Learning at home

Thank you to all the parents/carers for all you are doing to support your child's learning at home. We really appreciate how new and different this is and how much you are juggling.

Student timetables for working from home

Students should expect to complete the same amount of work / study for the same number of hours as they would in a normal week. Keeping a routine similar to a school day and homework is a good idea.

All work is being set on Show My Homework. It is set on a weekly timetable for each year group as shown below.

Years 7-10 school timetable

Year 7

Monday English, Geography and Art Tuesday Maths, History and DT Wednesday English, PRS and Music Thursday Maths, Drama and Computing Friday Science, Dance and Language

Year 8

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Maths, History and DT English, Geography and Art Maths, Drama and Computing Science, Dance and Language English, PRS and Music

Year 9

Monday English, PRS and Music (and Dance option) Tuesday Maths, Drama, Computing and second language Wednesday Chemistry, Biology and language Thursday Maths, History and DT Friday English, Geography, Art and Physics

Year 10

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Option A (Friday period 1), English and Biology Option B (Wednesday period 4) and Maths Option C (Monday period 5), Physics and PRS Option D (Tuesday period 4) and English Maths and Chemistry

Y10 option subjects – students’ work will be set as per their school timetabled option block periods as defined above.

Year 11 work to help you into year 12

Mr Flett has issued several ideas to get students started on work that will make a difference to performance at A Level. Many of these are curiosity based tasks, but all year 11 parents/carers and students should now be in receipt about year 11 into 12 bridging work for sixth form set through Show My Homework to help support transition to A Levels.

Year 12 school timetable

Work is set by teachers and departments using Show My Homework.

Revision Revision for exams was the key goal for most subjects when we left school. Hopefully you have also been able to keep up revision and are now ramping that up. We will email again about how the exams will take place, but we are still aiming to stick with the timetable issued before breaking up. In other words, having exams in the week before and after half term.

Speaking with some students, it has been good to hear how different ideas of sticking to a routine have been helping - like keeping to your timetable; or having three sessions a day, with a decent break between each.

Online Courses

If revision is going well and you want to be occasionally looking at other things, then here are a selection of short online courses you can do through the University of York. They are engaging ways of looking at subjects you are interested in now, or things you might want to study at university. It is great to put on your CV/personal statement that you have done one of them. They have always been designed as online courses, so are perfect to do from home. Some of them will even help with your A Level studies (of course you can do these courses after the year 12 exams if you are too busy now) – see link – York University: https://www.york.ac.uk/study/moocs/?utm_source=University%20of%20York&utm_medium=email &utm_campaign=11474649_April20%20Excellence%20Hub%20News%20Bulletin&dm_i=1BEN,6TX W9,RZCL6,RDHSM,1

Unifrog, Open Days, looking ahead

Unifrog (our Higher Education and Apprenticeships platform) is still available and has increased its distance learning resources. Students can log into it, in the normal way, as they would at school.

In recent conversations with students, we were discussing university visits. As you'll imagine, the virtual tours are being beefed up. I took a virtual tour of Nottingham Trent University. It is a really strong university, and we always try to go there for the Open Day (along with a trip to Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester). On the virtual tour I checked out some of the departments I normally like going to, and also a tour of the accommodation, facilities and city. It was a good experience and quite quickly gave me the feel that I normally get when we go there. The link for it is below, although obviously you can go out and do the same with many different universities just now. https://virtualtour.ntu.ac.uk/

Please get in touch through the school email system if you need to speak with any member of the sixth form team rather than responding to the InTouch generic emailing system as this platform is not manned daily and it will take us longer to respond to you.

A few common themes

Following conversations Mr Flett and Mrs Cruise have had catching up with students this week a few common things have cropped up below:

Sleep

It seems like some of you are having more problems with sleep than normal. I suppose that when some of the standard routines have been taken away, that’s not unexpected. But it seemed to be bothering a few people. Below is a link to a BBC article about sleep during this time (it is by a physiologist who is thinking about the current situation). It’s quite interesting even if you’re doing well with your sleep: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/52271086

Help

If there is anything you are getting stuck with, then please do let your teachers know and they will be more than happy to help. But beyond that here are a couple of other ideas:  There are a good number of year 13s who have little to do at the moment, and have offered to help out anyone in year 12 if they can. We have most subjects covered – so if you’d be interested in having a chat, or being able to get in touch with them when you’re stuck on something, please let us know and we’ll try to sort you out with someone. It might do them good as well as you!  Many of you have groupchats about subjects, and you’ve been thinking about this anyway. In the first instance you are checking with others on the groupchat about how to do something. If you have solved something through doing that, then great. If not then perhaps collect a few issues on behalf of the group and one of you can email the teacher so they can help you on the bits you need most help with.

Revision

In some subjects a problem that some people have is suddenly getting new sources of information – like a revision guide which introduces new material. Then you can get overwhelmed with new information and feel that there is too much to do. It would be sensible to check with your teacher first before using a revision guide or a website you’ve found.

