Learning From Home Update

9 April, 2020

Learning from Home during Lockdown

Talofa everyone!

Hoping you and your whānau are well and making the most of the ‘bubble’ time together. For those of you who are working in essential services, we cannot thank you enough. Working from home brings its own challenges and benefits and by now you have probably developed a daily ‘bubble rhythm’. 

We are starting a new way of working and learning and it is very different from anything most of us have ever experienced. I want to reassure you that our school staff and Board of Trustees will continue to be available to support your child’s learning and well-being in the next weeks.

When Term 2 starts on Wednesday 15 April the staff, parents and children will be working together in different ways than we usually would. Staff are meeting regularly online to make sure that learning tasks enable us to continue to work towards our vision for our students – that they are engaged, achieving and confident in their identity.

Our expectation is that your child will do between 1-2 hours of learning a day. Learning tasks will be a balance of things to do offline and things to do online. Remember that cooking with you, keeping up with their chores, jumping on the trampoline, helping to look after young ones are all important learning tasks too.

We know that many of you will be juggling work commitments with looking after your families. Please don’t be stressed about home-schooling or re-creating school at home. You decide if and when your child engages with the learning activities. 

Google Classroom is the main way learning is shared with our students. We already have many students who are logged in and completing work. If your child is not able to access Google Classroom, please PM our facebook page or contact your class teacher so we can help make this happen.

From 15 April teachers will be available online to support learning for 2 hours everyday. Teachers will let students know the specific time they will be available.

For those who are not able to access Google Classroom the Ministry of Education is sending each student a Home Learning Pack to you at home. Learning focussed programmes will be screened on 2 new TV channels from next Wednesday.

Teachers will have a video or phone call with individual students once a week. This is especially important for students who are not able to access Google Classroom.

Most of you will have heard from me or Whaea Jayne in the last few days. Thank you to all of you who have responded to our texts and calls. It has been helpful for our planning and to support our efforts to get learning resources to you at home. If you haven’t heard from us it’s because we don’t have the right mobile number. Please PM us the number so we can keep in touch. 

Finally, our thoughts and prayers are with our families in the Pacific, especially Tonga, Fiji  and Vanuatu who are battling Cyclone Harold.

We wish you a happy Easter, safe at home in your bubble.

Ia manuia!

Melini Fasavalu

Principal