Covid 19 UPDATE

19 March 2020

Dear Parent

Now that we have the confirmed closures of all schools in Northern Ireland due to Covid-19 I would like to provide some details regarding online learning and how we will aim to provide support to our pupils and parents. Obviously things will change dramatically for our pupils, the transition to online learning is not something they will have experienced before and may be fraught with technical difficulties.

With this in mind we have decided to endeavour to keep things as close to the pupils’ normal routine as possible. Our teachers will prepare weekly schedules which will provide general activities and work to be completed. We have decided to issue every child with a classwork book. This will allow them to complete tasks into the book, as they would do in class. This helps pupils maintain a sense of normality and allows staff to monitor work if one or two pictures are sent to teachers’ email on a weekly/monthly basis.

In order to provide parents with these resources we will do the following:

• Open the school from 2pm – 6pm tomorrow to allow parents to collect books, return reading and library books, lift PE Kits etc.
• Resources will be left in each child’s classroom and parents should enter the rooms via the playground entrance (as pupils would do). All doors will be propped open to help reduce levels of infection
• Provide timetables and activities for each year group via our school website (www.gibsonps.co.uk) which will be located under the Home Learning section (available from Friday 20 March 2020)
• Send emails to parents with Literacy, Numeracy & Spellings
• Be in school on set days should you wish to discuss anything with us (details will follow giving times)

Yours sincerely

K Sterritt (Mr)

Principal