate all that you have been doing in helping Laurieknowe stay connected in addition to the home learning over the last few months.

This is a link to further information for parents about the reopening of schools

www.parentclub.scot/articles/reopening-schools-faqs

Mrs McLellan will advise us all of return dates and next steps for you as families, once she has that information.  Until then, please stay safe and a huge thank you from the whole staff team for your continued support in these very challenging circumstances and do keep in touch.

 

Mrs Rogers and Mrs Loughran

Depute Headteachers.