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3 . Parental support for our youngest children . For Infant children , there is no getting away from the need for adult support with remote learning . This has been incredibly challenging for working parents who have been trying to work from home , whilst helping their child with school-based tasks . To help with this , we kept our timetable flexible in the Infant School and offered a wide choice of activities .
Summary thoughts for 2021 and beyond :
While the pandemic has certainly been disruptive , in many ways it has merely accelerated trends that were already happening .
In the case of hybrid or blended learning , the pedagogy of providing a balance of teaching that is synchronous ( direct instruction ) and asynchronous ( set work ), is clearly not new . It just hadn ’ t been used as a location-based , onsite / offsite or a delivery-based offline / online model . Asynchronous or enquiry-based learning has , however , naturally moved into an online world over the past two decades ; homework , project work , revision and research have been revolutionized by edtech platforms .*
During the 50:50 onsite / offsite learning period in June we split our curriculum to use the 50 % onsite time for areas best suited to in-person teaching , such as the introduction of new concepts . Offsite time concentrated on studentled enquiry areas , where they are used to completing work independently , whether online or offline . It was an evolution of what we were already doing .
Online provision of direct instruction was the new , pandemic-driven tool added to the edtech kit to deliver live teaching during the fully remote period . It is a very welcome addition that we are continuing to develop , but the in-person heart of schooling – pastoral care , social interaction , community events and bonds – remains a very powerful reason , beyond the pandemic , to keep the doors of physical campuses open .
* It was as a result of SARS , in 2003 , that we adopted our first ‘ Learning Management System ’ ( LMS ) called Moodle . At the time , the platform wasn ' t used much in day-today teaching and it has long since been replaced by the various systems we now use routinely to share resources with students and parents .
EDUCATION & LEARNING :
HOW DO YOU TEACH THROUGH A PANDEMIC ?