Ardtornish Primary School
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How we supported students to learn at home.

Over the four pupil free days at the end of Term 1 teachers designed ‘home based’ learning systems, matched to the Department for Education's guidelines for the implementation of home based learning for Years R-3 and Years 4-7.

Information about ‘home based’ learning procedures will primarily be communicated through class or team-based websites that caregivers can access through this page. These sites will be the central source of information for students and parents while also being complemented by the use of additional software as needed e.g. Class Dojo, SeeSaw, and online resources.
On top of what we are providing, on a class by class basis,
the 'Department for Education' has made available learning units 

that cover two weeks of study in English, Maths and Science for each year Level.
These units of work can be downloaded by  
​Clicking Here.

Do you need a password for a particular resource?
We have a passwords page where they are all summarised. To get the master password for this page ask your child's teacher or contact the front office. Phone 82648099 or text us on 044 7467 252 


Passwords Page Link

Links to class "Home Learning" websites
Note - Please contact your classroom teacher if you are locked out.


Foundation Classes
Mrs Zarcinas, Mrs Bonnett,
​Mrs Hodges

Room 18
Mrs Agaciak

Room 24
Mrs Bradshaw

Room 30
Ms Lennon
Rooms 7 & 8
Mr Wheaton &
​Mr Whitehead

Rooms 19 & 20
Mrs McAskill and Mrs Matthews

Rooms 26 & 27
Ms Baulderstone & Ms Addle

Room 2A
Mrs Crozier
Rooms 9 & 10
Mrs Hall &
​ Mr Gehling​

Room 21
Ms Campbell

Room 28
Ms Cafasso

Library
Mrs Moore
Rooms 11 & 12
Mrs Bagley  &
​Ms Ravlich

Room 22
Ms Holloway

Room 29
Mrs McCurry 

Link to Specialist Area Websites
Japanese - Science - The Arts​


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In designing at ‘Home learning’ programs we have ensured they are aligned to the Australian Curriculum, build on the learning that occurred during Term 1 and reflect the tasks and activities to be presented to the students who will continue to attend school in Term 2. In this way students at home and school will experience, as much as possible, a shared learning experience. Learning at home is therefore a viable educational choice.

To achieve a strong connection between the ‘home’ and ‘school’ programs teachers adjust, adapt and modify some tasks for home learners to ensure that they can be successfully completed using online tools and processes and maintain a strong focus on literacy and numeracy.

Learning at Home - Timetables
Suggested timetables are posted on class websites. By indicating how learning at home could be structured these timetables can support caregivers to plan their child’s learning across the day and week. While creating them, teachers also recognise that caregivers will have responsibilities beyond the monitoring of their child’s learning, and they may need to arrange the completion of activities in a flexible manner that allows them to meet their own particular priorities.

Even as we acknowledge this, we need to reiterate the importance of students completing all the activities, related to the key areas of numeracy and literacy each week, so they maintain their academic progress.

How each teacher's home learning program operates will be clearly documented on their website and parents have a responsibility to familiarise themselves with its operation.

These websites provide both broader overviews of learning programs and specific details about how daily activities can be accessed. The website are used in tandem with other software to deliver activities to students.
 
Designing a website is a complex undertaking and if a caregiver has a positive suggestion for improving a website's navigation or structure, we would welcome their feedback.

Learning at home - a shared responsibility.
Teachers have a responsibility for providing students with a planned learning program and monitoring their progress but the responsibility for ensuring that students engage with this program rests jointly on caregivers and the student themselves. Therefore the Department has established responsibilities for both which are listed here.

