by Cathy Mackenzie, Acting Depute Head Teacher and P6/7 Class Teacher

This video demonstrates Troqueer Primary School’s approach to using Microsoft Teams to support learning at home. Troqueer Primary School have used Microsoft Teams alongside other communication methods, such as our school website and the ‘ConnectUs’ school app, to support children to learn at home. A sustainable model was developed in which the school, which has 10 classes and a Nursery class, was split into 3 large cohort teams with groups of teachers supporting learners. The Nursery staff support learners through their Learning Journals app.

Every week staff work together to create a weekly learning grid for each cohort Teams group across P1-P3, P4-P5 and P6-P7. This has enabled collaborative working across the school whilst also taking account of the varied roles staff are undertaking, including supporting childcare in hubs. We have made use of other Office365features, including Microsoft Forms, within some of the learning grids. The weekly learning grids encourage children to take part in activities that support wellbeing, life-skills and independence alongside their curricular tasks. A group of staff have collaborated to create whole school interdisciplinary learning activities that are progressive and engaging, linked to a theme of habitats, followed by food. A whole-school learning context was adopted to help families that might have children learning at home across different age groups to learn together. These grids are posted on the school app, website and Microsoft Teams. Children are encouraged to share their learning or ask questions about their work on the weekly learning grid channel on Microsoft Teams.

Wellbeing and supporting interaction between learners and staff has been a major focus of our approach. We have created a range of welcome videos which are frequently shared on our school app and Microsoft Teams. We have also developed other videos to enable learners to see their teachers, such as story videos for younger learners and a series of ‘Around the World’ videos for P4-P7. The playground blether channel enables learners to chat online in a safe environment which is monitored by staff. There are several live chats each week and we are starting to include the use of audio features for these. Children can come along to these to take part in fun discussion tasks, quizzes and other activities with their teachers and peers.