Bentley Weekly Update 08/01/21

Thank you to everyone for their superb efforts this week getting to grips with remote learning. 

We are very proud of the children (and adults!) for their contributions to discussions and the work completed. We hope you all managed to access the live sessions this week, enjoying a story from Mrs Robinson or Mr Ross, joining an assembly and reviewing your week with your class teacher.  

Remember to follow the guidelines in our Online Protocol Guide which will help to keep us all safe during these sessions. 

In school we are embedding an effective risk assessment to keep everyone safe and socially distanced. I am aware that some of you need school provision for your child every day due to being critical workers, with no other adult at home to provide care for your child. However, if you do have another adult at home who can look after your child, please give this some careful consideration to keep you and other families as safe as can be.   

The Government released further guidance yesterday, on attendance in schools during this current lockdown. It states: 

“parents and carers who are critical workers should keep their children at home if they can.” This will be if they can continue their critical work in this way.

Some critical workers will be able to continue their critical work with their children at home, and where this is the case, we are encouraging all families to do this. We are working with our communications team to strengthen this message with parents.  We hope that employers are making allowances for as many critical workers to do this as possible. Some, such as NHS front line staff, police officers, social workers and teachers, may not be able to do this and may request a school place. 

Donations of Devices - You may have seen the BBC - Give a laptop campaign which was promoted again yesterday. If you know of anyone who can help please let them know. We are more than happy to accept donations of any unused laptops and tablets directly to the school for wiping and distributing to families who need them. We will let you know of anyone who makes contact with us at school too so we can support any families who do not have ready access to online resources for each child. One family have offered a printer to any family that needs it, get in touch if you would be interested. 

We have applied for some data sims too for our school and if successful will distribute these to families who need them. 

Children in school - Please can you send children to school dressed in uniform but wearing trainers. This will allow them to take part in Joe Wicks sessions and do PE activities outdoors.  

Remember they also need a coat with them every day. 

Your Comments – Thank you so much for all your lovely, supportive and kind messages. They mean an awful lot to the staff and keep us going! 

Free online books – You can access a wealth of free reading material for your children on the Oxford Owl site at https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/free-ebooks/ 

They have a wide range of books to keep reading going during this lockdown and you can access books using the colour band system we use in school. Happy reading.