(Published July 29th, 2020)
The Covid-19 pandemic in the Spring and Summer of 2020 has been a period of great change and challenge for everyone connected with our school. We are incredibly proud of the way that the entire Winshill Village community - children, staff, parents/carers, and governors - responded to the challenges and came together to keep children and families safe and our pupils learning.
As we reach the end of our two week Summer School, 151 of the 194 children in the main school (i.e. not including Nursery) have now attended school since lockdown began, and all parents and carers have had the opportunity for some time in school for their children.
On this page, we have shared some of the many ways that we have worked to support our community during these unprecedented times.
… from everyone at Winshill Village x
Supporting home learning and wellbeing
When lockdown was announced, we quickly reorganised our website to facilitate the sharing of resources for home learning.
The homepage was restructured to highlight our class pages, and each of those class pages was modified to share helpful links, advice and home learning activities authored by our class teachers in weekly blog posts.
Each class page also included a secure messaging form for children or parents to use to communicate directly with the class teacher. Our staff loved receiving messages from the children. They answered any questions or concerns by contacting parents directly, or by writing responses in their weekly blog posts.
We also added a form for parents to contact our Head teacher, Miss Goodson directly.
Free School Meals
Working closely with our school meal suppliers Chartwells, Free School Meals were delivered to the homes of eligible children by school staff throughout the pandemic, and FSM hampers have also been provided for children over the school summer holidays. Children without internet access at home had learning materials delivered to their homes alongside their free school meal deliveries.
Wellbeing and safeguarding
All teaching staff made regular phone calls to the homes of children in their class to answer any questions, chat to the children and their parents or carers, and check on their wellbeing. It was lovely to stay in touch with the children in this way, and to hear their voices on a regular basis.
The school office was available by phone and email throughout the Covid-19 lockdown. Miss Goodson and the rest of the senior leadership team coordinated and liaised with external agencies over safeguarding concerns relating to Winshill Village children and families. Where appropriate, families were referred for additional support, including to food banks and medical services. Many thanks to the community for supporting us in these efforts.
The Home Learning Showcase
To encourage home learning and pride in work completed at home, we established a Home Learning Showcase on our website for children to share examples of their work from home. From March to July over 350 pieces of work were shared, and the showcase pages had over 6000 views during those months.
Website statistics
From the first day of lockdown on March 20th to the last day of term on July 17th, our school website at winshillvillage.org.uk had:
- Over 16, 000 visits
- Over 72,000 views of individual pages
We’ve had visitors to our website from over 40 different countries!
Home-school communications
We made communicating with parents and carers a priority.
From the beginning of the lockdown, our Head Teacher Miss Goodson posted weekly updates onto the website, beginning with her message from March 22nd, and continuing throughout the Spring and Summer Term to her final message of the term.
As government guidance was released for the wider opening of schools, she shared thoughts and plans. Miss Goodson also shared regular quizzes for the children and parents to guess which interesting fact matched to which member of staff!
In May, we established a separate Covid-19 section of the website to share updated timetables and procedures, and answers to frequently asked questions from parents and carers.
As the school opened to all Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils, then to some pupils from other year groups, and, finally, for Summer School, all of those plans were shared online.
Communications with parents were supported by regular updates to our FaceBook page, and by text messages from our parent text messaging service.
Finally, we established secure Zoom calls from our Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 classrooms to link children in school with pupils still learning at home. It was wonderful for the children to see each other!
Year 5 Zoom call
Media: our videos and podcasts
We launched a number of media initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic:
Our YouTube Channel
We started a YouTube channel. Miss Twigger shared regular readings of ‘Journey to The Centre of the Earth’ to the channel for her Year 5 class, and Miss Hughes recorded a set of great Maths videos to talk her Year 2 children through calculation methods!
The staff in school also created a lovely ‘A little message from us to you’ video to tell the children how much they were missing them. When school opened more widely to Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils, we created a video to show some of the changes to the school to meet new Covid-19 regulations. This helped parents to prepare their children for the return to school.
The ‘No Limits’ podcast
In June, we launched ‘No Limits’, a weekly audio podcast to share shoutouts, jokes and pupil creativity to the Winshill Village Community. There were seven episodes of the show, including a fabulous Year 6 Leavers’ Special presented by Grace, Lucas and Alexandra from Year 6. Regular segments of the show included ‘Show and Tell’, ‘What’s that Noise?’, ‘Startin’ the week with Reverend Frank’ (with Reverend Frank Startin of St. Mark’s Church), and school news. The shows had up to 500 listeners each, and you can even listen to them on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
The Year 6 Leavers’ special of ‘No Limits’ featured in local press coverage in the online edition of The Burton Mail.
Messages of support
“The impact you have on all of our children is amazing. Thank you for this!”
“You guys have been brill for the children over the last few months. Thank you all.”
“The website is so positive and lovely to read thank you to all the teachers and Miss Goodson”
“I cannot begin to express how much I love this school and the amazing people in it. We will miss you immensely!”
In addition to the many lovely messages we received from parents and carers through our website and social media, we were also delighted to receive a letter of thanks from Kate Griffiths, MP for Burton and Uttoxeter:
“... you and your team have gone above and beyond to provide a sense of normality to the children’s educational needs, and to ensure the health and wellbeing of the entire Winshill Village community ...”
Thank you for your support!
The journey is not over, and many challenges lie ahead as we adjust to the new ‘new normal’ from September. We’ll be working hard to build on the developments we’ve made over the last four months. For now, though, it’s time for a summer break and for some well-earned rest for everyone! Thank you for your support, and we’ll see you on September 3rd. As Miss Goodson said in her final blog post of the term:
“... with mixed emotions; happiness, sadness, pride and joy (and exhaustion!) I sign off for this school year ... thanks for working together to get through this crazy, crazy time. ”