Routine

Year 13 students over the last few years have found that spending a whole day on one subject is likely to be inefficient. If you know you’ve got a limited amount of time before moving on to the next subject, you’re more likely to make more efficient use of your time. This will happen if you are doing three subjects in a day – say two hours per session.

Coursework

The English department is putting out a plea to really make good use of this time for coursework. Collecting and analysing data in English Language and really pressing ahead, is crucial for making sure that time spent back in school can be focused on learning for the exams when we get back.

Y11 and Y13 – Suggestions for making best use of time

The cancellation of summer exams has obviously had a huge impact on all our Y11 and 13 students. All that extra time which was being spent on final exam preparation can be put to really good use. It is vital that you keep your brains active, and no learning is ever wasted. Lots of people have already shared some great ideas (see link to school website below): http://www.highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk/pdfs/StudentPDFs/Y11andY13learningsuggestions.pdf

Keep your brain moving. Make the most of your time. Learn something new.

Parents/carers can help

Please help us by:  Making sure your child has access to their school email account from home. Ideally this will be on a home (or borrowed) desktop, laptop or tablet although we recognise that some students don’t have access to these and may only able to access email on their (or your) phone.  Making sure your child has somewhere quiet to work. In the event of an extended school closure we would ask that parents/carers try to ensure that conditions at home are conductive to allow 6- 7 hours good quality work each day.

Guidance on work expectations and how to manage it

1. As you know work should be set for Y7-10 on the basis of a weekly timetable, with 3-4 subjects being covered on each day.

2. Work should be completed on the day that it is set. We have realised that by setting longer deadlines it can be hard for students to know what to do when, work can actually build up and become unmanageable. We want every student to be as clear as possible about the work they need to do each day and to be able to complete it neatly in one day. They should then be able to switch off knowing they’ve done a good day’s work. We are not setting homework now; it is included within the work set in each slot. Some subjects may be setting more extended project style work. Teachers have been asked to make sure work towards these is broken down into chunks and not set over a number of weeks, which can make it look like it is on-going in Show My Homework.

3. Students should be working each school day, but not working excessive hours. They should not be working much more than they would normally. Students in Y7-9 should be expecting to spend around 4.5 hours each day working, students in Y10 around 5 hours. In many cases this will mean about 90 minutes per subject on each day in Y7-9 and about 100 minutes for Y10. Some subjects only have 1 lesson a week, for example PRS and Music. They will set work for up to 45 minutes.

4. Estimating exactly how much work different students are likely to do in the time set

is really hard – everyone is different, and works at a different pace and with different

approaches. While we can adapt to this easily in a school situation it is harder to do remotely. Please keep this in mind and get in touch if you are finding that there is regularly too much work to manage.

5. Teaching staff will be mindful of all of the above when setting their work. We think that in some cases we may have over-estimated the amount of work that can be completed within certain time frames and are asking staff to think carefully about this. We are aware that it can take time to work through instructions, to access resources and to save work for example, and that family members who are trying to help may be very busy too. We also know that spending hours at a computer is not easy for many students, and not good for them either. They need to have breaks, ideally get some fresh air and exercise and to talk to others.

6. Everyone is starting to find routines that work for them. For many this will be to try to follow the hours of a normal school day, starting with assembly at 9.00am and completing school work over a number of hours until around 3.30pm. Then switching off. This may not be ideal for

all, or always be manageable but it is likely to provide a good model. Working late into the evening is not generally a good idea.

Once again we are so grateful to you for your support, understanding and flexibility. You are helping us to be the best ‘virtual Highfields’ we can be; we are learning every step of the way and can do a great job if we continuing working together.

Please keep us posted on the learning that your young people are doing using the email address wearehighfields@highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk

Mr Cole Deputy Headteacher

Resources for Highfields students learning from home

Show My Homework: Access to work set is through Show My Homework www.showmyhomework.co.uk/ (also accessible via the school website). Students can log on to Show My Homework using their school username and password. Please ensure your children check Show My Homework regularly as staff will

be updating their subject areas.

School Website / VLE:

Resources are available on the school website: www.highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk

Students can access ‘all users’ from home from the Highfields School website:  Go to Highfields School homepage  Click on ‘portals’  Click on ‘student portal’  Enter school IT username (not email address) and password  Find ‘all users Starkholmes’ or ‘all users Lumsdale’ on the right hand side  Select the appropriate department/folder required.

If students have forgotten their password please email reset@highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk specifying your user name and form to request a new password.

‘Always be doing’ Tasks: All students have been given ‘always be doing’ tasks to work through during any time spent at home. Copies of the information can be downloaded from our website as follows for each key stage:

Years 7-9 (key stage 3): http://www.highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk/pdfs/StudentPDFs/KS3ABD.pdf

Year 10 (key stage 4): http://www.highfields.derbyshire.sch.uk/pdfs/ExamPDFs/KS4ABD.pdf