Blended Learning (Remote Learning)

The DfE (Department for Education) have asked all schools that where a class, group of pupils, or individual pupils need to self-isolate due to COVID-19, or there are local or national restrictions requiring pupils to remain at home, schools are expected to provide immediate access to remote education.

As a school, we have decided to start using ‘Microsoft Teams’ to access learning whilst at home. It will be used every week for home learning (Assignments) and messages. Microsoft Teams will also be used to support any child that has to remain at home while self-isolating. If your child is self-isolating you will be contacted by the school to inform you that daily home learning will be in your child’s Microsoft Teams Class, ready for them to access. This is our first step on our journey towards ‘Blended Learning’ – teaching children in the class and at home, if needed.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a free Microsoft App/site that aims to simplify creating, distributing and assessing learning in a paperless way. Teachers can use Microsoft Teams to send announcements to entire classes, share resources, lesson notes, inputs, diagrams, and home learning. Children can use it to access work covered in class in school, at home or on the go and complete home learning. Parents can use some of the features of Microsoft Teams to help engage with and support children in their home learning. It is a free resource that can be accessed from any device connected to the internet – laptops, desktop computers, tablets or mobile phones. If you do not have the technology for this, please contact the school office.

Video Guides

More coming soon.

Microsoft Teams has a number of different uses and benefits:

Teachers can use it to set classwork/home learning tasks.
Teachers can upload and save files which children can access both in and out of school.
Frequently used website links can be shared on Teams which allows pupils quick and easy access.
Microsoft Teams is a FREE website/app which is part of the free Microsoft suite of educational resources (i.e. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Forms etc.) This can be downloaded free from your regular app store. (It can also be accessed through a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Firefox).
Children can discuss classwork/home learning and can collaborate together on tasks.
It encourages and develops our childrens’ digital literacy – many organisations, places of work, universities and secondary schools also use Microsoft Teams.
Children can upload work for the teacher to see and feedback on.

In each class Team are links to their regular useful websites, i.e. Studyzone, Accelerated Reader, Spelling Shed, and more. This is to make it easier for the children so that they can access school links all from one place, Microsoft Teams.

As the weeks progress, more will be uploaded to Teams. Children will be shown in class what their ‘Team’ looks like, so please waste no time by logging in with your child’s unique username and password. This will be in your child’s Home Learning Journal (Years 1-6), or have been passed to parents in Nursery & Reception. It will be under the O365/Teams label and each child’s log-in ends with @hillsideps.co.uk. If you do not have your child’s login details for Teams, please contact their teacher.

We are still in the process of trialling certain aspects and training staff on this new way of teaching. Eventually, our aims are that there will be lesson inputs and resources for the children to continue their learning, is required to self-isolate, in line with the rest of the class at school. This may be a live or pre-recorded lesson. The lesson inputs will be a recording of the teacher’s voice and screen from the board that is shared with the children in the class. The children at home will not be able to see the teacher or any of the other children at school. Staff have been trained appropriately in safeguarding and GDPR to ensure the safety of all children.

We appreciate that this is a new way of teaching and learning for everyone, the teachers have been busy learning and practising different aspects of this in preparation for this new way of teaching. We anticipate that there may be aspects of this that will require adapting as we all become more proficient in ‘Blended learning’. We thank you in advance for your patience with this as we work together to support your children’s learning.