Coronavirus

Dear Parents

I hope you are all safe and well at this difficult time. At least the sun continues to shine and we have been able to make the most of the slight easing of the lockdown measures.

As I am sure you can imagine, we have spent the last two weeks since I wrote to you making sense of and putting plans in place for the partial extension of school opening. The School Governing body met last night to approve these plans. In line with Government guidance, in this first phase we are opening to children in Reception ONLY, NOT Year 1 at this time.

We have set up the required “bubbles” of no more than 15 children to teach those in Reception who have expressed an interest in returning. At the same time, we have had to manage the safe grouping of the growing number of Key Worker and Vulnerable pupils from Year 1 and Year 2 who need a place.

 We have completed a comprehensive risk assessment to minimise risks to the health of pupils and staff but there are no guarantees around this. The school governors have then had to hold a virtual meeting to consider and agree that the planning is in place to extend the numbers attending school.

We still do not have confirmation that the extension of school opening will happen on 1^st June as the government want to ensure that the data supports this action. I expect the announcement may well be at the end of half term.

Next week is the May half term holiday and the school will be closing to all pupils. This is to give school staff a well-needed break and to enable us to ensure that the site meets the new health and safety requirements for the possible increase in pupil numbers. Furniture needs to be rearranged and resources limited to those that can be easily cleaned. School is going to look very different to all of us who return in June at least for a while longer. Some of the routines around arriving at and leaving school will have to change along with the timings of the school day. These have been communicated separately to parents of children who may return in early June.

After half term we will continue to provide home learning through Tapestry and on the website for children who are not in school in all three year groups. Teaching in school will follow the same planning. We continue to be amazed by how hard our families are working and are so impressed with the Tapestry uploads. It is lovely to see the children learning and playing. Teachers will also make contact with the children still at home early in June to catch up with them and answer any questions that you all may have.

Hopefully the sun will continue to shine on us all. I will of course provide an update as soon as any new information is available.

Stay safe

Jo Davenport and the SWIS team

Dear Parents

We do hope you are all continuing to stay safe and well at home. The continued sunshine over the Easter holidays has helped us all to cope with our current situation. Hopefully, the children all enjoyed themselves and have eaten their fill of chocolate treats!

We have stayed open over the holidays for Key Worker children although the numbers have been very low. This has enabled us to keep everyone safe and I am pleased to say that staff remain healthy and well at the moment.

We shall start to set daily Maths and English activities again on Monday as well as weekly cross curricular learning activities. These will continue to be posted on Tapestry. Please do get in touch if you need any further support or guidance. If you need a new exercise book to record the learning in, we will put boxes containing new books outside the school for you to collect if you are passing. Mrs Chimes is rejoining the staff team on her return from maternity leave and will be setting a weekly physical challenge for the children in all year groups. Look out for these on Tapestry. The Department for Education has put together lists of useful websites and the BBC are putting together learning activities on their website. Staff will direct you to the most useful of these.

A skeleton staff will continue to be in school for the Critical Care of key worker children. If you do need us please either telephone the school between 8am and 4pm or email on head@southwootton-inf.norfolk.sch.uk.

If you are finding home learning a challenge, there is a factsheet on the school website under Home Learning which gives some useful hints and tips. Try to pace yourselves. We are not expecting all the work to be completed every day. Keep doing what you can and remember through talking and playing with your children, they will be learning.

Please do be careful to check that the parental controls are high on your devices. Some of the learning suggested will be through websites etc  and it is important to really know what your child can and cannot access. There are various guides that can help with this. This is the link to the NSPCC website. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Stay safe everyone!

Jo Davenport and all the staff at SWIS

Friday 27^th March

Dear Parents

We do hope you are all keeping well and have managed to enjoy some time outside in your gardens this week. The sunshine has certainly helped to lift spirits. We are so impressed with all the home learning we have seen on Tapestry. As families, you appear to have adapted well to this strange new existence!

We shall continue to set daily Maths and English activities as well as cross curricular ideas until Wednesday when we would have been finishing for the Easter holidays. Please keep up with the reading through the holidays. If we are still closed, as we expect to be after Easter, then daily learning will resume on Monday 20^th April.

A skeleton staff has been in school this week for the Critical Care of key worker children. Numbers are low as where possible parents have opted to “Stay at Home” as the Government have requested. If you do need us please either telephone the school between 8am and 4pm or email on head@southwootton-inf.norfolk.sch.uk.

If you are finding home learning a challenge, there is a factsheet on the school website under Home Learning which gives some useful hints and tips. Try to pace yourselves. We are not expecting all the work to be completed every day. Keep doing what you can and remember through talking and playing with your children, they will be learning.