Advice to Parents

Parent responsibilities during home learning
​
Provide support for your children by:
  • establishing routines and expectations
  • defining a space for your child to work in
  • monitoring communications from teachers
  • beginning and ending each day with a check-in
  • taking an active role in helping your children process their learning
  • encouraging physical activity and/or exercise
  • checking in with your child regularly to help them manage stress
  • monitoring how much time your child is spending online
  • keeping your children social, but set rules around their social media interactions.
Student responsibilities during home learning

These responsibilities change according to the age of your child:
  • establishing and/or following a daily routine for learning
  • identifying a safe, comfortable, quiet space in their home where they can work effectively and successfully
  • regularly monitoring digital platforms and communication (G-Suite , Seesaw, Dojo, email, etc.) to check for announcements and feedback from teachers
  • completing tasks and doing their best work
  • doing their best to meet timelines, commitments, and due dates
  • communicating proactively with their teachers if they cannot meet deadlines or require additional support
  • collaborating and supporting their classmates in their learning
  • complying with the school and departments cyber safety rules

Structuring Learning at Home.
​

In recognition of the need to support caregivers to manage their child/ren’s learning in the home environment our programs are designed to follow the Department’s implementation guidelines and provide activities matched to two major segments of schooling, years R-3 and years 4-7.

Years R-3

These younger students will in all likelihood require more caregiver support to successfully engage in learning activities. 
Their daily program will be structured around four learning blocks.
  1. Daily Literacy activities for 90 minutes per day, with a focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening. These may include:
    • phonological awareness,
    • phonemic awareness and other oral language activities
    • phonics practice and consolidation
    • vocabulary development, and
    • the reading of appropriate texts, including decodable texts and daily writing activities.

  2. Daily Numeracy activities for 60 minutes per day, with a focus on number. These may include:
    • sorting, patterning, counting and measuring activities that can be conducted using everyday materials
    • identifying and describing shapes, and o the use of mathematical language.
 
    3. Daily Physical Activity recommendations
  • These could be completed indoors and outdoors, for example, simple exercises and dance movements or outdoor games. (30 min)
   
    4. Play-based learning activities
.
  • These activities will require less caregiver supervision, in comparison to the literacy and numeracy components of the day, and may including free drawing, colouring and painting, collecting and grouping, creating and making, and listening to sounds, including music. 

Additional Learning Activities: Class teachers and specialist teachers will also provide additional tasks for students to undertake, linked to other curriculum areas beyond English and Maths. However it will be left to the discretions of each parent to choose how many of these activities their children undertake. Parents may like their children to be involved in some or all of these in preference to less structured play based activities.

Minimum Formal Learning Time:  2 hrs 30 min plus lots of play!

Years 4 - 7

These older students will, in all likelihood, be more independent learners and able to successfully engage in learning activities with less direct caregiver supervision. 

Their daily program will be structured around three learning blocks.
​
  1. Daily Literacy activities for 60 minutes per day. This may include:
    • oral language, reading and writing
    • further consolidation of phonemic awareness and phonics skills for some students 
    • vocabulary extension, wider and increasingly independent reading every day, and
    • more extended writing.

  2. Daily Numeracy activities for 45 minutes per day. This will include:
    • a strong emphasis on number
    • problem solving, and
    • purposeful use of mathematics.  This could involve students engaging in problems that have multiple solutions and recording their reasoning for using that approach.
 
     3.  A Selection of tasks from other Australian Curriculum learning Areas for 90 min.
          Tasks set over the week could include Science, History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship, The Arts, Technology or Languages.
          These tasks may all be provided at the beginning of the week so students can choose when they will be undertaken and for what duration each day.

Daily Physical Activity - recommendations (for 30 minutes) will be provided to support students to be actively engaged during breaks between the major learning blocks. These could include indoor and outdoor activities, for example, dancing and static movements or outdoor skills and games.

​       Formal Learning Time: 3 hrs 45 min 

The Continuing Role of the Teacher.
While the way in which students access and complete learning may change, the role of the teacher will not. 
Teachers will remain responsible for the content students engage with, the feedback they receive and identifying evidence of learning.

