Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Once again, on behalf of the staff at Mindarie Primary School, I thank you for the support that you are continuing to provide to our school and staff. Teachers and Education Assistants are really appreciating the emails that they are receiving. Please be assured that we are all working really hard to make sure that we can provide you with effective Distant Learning from the commencement of Term Two on April 28, 2020.
Essential Resource Packs
As we posted on Facebook yesterday, the Education Assistants are currently creating Essentials Packs for you to use with your children at home. In these packs you will find tools to help you, such as laminated paper to use as a white board (don’t worry, your children know how to use these), dice, counters and cards for mathematics activities, your child’s pencil case (if it was left at school) and so on. We hope to have these packs ready by mid-way through next week and we will be communicating with you regarding how you can collect these packs. As you will appreciate, these packs are taking time to put together so please be patient and wait to be contacted.
Playgrounds
Unfortunately, as of tomorrow, students will no longer be able to use the school playgrounds; senior, junior, early childhood and nature. We will be blocking off these areas. Students in years three through to six will be playing on the grassed area of the senior play area. Pre-Primary to year two students will be playing in the lower yard of the Early childhood area.
End of Term One
Tomorrow is the last official day of Term 1, as Monday to Thursday next week are designated School Development Days. During these days, the staff will be preparing curriculum content for each year level and learning how to deliver this digitally.
As per direction from the Premier of Western Australia, parents and carers are required to keep their children at home from the end of the day on April 3. The school holidays will therefore commence on April 6 and run until April 28.
As Mr Morrison announced today, the federal Government is providing financial support to the Child Care sector. This is to ensure that parents who would normally access vacation care or child care can still do so. The Government is doing this to ensure that this extremely important area is supported. Your normal child care provider will be able to provide you with more information in relation to this.
The Premier and Prime Minister were also very clear around essential workers still being able to access care for their children, and they stressed that if the normal practice was for children to be cared for by Grandparents/ carers that fall into the age group of 60 years old and above, and that these cares were self-isolating, schools would provide supervision for these children.
If you find yourself in this situation please advise the school of this, so that we have some clarity of around the ages and number of children we can expect at school next week.
Parents working from home are expected to have their children at home.
Children attending school from April 6 to 9 are required to wear their school uniform. This is so that we can distinguish them from students attending Keiki.
All gates around the school will be closed next week. Children attending will need to enter via the front gates of the school.
Distance Learning
The digital platform we will be using to support our Distance Learning model is Seesaw. We have purchased licenses to allow teachers to use the full suite of options available on Seesaw. If you are not familiar with Seesaw, instructions will be provided next week.
Teachers will also be linking in with their classes using Zoom. We will provide more detail in relation to this in future postings. The feedback teachers have been receiving, via the phone calls that they are making, is that students are missing seeing their class mates, teacher and whole class. Zoom will facilitate this contact.
Students who need to attend school (according to the guidelines outlined above) from the commencement of Term 2, will be using Seesaw in the same way students will be at home to ensure equity across the student population. Teachers will not be teaching these students. The expectation for teachers is that they deliver in one way only.
As previously mentioned, provisions will be made for those families who do not have access to the appropriate technology at home. Mr Gould is currently creating the Mindarie Primary Distance Learning Parent Guidelines. We expect these to be available to parents and families mid-way through next week. In addition, Mr Gould is creating a dedicated section on our website that will be a go to point for all Distance Learning.
Teachers are currently contacting families and they are appreciating this contact and also the information you are providing. This will continue to guide our planning for term two.
With each day, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing our world and how we operate, in ways that we are all finding very confronting, unsettling and unprecedented. As a school, we continue to act upon the regular updates and advice provided by the Federal and State Governments, and the Education and Health Departments. We will continue to keep you informed as things progress.
Once again, thank you so much for your ongoing support during this extraordinary time.
Kind regards
Kind regards,
Barbara Bromley
April 2 2020