Please do be careful to check that the parental controls are high on your devices. Some of the learning suggested will be through websites etc  and it is important to really know what your child can and cannot access. There are various guides that can help with this. This is the link to the NSPCC website. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Stay safe everyone! Jo Davenport and all the staff at SWIS

Dear Parents/carers,

Re: Coronavirus update – school closure to most pupils

Following on from my last update, I’m now writing to let you know that we have now been instructed to close the school to almost all children after this Friday until further notice.

As advised by the government, we will do all we can to stay open for the children of key workers (e.g. NHS staff, police, others in frontline services) and children with certain needs.

We are waiting for the government to publish more information on what this means, but it would help us in the meantime if you could let us know if you think your child may fall into one of these categories. Please either ring or email the school using the details below.  We’ll be in touch again as soon as we are sure who this does apply to.

All other children will need to stay at home, so we ask that you do not send your child into school from Monday onwards.

Please note that this is a national closure – as you may have heard in the news – so while it is a challenging situation, we are not alone. We’ll re-open fully as soon as we can and will let you know when this is by text and email.

What we’ll continue doing while your child is at home

Your child’s learning is of course important to us, so we’ll continue to help your child to learn as we detailed yesterday.

If your child qualifies for PupilPremium we will also be in touch with more information about how we will continue to provide this, with support from a scheme that the government has just announced.

This is as much as we know right now and we appreciate your continued patience as we deal with this ever-changing situation. We understand that this latest news will have an impact on you and your family and it’s far from ideal, but we’ll continue to keep in touch with any updates as the situation develops. We expect to be here in school for the foreseeable future and are happy to offer what guidance and support we can during this difficult time. The SWIS community has always been strong – amazing children, great staff and fantastic parents! I am sure we would all like to support each other through this troubling time.

If you want to get in touch to share any concerns, please don’t hesitate to do so via telephone or email.

Tel: 01553 671552  email: head@southwootton-inf.norfolk.sch.uk

And remember: if you or your child feels ill and you want to know what to do next, please use NHS 111 online.

Thank you again for your continued support, and we will be in touch with more information when we can.

Kind regards

Jo Davenport

Dear Parents/carers

As you will be aware, Government and Public Health England guidance changed this week. The new advice is that anyone showing the symptoms of either a new and persistent cough and/or a high temperature, should self isolate for 14 days, along with the entire family/household. This means no one should leave the family home during this time to protect the health of everyone in the community. Also people with significant underlying health conditions should consider self -isolating. Self isolating requires whole households to remain at home for a minimum of 14 days.

We are encouraging hand washing in school, but are aware that for some children the soap is causing discomfort to their hands. If you wish, you can send in a bottle of hand soap, sanitiser or hand cream labelled with your child’s name and we will keep this for their use. We have asked all parents to ensure their children wash their hands with soap before coming to school as well as on arrival.

We are cancelling all clubs from the end of this week. Parents of children attending after school clubs on Wednesday and Thursday should wait on the front playground. The children will be brought through the library to meet you. The Year 1 trip and swimming for Red Squirrels has also been cancelled.

Teaching staff are currently planning “Home Learning” alongside their regular class planning. We will use Tapestry and the website to communicate these plans. In the event of school closure we will aim to set daily maths and English learning activities alongside a weekly grid of suggested cross curricular learning activities. We are currently compiling a list of websites for home learning your child can use if they are absent. You can also download free audiobooks from many websites, including Oxford Owl, where you can register for free. This will support home reading.

There will be a home learning package for each child sent home in the case of closure including an exercise book and writing materials for them to record their learning. Photographs on Tapestry will also be a good way of recording their learning. Staff will check this regularly and provide guidance and support as necessary.

Please do not send in any unnecessary bags. Many children bring a large rucksack and it only has their lunch and water bottle in it. The fewer items in school the better. Please remove keyrings etc from their book bags.

In addition to all of this we have cancelled whole school assemblies as an additional measure.

We are also cancelling any non-emergency meetings in school, and this includes meeting with teachers. Thank you to parents/carers who are ringing in with messages or questions rather than coming to the hatch in the office. As you can appreciate, our office staff are exceptionally busy at the moment as we follow up on guidance, absences, checking with vulnerable families and prepare work etc for children so by ringing in and ensuring your child has everything they need, we can focus on the important work.

A huge thank you to parents and carers for being so supportive and sensible at this time. Please be reassured we are doing all we can in line with government and PHE guidance and your support with the measures we are taking is much appreciated. Please refer to the official websites if you have any questions, or if they are more school specific you can ring or email and we will do our best to give a swift response.

Best wishes
Jo Davenport