St Martin's in the 21st Century

15th October 2020
St Martin's in the 21st Century!
Over the last few months we have all had to find new and innovative ways of working.
At the moment we are not able to have visitors into school, but earlier this week we had our first virtual visit. We used teams to enable Mrs Nippress to 'visit' both upper school classes and share her knowledge and experience linked to their topic of earthquakes and volcanoes. Although this felt strange, the children gained a huge amount from the experience and learned loads linked to their topic.
Yesterday we tried experimenting with using Teams to enable Mrs Wellings to teach Maple class. As many of you are aware, Mrs Wellings is currently having to self-isolate while she waits for the results of a coronavirus test. However, she is feeling absolutely fine and was keen to try teaching her class remotely. Although not the same as being in the classroom, it has allowed her to see the class and the class to see her! Despite a few technical problems (it took over half an hour in the morning to set up the teams meeting and ensure that we could see and hear Mrs Wellings through the IWB and she could see and hear us) and the children saying it was 'weird' having their teacher 'beamed' into the classroom, it seems to have gone well - we will be reviewing it properly over the next few days to identify the pros and cons of this approach.
We are very aware that over the next few months, it is likely that staff and children will have to self-isolate at times. Although we have a plan in place that identifies what we will aim to do in a variety of different situations, at the moment none of us know exactly what the next few months will bring and we will continue to review and adapt plans and experiment with different approaches in different scenarios in order to try to find what is best for the children.