Welcome Back - April 2020

Welcome Back – April 2020

Welcome back, everyone. I hope that you’ve had a peaceful Easter as well as a safe and healthy one. Don’t panic, we know that today is a training day so we don’t expect students to be working but we wanted to update you on expectations before we start back properly.

I’m sure that after a two-week break it’ll be good for us all to get back to routines and whilst our routines might be unfamiliar, it won’t take us long to adapt.

It won’t surprise you to hear that we’ve been listening to students, staff and parents about how we set work. We hope that we’ve learnt from some mistakes and that, given this will be the situation for the foreseeable future, we can all work together to ensure students make progress.

Firstly, we should thank everyone who shared their insights into how setting work has been so far, it has been really helpful.

As from today (Monday 20th April), we will be setting work in the following manner wherever possible:

  • Each class teacher will set one piece of work per group; this should be roughly an hour’s piece of work.
  • Core subjects (maths, English and science) in KS3 and KS4 will set two pieces of work (two hours) worth of work per group.
  • All work will be set at the start of the week on Monday morning to enable students to plan their week and to aid organisation (blank timetables will be shared with students to assist this process further).
  • Work will be scheduled for completion by the Friday of the same week – depending on the work involved, this might be flexible.
  • Where possible, we will set an online quiz in order to gauge some level of student engagement and progress of students.

Students will be encouraged to exercise and read as part of their working week. Staff have been encouraged to share recommended reading and there is a reading list on this website: https://ormistonforgeacademy.co.uk/news/2020/3/27/suggested-reading-lists

We are hoping that this streamlined approach will encourage more engagement from students. We will keep tweaking the model but we believe this direction provides us all with some balance. Of course, we are always open to feedback and we will continue to monitor student progress.

Please take care and stay safe.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Lisa Mason
Principal
Ormiston Forge Academy

Don’t forget:
Wash your hands
Cough/sneeze into your elbow
Don’t touch your face
Stay more than 6ft (2m) away from others
Stay home if you feel sick

Please follow Government advice by washing your hands frequently and reduce your social interactions – here’s some Government guidance on social distancing: https://bit.ly/2UxH51F