Dear Parent/Carer,
Firstly I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a Happy New Year. I hope you enjoyed a relaxing break with your family and that 2021 brings health and happiness for us all. Following the announcement from the First Minister in December and the subsequent announcement on January 4th, the new term has started in a way that is similar to last March, when we all went into the first lockdown. At this point, only the children of key worker children who have no other childcare arrangements in place should be attending school and over the next few days we will review and request documentation to support requests received.
It is our intention to operate a normal timetable from Monday, with learners accessing their classes via Microsoft Teams as they were accustomed to last term for their homework tasks. Remote learning isn’t easy, we know. Many of our staff are parents too who will also be taking on the challenge of working and home schooling their own children, so we fully recognize the strain that this situation can put on families. However, at this time the safest place to be is at home and we hope that it will not be too long before we can return to full time education in school.
Remote Learning
For the vast majority of our pupils, remote learning will begin on Monday 11th January 2021, the learning set for your child will be specific, progressive and relevant to what they are learning in class and therefore we urge you to ensure that your child completes and returns the set learning. Learning has been planned by teachers to ensure a continuity of learning programme that replicates the weekly learning programme usually set in school. Although, the expectation is that all children complete the set learning, our approach is to offer a flexible, accessible, supportive and timely learning experience that supports everyone, as each family set up and accessibility to devices is unique for each personal family circumstance. In addition to this, North Lanarkshire have a Virtual Classroom available on Microsoft Team and we have attached a guide to this for you to review. Please see attachments. Your child’s teacher will communicate to them via Microsoft Teams the colour of work they can access on NLC Virtual Classroom and this will supplement the work they set. The code for your child to join the Team is: r0f8wg2.
We are here to help
Please remember that our staff are working incredibly hard to adapt lesson content for remote learning and that this is a learning curve for everyone. We don’t want anyone stressing about remote learning and therefore to provide further support we would like to invite our parents/carers to attend a WebEx session on Wednesday 13th January at 11am to discuss further how remote learning will work, we will send out the link to join in the next few days.
Please remember, that Microsoft Teams is for pupil use and not an appropriate platform for adults to communicate (either by chat or on video), you can always email us at ht@st-augustines.n-lanark.sch.uk or telephone (01236 632090) as we will be on hand throughout the school day, but please do allow up to 3 working days for a response in some cases.
We hope that our approach will be supportive to you and your child and look forward to further strengthening the great partnership that exists between school and home.
Please do not hesitate to contact the school by e-mail or phone if you wish to discuss any matter. We look forward to welcoming your child to their virtual classroom and the start of lessons on Monday morning.
Kind Regards
Mrs.Caroline Docherty
Head Teacher