Methods for collecting evidence of learning and providing feedback to students.
These are not yet finalised, and staff will be exploring a range of strategies as Term 2 progresses. Being present as students engage in learning tasks at home, parents will gain strong insights into their child/ren’s learning strengths and challenges. How work will be made available for teachers to assess and respond to will vary with the age of students and the type of learning tasks with which they are engaged. Some online learning tasks automatically generate data about a student’s engagement and achievement while other types of tasks will require students or parents to submit completed activities to the class teacher for their assessment. Ways of doing this will evolve as teachers assess the success of different methods and parents will be kept informed of the strategies being employed through the class webpage.

Communicating between home and school.
Teachers webpages will state their preferred methods of communication between home and school both for students and caregivers. The methods they choose may vary in accordance to the purpose of the communication and the age of the students. 
​

To ensure parents and students can have “real time” communication with teachers, each teacher will set a specific time over a week when they will be available to give ‘real time’ responses to your communication. This might be by phone call, text, chat or email. Information about when these times will be and how communication will be undertaken will be shared on their website at the beginning of the term.

Staff will also be exploring the use of video conferencing as the term progresses but initially, until the department settles on its preferred method for implementing this, it will only be in a very limited form, with selected classes, due to technical, bandwidth and security considerations. More information will be made available about video conferencing as the term progresses.

Attendance
​All students who are registered as undertaking home learning will be recorded as such in our school attendance records. If while your child is undertaking home learning they become ill and cannot engage in their daily learning tasks please let the school know by a TEXT or phone call and we will record them as away sick.

When can I access the class website?

All class Home Learning Website will open by Thursday 23rd of April. However, some are already available for viewing.
Links to them are at the top of this page.

​Teacher's will post Weekly updates 24hrs before the work has to begin so it can be previewed by parents.
​
In conclusion.
By working in partnership, with goodwill, clear communication and an understanding and appreciation of the pressures we all face in this unprecedented time, staff and parents will be able to provide students with home learning experiences that will be positive, maintain the continuity of their learning and allow them to gain a greater insight into the importance of taking responsibility for their own achievement.
​
Mark Hansen
Principal
9th April 2020

Recommended Resources.
​These links are to recommended sites and materials with which many students are already familiar. 


Additional Resources


Reading
Japanese
Humanities and Social Sciences
Music
Science
Maths

...Our Learning SA 

Click on the image below to explore this resource.
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This site is an online collection of education materials developed by department curriculum managers and expert teachers.
 
The site provides learning materials and activities across all learning areas in the Early Years Framework and the Australian Curriculum. There are materials that are appropriate for families as well as resources that are more targeted towards teachers.

This new easy-to-use website supports: 
  • continued learning between school and home
  • students with opportunities to work independently
  • parents and caregivers with resources and guidance to support learning at home
  • teachers with resources to support them teaching the curriculum.​
This space has been created with urgency to support school and preschool communities in this challenging time and will continue to be developed over the coming weeks and months.

As children commence online learning parents can help them to be cyber safe by reading these....
.....Tips on how to stay safe online during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Schedules: The Number One Strategy for Students with Autism and or Problems Related to Being Organised and Focussed in these Uncertain Times
https://suelarkey.com.au/schedules-students-with-autism-coronavirus/
Whether your child is ASD or not if they struggle:
  • To stay engaged with online learning 
  • To get into a routine when learning from home
  • With anxiety in this strange time
  • To stay away from the screen
  • To stay on task
then we recommend you start using SCHEDULES

Additional Printable Home Learning Packs

These "Teaching at Home Packs" include a range of resources that can be completed at home by children with the assistance of their parents or guardians. The pack includes resources covering the key learning areas of English, Maths and Science, along with some additional craft and mindfulness activities. They have been generously provided by 

Teachstarter 
Click on the link to find more resources.
Foundation Home Pack
File Size: 32555 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 1 Home Pack
File Size: 26421 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 2 Home Pack
File Size: 29842 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 3 Home Pack
File Size: 25289 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 4 Home Pack
File Size: 18519 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 5 Home Packs
File Size: 21165 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Year 6 Home Pack
File Size: 19455 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Empowering students to create positive futures through high quality teaching.​